The Power of No: A Book Review

The Power of No. This is a book about taking back control of your life. A substantial number of us have spent most of our lives subconsciously or otherwise giving up our power to others around us much to our own detriment. Taking back control of your life is another means of gaining back your personal power. James and Claudia Altucher have written this book to serve as a blueprint for reclaiming that power of ours back. All with the selective and judicious use of the simple word, no.

James and Claudia share with us their ideas on the application and use of No through seven chapters. Highlights of each chapter are shared here.

Chapter One: The No That Choses Life

Devoted to learning how to say no to stress, to taking your own life, your emotional life, to avoid disease, learning how to navigate away from negative chatter, and how to pick yourself up from rock bottom. James shares his own compelling story of plummeting from lofty financial heights to rock bottom and the aftermath.

Chapter Two:  The No That Brings True Love, Creativity and Abundance

I loved the quote from the Altucher’s in this chapter which is: “ If we have crappy people around, we have a crappy life.” With this quote in mind, a second quote carries the though further: “Reconsider who you call your friends, lovers and partners. You could be surprised. Because if you don’t say no to crappy people, your life will go down the drain.”

Chapter Three:  The No to Phony Storytelling

One topic taken up in this chapter speaks to the danger of allowing others to make our choices for us who themselves are unhappy about many things in their own lives.

Other topics are saying no to being a slave for others, plotting your escape from the 9 to 5 world, and, finally, taking steps to getting healthy, getting well, getting inspired, and  getting knowledgable.

The Altuchers inform us that complaining is draining. By disciplining yourself to eliminate complaining (if that is what you are prone to do) from your daily behavior. With regard to complaining, this is what they had to say: “Complaining sucks the air out of any new possibilities that may appear in the present moment; it drags things down into a depressive mode and leaves us drained.”

Thought attacks: The average person experiences up to 70,000 thoughts a day.

Learn how to say No to social pressure. That social pressure is countered with what the authors call ABC. Acknowledge, Boundary, Close. This is a means of politely but firmly shutting down those who are trying to overload you or who make unreasonable demands upon you and your time.

A no to abusive people primarily means avoiding them altogether, or, removing yourself from their spheres of influence.

Chapter Four:  The No to the Angers of the Past

No’s listed here include the following examples.

The application of a compassionate no. The example given here would be like the Highway Patrol officer at the scene of a horrific accident who gently but firmly prevents a mother from approaching the crushed vehicles and witnessing the mangled remains of a husband, a son or a daughter. Compassionately preventing another from witnessing an unspeakable horror.

No to mindless selfishness. Consider treating everyone else as if it’s their last day.

Saying no to lies; to the costume ball masks of life that we all learn to select and put on from childhood onward. Look outward for others that are true to themselves on the inside. Just like you are evolving to be. These are the kinds of folks that may well be . your new tribe.

Chapter Five:  The No to Scarcity

In order to counter scarcity one must take up the belief in abundance. Believe in it first and then it will come.

Getting unstuck. Here the Altuchers offer a nine step guide to getting unstuck by turning the flywheel of forward progress.

Practice the art of listening to others with an open heart. All people are drawn to those who are good patient listeners.

Chapter Six:  The No to Noise

The opening quote to this chapter is a great one. “You have the right to silence and be fully present, here and now.”

Identify the noise and distractions in your life and set out to minimize or eliminate them.

Consider adding Yoga to your regimen to help you focus and become grounded. This is Claudia Altucher’s area of expertise.

Chapter Seven:  The No to “Me”

We are not our thoughts (refer back to the thought attacks in Chapter Three).

The benefits of cultivating silence are: trust, value, time saved, mystique, observation, more brain energy, less web to untangle, and, less stress.

I enjoyed reading this book because the solutions and exercises offered within are imaginative, make sense and liberally laced with humor and wit. The Power of No is real world grounded with personal, shared stories of failures as well as successes that the duo author couple have lived through. The Power of No is clever, candid and what is presented within is all doable!

