This was interesting, practical, straightforward, and engaging. Adams uses just enough person writing and anecdotal information to make a book that's essentially a Guide to Coaching Yourself interesting and funny. He's also done the heavy lifting of taking the concept of reframing, which most people know and do although they probably don't know they do it or even do it consciously, and not only explicated it with high level, accessible examples, but divided the book into a number of easy to navigate chapters with easy to navigate subtitles so that you can zip right to what you might need at a given moment (should you keep this in your home library; I have to give it back to the public library*). He also created an appendix that's a giant list of his suggested reframes. And they are just that-- suggestions.

I am a long-time reframer and I teach people, in various capacities, to do it. Adams makes it abundantly clear that people must WANT to genuine reframe and approach the situation differently for reframing to be successful. I agree. "Look on the bright side" is the world's easiest to access, least effective reframe-- mostly because people who don't already tend toward optimism won't (or can't) and because it's imprecise to the point of being nonsensical. Adam's whole book is dedicated to desire and specificity. To which I would add, yes. Exactly. I am not a hypnotist. Just a long-time practitioner of behavioral communication and professional development coach who knows the power of Assume Positive Intent + Read Their Cues and adjust accordingly. It only takes a little effort over a relatively short amount of time to concentrate on one area of self-awareness, then self-flip the script away from what hasn't worked toward what might work. And if what might work works, well, then your body will reward you and you accepting that reward (a small dopamine hit, a good night's sleep, a compliment-- all of which will create more of themselves in a continuous reinforcement loop until acted upon by a contrary force) will confirm your reframe. A few more days or weeks of practice and voila! An incremental move toward success. Now, start stacking them.

Meanwhile, one of the very first anecdotes Adams writes is about reframing the physical act of sneezing. He and a not insignificant portion of his social media followers and fans (I am not one, generally, though somehow found this and put it on the Bigass Goodreads To-Read List) have trained themselves to prevent sneezing via self-coaching and sometimes even imagining. I have been trying hard to do this via techniques described. So far, no success. I will keep trying. I am the kind of person who CAN'T sneeze most of the time. The sensation (which to me starts as an uncomfortable tingle mid-nose) will build up for days and sometimes weeks, moving from a mild tingle on one side of my nose and grow into a large, distracting tingle-throb, moving up and into my (usually right) eyeball where it can sit and sit and pound and I know if I could JUST SNEEZE I would feel better, but I can't. None of the typical stimulants work, including sunlight, a shock from light to dark, pepper, dust, tickling myself, having other people tickle me, mimicking sneezing, thinking positively about sneezing, having someone offer me money to sneeze, having someone offer me money to not sneeze, saying sneeze, any of it. So, I am interested. Imma keep trying.

* So I took pics of that whole appendix and will happily reference for you as needed. Hit me up. Your fee is helping me sneeze. Or not, as needed.