Building Blocks of a Better Attitude by Dave Berman

Title: Building Blocks of a Better Attitude

Author: Dave Berman

Format: e-book (PDF)

Source: http://manifestpositivity.com/product/e-books/building-blocks-better-attitude/

Price: $10

Rating: Excellent

The blurb for this book opens with these words:

“This book is for you if pessimism and cynicism aren’t working out so well . . . ”

Many years ago, I was rather pessimistic, and it didn’t work out. In fact, I became rather pessimistic that it would ever work for me, to the point that eventually my optimism about optimism crowded out my pessimism about pessimism.

In any case, I get the feeling that the author was probably a lot like me at one point, and he’s had to develop the skills necessary to maintain optimism. So on the drive out to an all-day hypnosis training, I had my smart phone read Building Blocks of a Better Attitude aloud to me. (BTW, if you’re not employing this trick or something similar to use your commute time to your advantage, you are missing out on a great continuing education opportunity.)

In this brief e-book, Berman spells out each of those skills necessary to build and maintain optimism, using the metaphor that each one is a building block that has allowed him to construct a healthier, more effective way to cope with the world. It’s like Pink Floyd’s The Wall in reverse.

Perhaps because Berman and I have studied in a lot of the same places—and as friends and colleagues, we’ve even traded books and influenced one another—I didn’t find a lot of material that was new to me. Your mileage may vary.

Even knowing a lot of the material, I had to admire the brilliance in Berman’s presentation. At first I noted that the book seemed a little short—then I realized that’s because of the utterly clear and concise way that Berman explains each building block, along with his logical progression from idea to idea. So, while the book draws from a number of different sources in disparate fields—and Berman is scrupulous about crediting his sources—it is an amazing work of synthesis, pulling all of these ideas and presenting them in a simple, easy-to-follow order. In many ways, it embodies the NLP principle of doing the very least to get the greatest effect.

Indeed, if I ever get the chance to work with a teen after-school group, I’d probably use Building Blocks of a Better Attitude as the text book, though I might have to re-frame the term better attitude if I do so.

It’s rare that I can’t find anything to complain about, so I hope that my readers will not take it as bias that I really can’t poke any holes in this book. If I were going raise any questions, it is perhaps that Berman doesn’t cite much in the way of peer-reviewed articles backing up his material, but that is a faint criticism at best.

In interests of full disclosure, I will say that the author and I were classmates at the Hypnosis Practitioner Training Institute (Go Turtles!), and we’ve developed a friendship as colleagues who trust and rely on each other’s judgment. Hopefully, my readers have seen me criticize enough of my good friends’ works to trust that I strive to avoid bias when reviewing. Also, while I’m certain that the author would have given me a review copy had I requested it, I opted to purchase this work—and I recommend that you do the same.