The Web page for James Altucher are: www.jamesaltucher.com (The Altucher Confidential). Web pages for Claudia Azula Altucher are: www.claudiayoga.com and www.earthyogi.blogspot.com

Jeff Dodson

September 30th 2014

FTC Disclosure:  I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are unbiased and reflect my honest judgment of the product.

Don’t Die with Your Music Still in You: A Book Review

Serena Dyer is a daughter of world renowned spiritual author and speaker, Dr. Wayne Dyer.

In reading this book, I learned that Serena was by no means a perfect child. Growing up, she experienced many of the challenges and obstacles most children and teens contend with. She shares examples of being independent minded, stubborn, contending with failures and working hard at overcoming being quick to judge others.

One of the great gifts she was provided by her parents was to follow her own destiny rather than to fit in, to conform. In this ten chapter book Serena shares how she grew up and how she grappled with recognizing what her own destiny was to be and how to pursue it.

This is her first book and it is entitled “Don’t Die with Your Music Still in You.” From the outset, I must tell you that I found this book to be an easy read, informative and entertaining.

The book is composed of ten chapters. My thoughts and takeaways from each are incorporated here.

 1.    Don’t Die with Your Music Still in You
Serena writes,“it isn’t about what you do with your life. It is about how you lead your life. Live a life of purpose. Wow! Get right to it.

In this first chapter, I loved this quote of hers: “When we hide who we really are in order to fit in or belong, we are suffocating are souls.”

This is the best description I have ever read of something I have occasionally felt on the inside from time to time in my own life when I strayed far from what I was put here to do.  The emphasis on the word suffocating in the quote is my own as the word she chose here so closely aligns with my own personal experience.

2.     Have a Mind That Is Open to Everything and Attached to Nothing
In this chapter, Serena shares with us several stories about her early childhood.  Some are humorous and served to illustrate just how independent minded and strong willed this young lady was. Serena talks about establishing alignment with her purpose.  She learned that she was and is a communicator.  She is very good at conversing with and speaking to others.

3.     You Can’t Give Away What You Don’t Have
In other words, if you don’t have love and compassion on the inside, then you don’t have those attributes to give away and share with others.

4.     Embrace Silence
In Chapter Four, Serena reflects upon how her mother served as a model of demonstrating listening and silence. Serena describes her mother as “an ocean of calm,” while she raised Serena and her seven other siblings. Serena shares how silence can be used as a powerful tool: “When we are quiet and focus on our thoughts, we’re able to realize what kind of thinking patterns we have, and change the ones that aren’t working for us anymore.”

I love silence. Working in silence, or performing my hobbies in silence. Have done so ever since I was a kid. This chapter resonated for me also.

5.     Give up Your Personal History
Serena begins Chapter Five with this quote: ‘Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.”A variation of this quote I have found is: “You cannot march forward into your future facing and walking backward.”

Serena writes,that your personal history does not have to define who you are. Letting go of the past better allows you to embrace and live in the present.

6.     You Can’t Solve a Problem with the Same Mind That Created It
Revising your self-talk. Serena asserts that, “ If you allow anything to stop you from pursuing your passion, you’re stopping your soul from expanding.” Another great quote about one’s mind set here is offered by Spanx founder, Sara Blakely who stated: “I think very early on in life we all learn what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, and we stay where it is safe.”

7.     There Are No Justified Resentments
Serena shares how she learned this from her father.  Anger does not serve you. It only keeps you in the same place that you want to get away from. Taking back control of your life. Blame yourself for your mistakes but not others. Own your own choices and the consequences that follow them.

8.     Treat Yourself As If You Already Are What You’d Like to Be
Believe it first then you will see it. Serena quotes Pablo Picasso here who said: “Everything you can imagine is real.” She devotes time in this chapter speaking about visualization and cultivating the emotional feelings that would arise from achieving higher goals and accomplishments.

