BOOK REVIEW: Stop Whining, Start Living: Turning Hurt Into Happiness by Laura C. Schlessinger

Stop Whining, Start Living: Turning Hurt Into Happiness by Laura C. Schlessinger

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
What this book teaches: Happiness is a choice, sounds trite, but it's not. It takes grit and spirit to live your life in a positive manner. Terrible things happen to all of us. Whining has a temporary place in life - it can heal us to be able to whine or vent about something; it's when it takes up permanent residence that it is a negative thing.

Instead of whining about all of our needs that aren't being met strive to fill other people's needs. We will find that our own needs are filled up in that way.

Every time I apply Dr. Laura's advice in my life, very positive results ensue. She is very opinionated, but she is real. She insists that you have to work hard and consciously choose to have a happy life. We can't control a lot of what happens in life. We can control how we react to it. It sounds simple, but Dr. Laura uses real life examples from phone calls to her show and letters and emails written to her to drive the points home over and over again. This helps the reader to figure out how to apply the concepts to herself.

Some of my favorite quotes:

"Yes, indeed, just join the human race; better than some, not as good as others, but always striving for the heavens - AND - with an attitude of loving appreciation for the opportunities, not a self-loathing discounting of your potential."

This is in application to a woman who is dying of cancer and chooses to have a quality life with her family instead of undergoing further futile chemo treatments that are very disruptive and painful:
"At these times you can curse the coming darkness or praise the available light. I am always deeply moved by people who embrace the latter. It's all we have actually, those moments of life with those who matter."

"There are no real excuses for not doing the right thing."

"Deciding to make a choice is the decision to become supremely human. Lower animals run largely on instinct. What makes humans so special is the ability to reason and make choices. That's your power. Use it."

An excerpt from a letter to Dr. Laura from a woman who is very overweight due to drowning out her sorrows by emotional eating - her fiance has broken off the relationship as a result:
"I have to regain my health and show this great guy - and he is a good man - that I care enough about my life to be the gift he truly deserves."

Dr. Laura preaches that we can pretend to feel a certain way and that it will almost always turn into our actually feeling that way:
"So even before you have a change of mind or heart - you can behave as though you have a change of mind or heart. Funny thing, it usually makes you feel a change in mind and heart."

"Despair is a cheap excuse for avoiding one's purpose in life. And a sense of purpose is the best way to avoid despair." - Rabbi Menanchem Schneerson as quoted by Dr. Laura

Remember the stories we tell about our grandparents and great grandparents who stood up to adversity and worked hard for what they got:
"In a nutshell, when you spend your time whining, justified or not, you lose time living. Don't make that trade-off. Make the story of your life an inspiration to the generations."

An excerpt of an email/letter to Dr. Laura:
"If the grass is greener on the other side, water your own damn lawn."

AMEN.


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BOOK REVIEW: Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver

Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is so fantastically beautifully written that I do believe I'm in love with every word of it. It's a good thing it's a "love story" of sorts, but not the kind you might expect. It's a love story about nature, about wild animals and bugs and trees and how it all fits together to make the world go 'round. This book not only made me view the world in a more balanced light it helped me get over my fear of spiders. My hatred of flies is much larger than my fear of spiders and without the spiders I do believe we'd be drowning in flies.


I'm of course oversimplifying this story. It's not at all about spiders and flies in fact. It's actually about coyotes. And strong women living in a backwards county that believes these women should fit into some kind of mold. And a crotchety old man whom I hated up until about the last quarter of the book. And the purpose of life, in a very straightforward unpretentious manner.


I already loved Barbara Kingsolver just from reading The Bean Trees, which I randomly bought for a quarter outside of Half Price Books a few summers ago. I read the first few pages of The Poisonwood Bible and decided I wasn't in the right head space for that one yet. After reading Prodigal Summer I fully intend to get my hands on and read every word ever written by Kingsolver, including The Poisonwood Bible. Kingsolver is brilliant. Purely brilliant.


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