You know your blog is doing alright when you ask a reader to send you a copy of their book to review and they do it for free. I’ll say it once, I’ll say it many times: Thanks Carol for sending me your book, I really appreciate that.
I have decided that I will write this review in the following style:
a) Brief description of the book
b) Things I loved about the book
c) Critiques of the Work
d) Say a huge thanks to Carol again
e) Log off and go and watch some soul flicks
f) Leave you with information on where you can pick up the book and/or learn more about Coach Carol
You Deserve to Feel Good: How to Ensure that You Do by Caroline Jalango
This book’s title gives you a pretty clear indication of what the book is about. It is written by Caroline, an ex-lawyer turned life coach /motivational guru, who also happens to be an African immigrant living in the US. The book gives you practical, immediately applicable tools that you can use to turn frowns upside down, drab into fad, depression into elation, melancholy into gay foly, sadness into….you get the point.
In short, if you need a book that will teach you, wherever you are, how to immediately get yourself into a powerful, self-confident, self-believing and assertive state, this book is for you.
What I Loved About the Book
1) Caroline’s Voice: I can pretty much write the whole article about Carol’s writing voice. I have spoken briefly with Carol via email and the same voice from that email is what I find in this book: exuberant, encouraging, motivational and unwaveringly committed to moving you to action and to a better place in your life.
This book makes you want to sit with Carol, especially on those downer days, because you know just five minutes with her will give you the boost you need to get up and get on with it.
2) The Sub-Categories: If you need help dealing with negative people, refer to Chapter 10.Need to bounce back from failure? Read the next Chapter. Feel like you don’t value yourself? Chapter 6 is all you need. This book can pretty much meet you at whichever internal negative situation you’re at and move you to a much better place.
3) Quick read: Because of Carol’s exuberant voice, this is a very quick read that doesn’t dabble or beat about the bush. You want to feel good now? She will get you from zero to hero quicker than a
poem-that-choses-to-list-all-the-problems-for-hours-before-listing
just-one-solution-in-the-last-line.
4) Small Editing Things That Make Me Smile: The cover graphics are great and she uses lists a lot. If you read blogs as much as I do, then you can appreciate when someone uses the always-so-easy-to-digest list format and mixes that with great graphics that make the book easy on the eye.
Critiques
1) The Book is for Women: I am a man. Just a a quick request to all the fellas out there: More personal development stuff, biographies and autobiographies (especially on TV. Where’s our Oprah? Please don’t say Jimmy Kimmel) for men, centered around the masculine existence. Has nothing to do with the book, but it had to be said.
2) Not Specific: I would have loved to have known how Carol’s uniqueness, an ex-lawyer who started her own business or her experiences as an African living overseas, have impacted on her thinking, her decisions and the quality of her life.
I don’t think I have ever read anything that speaks to the experiences described above and how to overcome them or leverage them to success. A much more specific personal development book is definitely needed in the already over-saturated personal development field.
3) Audio Version or Course: I think with a voice like Carol’s she should definitely not have restricted this book to the two dimensional page. Instead, in my humble opinion, Carol should have made this either an audio and/or video course (example would be a 30 day course ala Tony Robbins) or a 3 day/6 day/4day seminar with the book as a guide for the seminar.
I may be wrong, considering I have never ever met Carol in person, but me thinks that such exuberance shouldn’t be left to the imagination but should be ‘tangible’ either through the tone of her voice or the way she uses her body.
Therein are my two cents regarding what in truth is a pretty phenomenal experience, the FIRST TIME I ever read a personal development book written by my fellow African. So in conclusion let me thank Carol for making me my own custom made affiliate link to her site.
Make sure you check out the book by clicking on this link
Be blessed and bless others,
Mwangi
Tags: leadership psychology, life coaching, peak performance psychology, product review
hmm, sounds interesting. Was talking to a friend yesterday and we ended up talking about the way focus on the girl child and/or woman, though greatly needed, has left the boy child/man unattended to.In addition to that i know sooo many guys whose closest circle of friends is all female.I could go into a blog post here on my feelings on the matter(I wont;). But yeah, more than needing books written about life experiences, we need men to actively stand in the gap for their fellow men in Kenya. building them up, good advice, support, not making it an ego thing…
@mamashady: Couldn’t agree more. Speaking for myself, I recall NO male role models growing up, all the people I admired were women. I didn’t begin to acquire respect for African men until I was out of my teens. Definitely a worth while subject for a post, me thinks, perhaps inspire the next great African author.
Btw, please feel free to post up what you wanted to say on the topic either here or on your own blog, would love to hear it.
I do agree that men should support each other more. In Kenya I did have a good clique of male friends but out here it is so much harder to have friends period, male or female but I do have more female friends out here.
But yes in many ways the boy child has been left eating dust in Kenya. That has been happening world wide and it has been contributing to the rot in society. Look at black males in the USA? Look at the louts in the UK? But its going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.
@acolyte: I don’t know about yourself, but I never had a man take me out sit me down and just talk to me about life and how best to handle it. All I remember is older men sneering at me and telling me what they think I should do because they do it a.k.a. they were just talking to me so they could brag and make me feel like their inferior.
I have also been blessed through my life with great supportive friends, and I think I will never ever take that for granted now. I guess that’s something else worth exploring and blogging about: how to find, maintain and support great friends….it took losing some on my part to realize it’s a skill.
However, where are our heroes, our demagogues, our inspirations, our teachers?
Lol! This discussion of the girl child reminds me of the post that M did on aid and poverty eradication: http://www.thinkersroom.com/blog/2006/02/get-real-poverty-eradication-101/
[…] I wrote about Coach Carol’s book, one of the things that came up was the fact that there aren’t that many people for the […]
[…] I release my review of Steve’s book, which I worked on, together with Coach Caroline. However, today, why not focus on the main man […]
[…] got Coach Caroline on the phone with me and we had a freewheeling discussion about the impact the book had on both of […]