9.     Treasure Your Divinity
A quote from Louise Hay begins this chapter: “You have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

Serena writes that, “Treasuring your divinity simply means accepting all parts of yourself as having come from pure, Divine love.”

In chapter nine, Serena shares her experience of choosing to be immersed in the holy water spring at Lourdes. This occurred while she accompanied her father, Wayne, on a trip that took in three of the most spiritual places in Europe. She describes the event as follows: “ I left the baths rejoicing, crying, laughing; I was ecstatic. I probably looked like a lunatic on the street, but I didn’t care. I felt great.” Become what you seek.

10.   Wisdom is Avoiding All Thoughts That Weaken You
I loved the quote that begins this chapter which is, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

In this final chapter, Serena shares the principles that are set forth in the book, Power vs. Force,  by author David Hawkins, M.D. , Ph. D.  This is one that her father shared with her when she was young. Power allows you to live and operate at your best without effort.  By contrast, Force requires movement and burns up energy. Peak athletes focus on performing at their highest capacity and using their own inner strength to excel. Power thoughts thus strengthen us while those of force weaken us.

Overall, I found this to be a great first book by a new author who offers a unique personal perspective of what she learned growing up for herself in addition to a peak inside the family of one of our greatest and most popular spiritual teachers and public speaker.

Serena Dyer has her own website, www.serenadyer.com.


Jeff Dodson
August 27th 2014

FTC Disclosure:  I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are unbiased and reflect my honest judgment of the product.

One Of A Kind

Our religious leaders and philosophers are noted for their attempts to impress upon each of us just how unique each one us really is.  We are told that from the beginning of time up until the very end of time (if such a thing is possible), there will only ever be just one being that we know as our self.

That means just one you, one me, one Uncle Jonas.

So for the curious at heart, just what kind of mathematical odds against the possibility that each of us were ever born to begin with? What does the science of statistical probability tells us about just how unique we individually are?

An intriguing article on this topic by writer Tara MacIsaac was featured in the July 17th-23
2014 issue of the newspaper, Epoch Times. (www.theepochtimes.com)

Tara cites self help author/blogger Mel Robbins’ remarks at a 2011 Ted Talk (Technology, Entertainment & Design) conference in which she declared that the likelihood of you being born as you has been calculated out to about 1 in 400 trillion.

To quote the writer Tara, “This is the probability of you being born at the time you were born to your particular parents, with your particular genetic makeup.”

Tara reported that Dr. Ali Binazir, author and personal change specialist, was also in attendance at Mel Robbins Ted Talk. Dr. Binazir did his own computations and came up with the odds of 1 in 700 trillion.

Dr. Binazir’s conclusion was: “the odds that you exist at all are basically zero.”

By way of illustration, Dr. Binazir shared this scenario: “It is the probability of 2 million people getting together each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice and they all come up with the exact same number — for example, 550,343,279,001.”

Then there are those characterizing attributes that make up the individuality of each of us that perhaps serve to reinforce the uniqueness factor.

Internet writer/blogger, Mary Jaksch, offers a website, Goodlife.Zen (www.goodlifezen.com), that speaks to individuality. In an essay entitled, 35 Things That Make You Special, she lists the following:  personality, signature style, beliefs, spirituality, aspirations, dominate sense, thoughts, goals, creativity, happiness, attitude, attraction (whom/what are we drawn to?), genes, body, face, ethnicity, culture, voice, diction, gender, health, hormones, age, intelligence, life experience, childhood, trauma, opportunities, relationships, learning, habits, work, quirks and foibles, communication style, and, last, your life journey.

Whew! This list of 35 attributes or qualifiers, by her reckoning, would seem to lend support to the mathematical odds discussed beforehand.

In attempting to comprehend what these kinds of hyper-sized numbers represent, and, in review of the spice cabinet variables writer Jaksch has listed, one can’t help but feel a sense of awe and wonder at the apparent hand of Divinity that is at work here.

Way too many of us for too damn long have ignored just how individual and unique we all are and were meant to be.

So stop and pause the next time you come upon a mirror, give yourself a long gaze and then smile. You’re looking at a one-of-a-kind original.


Jeff Dodson
August 18th 2014

Gratitude

image courtesy of: joettles.com

Gratitude

This topic of discussion arose between my wife and I recently. How many people nowadays express their gratitude for something to another? Much less than there should to be.  Too many folks just take what they receive for granted or sadly, with an attitude of entitlement.

For many, gratitude means to be thankful or to give thanks for something we value.  An emotional feeling of appreciation for a kind of     act directed towards you.      

From the online reference source, Wikipedia, we are provided with this:
“Gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness, or appreciation is a feeling or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. “

Browsing the web,  I discovered the following quotes about gratitude:
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”
— William Arthur Ward (writer)

“Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.”
— Henri Frederic Amiel

“When a person does’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.” — Elie Wiesel

“Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.” — Jacques Maritain

What lessons did I learn from my parents and grandparents about gratitude?

As a small child, it was always thank those who provided you with a gift at your birthday party. You did that either face to face or afterwards on the old fashioned house telephone.

As a teen and later young adult, I was taught to send a small note or a card of thanks to someone who taught you a new skill, provided assistance in a job lead, a tip that paid off for you or maybe just a note of admiration and thanks to a person you just damn well felt good about.

The responsibilities of caregiving drove home the necessity of expressing gratitude to all of my parents’ medical providers, nurses, can’s, whenever we had an appointment or need for their services. My late father’s banker, for example, is now the banker for my wife and I primarily due to the conscientious and loving attention she provided to dad.

Sociologist Georg Simmel calls gratitude, “ the moral memory of mankind.”

Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis campus, and a leading scientific expert on gratitude, has discovered through his research that practicing gratitude has proven to be one of the most reliable methods for increasing happiness and life satisfaction. Gratitude appears to strengthen the immune system and lower blood pressure. Gratitude has also been found to strengthen and enhance relationships.

Gratitude is viewed as a prized human propensity in the Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu traditions.

Gratitude is something we need to show and spread around a lot more in our society today in place of smugness, entitlement and the notion that, ‘the world, or, somebody owes me something.’

It is an easy trap to fall into. That is, taking for granted all of what we have today that, at one time, was all merely dreams or a bucket list of achievements yet to be fulfilled.

A simple statement and a quote to end this blog comes from the late President John F. Kennedy.
“We must find the time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”


Jeff Dodson
August 9th 2014

Alzheimer’s Research: The Alarming New Drug Failure Rate

A few weeks ago, I came across an article written by John Carroll at the online website FierceBiotech (www.fiercebiotech.com).  The article was entitled, Alzheimer’s R & D suffers as trial failure rate hits an astounding 99.6%.

My immediate reaction was, this cannot be true. Turns out, sadly, that it is true.

Jeffrey Cummings, director of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health has been researching the medication studies and clinical trial data available at www.clinicaltrials.gov for the time period between 2002 to 2012.  He reported his findings to FierceBiotech that determined that the clinical trial failure rate for a new Alzheimer’s drug was indeed 99.6%.

Three most recent Phase III clinical trials that ended in failure with their respective new drugs were Ely Lily and their Solanezumab,  J & J’s Bapineuzumab, and, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals version of Bapineuzumab.  A successful Phase III clinical trial is the last step in the process for a pharmaceutical company to obtaining FDA approval of the new drug and delivering it to the consumer marketplace.  It is worth noting that the time a new drug takes to reach the market place from its original inception in a laboratory is between 12 to 15 years.  The total financial expenditure for all this according to industry claims comes to approximately 1 billion dollars.  That’s for just bringing one drug successfully to consumers.

The bigger pharmaceutical firms are starting to move away from investing their money in any  medication that deals with late stage Alzheimer’s.  The thinking within the industry is that it is too late to do anything measurably corrective for anyone with late stage AD.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) devotes $600 million a year just for Alzheimer’s research.  Though this is a substantial sum, it represents approximately one tenth of the money that is directed towards cancer drug research.  The large pharmaceutical firms contend that if the NIH would pump a greater amount of funding into AD and neurological research they would up the investment risk ante as well.

So where do we go from here? Is there anything offering hope out there for AD?

Promising new work is being done with delivering small amounts of medications across the so called blood-brain barrier.  Nature provided us with this barrier as a means of preventing harmful and infectious organisms from entering the brain.  It has taken scientists the better part of the past century to learn how to introduce what are known as small-molecules across this barrier and into the brain.  To make a difference in treating a disease such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s disease, or a brain cancer, a step up to large-molecule medications is required.

The transferrin receptor pathway is a natural protein transport mechanism that is one of the hot research areas to use to transport large-molecule drugs into the brain.

On January 13th 2014, www.fiercedrugdelivery.com reported that Roche laboratories had developed a transferrin receptor pathway delivery method for getting their experimental drug, gantenerumab into the brain to reduce amyloid plaque.

On March 19th 2014, www.fiercedrugdelivery.com reported that AstraZeneca’s MedImmune had worked out a deal with Canada’s Bioasis Technologies to utilize their version of a blood-brain barrier breaching technique called the Transcend platform.  The Transcend platform acts a shuttle to piggy-back medications across the blood-brain barrier directly into the brain.

Another area of early detection research has been underway in Australia.  An early diagnosis trial in Perth involves an eye test to identify who will develop AD up to 20 years before the first disease symptoms begin to appear has shown promise.  Natasha Harradine of ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News reported about this study on Sunday July 13th 2014.  The trial participants consumed curcumin, a yellow compound found in the spice turmeric. The curcumin makes any beta-amyloids glow in an eye scan.  This particular trial is a joint project between the CSIRO, Edith Cowan University and the McCusker Foundation.

While these are promising new technologies for catching AD very early in it’s development, I don’t believe that researchers should completely give up on our loved ones who have already descended into late stage AD.  NIH and Big Pharma, please take note and up the anty with more funding….just like what’s been done with cancer and HIV research. Breakthrough medications and treatments for both of these diseases did not come through cheaply.


Jeff Dodson
July 21st 2014

A Book Review of Letting Go

Letting Go: The Pathway Of Surrender is the work of author David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. 

This book is my first exposure to the work of this author, who has written seven other books including co-authoring the 1973 groundbreaking work, Orthomolecular Psychiatry, with Nobel Laureate, Linus Pauling. Letting Go, his most recent work,  was written just prior to his death in 2012. 

Letting Go is an extensive, thorough primer that walks you through how are mind works with respect to the emotions that we attach to everything and the thousands of subsequent thoughts that arise as a result of those emotional feelings.

The essence of what this author is teaching you is this:

A thought is a “thing”.  It has energy and form. Thoughts are caused by suppressed and repressed emotional feelings. When a feeling is let go, thousands or even millions of thoughts that were activated by that feeling disappear. We surrender a feeling by allowing it to be there without condemning, judging, or resisting it. We simply look at it, observe it,  and allow it to be felt without trying to modify it. With the willingness to relinquish a feeling, it will run out in due time. It is all about learning how to shed our emotional baggage.

The primary emotions to contend with are these:

1. Apathy and depression
2. Grief
3. Fear
4. Desire
5. Anger
6. Pride
7. Courage
8. Acceptance
9. Love
10. Peace

Each of these emotions generates a vibrational frequency level. Apathy and depression rank the lowest. The vibrational frequency level increases up through grief, fear, desire and so on until you come to courage, acceptance and love which have the much higher levels. Peace generates the highest vibrational frequency level.

Our minds have come to handle our emotions in one of four ways: expression, suppression or repression and escape.

The goal is to learn to be set free from emotional attachments. It is the underlying emotions, untapped, bottled up and not dissipated that serve to act like the carbonation in a soda can (my own visual image device). A built up pressure that eventually must be released.

Dr. Hawkins sets forth many principles in this book. Among them, here are a few of the ones that struck me as compelling:

A thought is a “thing.” It has energy and form, as previously mentioned.

The mind with its thoughts and feelings control the body; therefore, to heal the body, thoughts and feelings need to be changed. 

What is held in the mind tends to express itself through the body.

An illness tends to result from suppressed and repressed negative emotions plus a thought that gives it a specific form (i.e., consciously or unconsciously, one particular illness is chosen rather than another).

Feelings are not the real self. Whereas feelings are programs that come and go, the real inner Self always stays the same; therefore, it is necessary to stop identifying transient feelings with yourself.

Dr. Hawkins had this to say about the emotion of anger:

“With regard to the emotion anger, the price we pay for chronic anger and resentment is sickness and premature death. Anger is binding, not freeing. It connects us to another person and holds them in our life pattern.”

A final quote that I loved of his is this one:

“If we look back on our life, we will see that every mistake we ever made was based on an opinion.”

The book is very comprehensive and not one that you can knock off in one afternoon.

It is more like a detailed blueprint to lovingly take your time with and soak up each aspect as you delve into it.

I have already applied the principles set forth in the book in dealing with old repressed anger feelings about an encounter in my childhood with a bully. It works!

I love what this book is all about.  Finding a pathway through the thicket of old stored away emotions to ones higher, inner spiritual Self.

For more information about the author, David R. Hawkins, visit his website at www.veritaspub.com/

Jeff Dodson

July 3rd 2014

FTC Disclosure:  I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are unbiased and reflect my honest judgment of the product.

A Book Review of Percolate

It was the title that caught me at first.  Percolate. Just like a coffee maker. Second, since I have been an avid coffee drinker for decades, another reason to give this book a read.

Percolate is the first book by author, Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino. She is the founder of her own business, The Best Ever You Network and the host of  The Best Ever You Show.

Percolate is a book that offers a Nine Point Plan of self improvement.  Each of the nine chapters headings of the book are entitled Percolate Points. Coffee and the love of it is the vehicle that this author employs to capture your attention and illustrate a step by step plan to make changes in your life for the better. 

“Every day you wake up with the opportunity to think, behave, and relate differently; and that moment of choice is what Percolate is all about,” is a quote from Elizabeth that sets the tone of her book.

Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino shares three words that she lives by: motivation, consistency and discipline.  These three words, really, are the building blocks, the ingredients necessary with any self-improvement program.  Motivation is the reason or reasons that propel you towards making a change. Consistency is what you strive for in your efforts at making forward progress. Discipline is the stick to it no matter what final element.

The author sets forth what she call Percolate Principles.  There are thirty five of them. Those that resonated for me were:

Be authentic (remaining true to heart, to what your purpose really is)

Be inspired (what or whom do you admire and desire to emulate?

Be resilient (how tough are you in the face of setbacks?)

Be yourself (follow your own character script rather than that of someone else)

Take away quotes that I loved from this author:

“Everyone has challenging health problems, or other issues, but your potential has no limits.”

In terms of listening,  “are you still enough to hear yourself and others?”

“You have an expiration date, and despite your wanting to claim control over life circumstances, you’re not entitled to know when your expiration date will be.”

Percolate is a down to earth, well crafted book that is both humorous and informative. The author shares many of her most inspiring lessons along with a few of her most comical and embarrassing ones.  I loved her statements about the importance of Contributing amazingness to the world, and , learning to like your own blend.

Percolate is a book, in part, about making the transition from ego-based decisions centered from the mind into making decisions and exercising thoughtfulness from the heart towards yourself as well as others. “Think with your heart and uncover your authentic, best self,” is how this author put it.

I enjoyed Percolate along with my favorite cup of java!

Websites of author Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino are  www.thebesteveryou.com, and, www.Percolatebook.com.

Jeff Dodson

June 2nd 2014

FTC Disclosure:  I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are unbiased and reflect my honest judgment of the product.