The book works by making you consider the impact of those events and then deal with the negative element of them.

If you feel that your life is a bit off the rails, I hope you get some of the benefits I have experienced should you choose to get this book.

As someone who loved Life Strategies and Relationship Rescue (and the workbooks that go with them), I was astonished at how ineffective this book was in pursuing a very important subject . . . following your own inner voice and touching the inspiring passion within you.

Dr. McGraw's main point is that you should focus on what's most important to you. Most people have been so negatively influenced by past experiences, negative self-talk, and social pressures that some archeology is needed to locate "your authentic self." Most people, by contrast, run their lives through a "fictional self" which is the result of accidental events and what others want. The book contains many exercises to help you perform that self-learning, and then to act on your new insights.

I agree with these premises based on having attended many seminars and workshops in this area (the best ones were given by fiction author Dan Wakefield and self-help guru Tony Robbins), many years of meditation, and continuous work on overcoming my own social and self-imposed limits. What I don't agree with is the way that Dr. McGraw sets out to help readers.

The book seems to build from the therapeutic process he uses with patients. But the book sets up a different situation. You are encouraged to do this work on your own. I think that shift is a big mistake. In the workshops I have attended on this subject, most of the benefit came from talking with another workshop attendee who listened to what I had to say and reacted to it in a helpful way . . . much like a therapist would. Most people have a lot of heavy duty issues to deal with, and expecting them to make progress in these painful areas on their own is a mistake . . . and could even be harmful in some cases. So, I don't think the book will work very well except for those who need help in this area the least. If you decide to read this book, I suggest that you find another person who will do it with you so that you can share your observations with one another. Please note that Dr. McGraw discourages you from doing this, and spends a lot of time describing the ways that friends and family may try to sabotage your progress. I disagree based on my experiences..

I also found the self-diagnostic examinations in the book to be either too obvious or unusable. After reading three questions, it was perfectly obvious what he was driving at. As the worst example of this problem, the book has blatantly obvious appendices A and B for the internal factors that influence you. Nowhere could I find a way to score these questions, however, while the text blithely discusses what your point totals mean.

Other signs of sloppiness are everywhere in the form of mind-numbing repetition that serves little purpose. About a third of the book superficially covers the same material about your authentic self. Yet, the explanation of the concept stays at an extremely elementary level that may make it hard to grasp. For example, you shouldn't do what pleases others . . . unless it pleases you to do so. Now, a lot of people are going to have trouble differentiating from pleasing to avoid problems, and pleasing as part of a rewarding sense of self. The book is only clear about extreme examples, like those involving abuse. Without the annoying repetition, this book would be about half its size. By the way, the key elements of your authentic self are in chapter 11.

I was also astonished at his use of unimpressive personal examples involving himself and Ms. Oprah Winfrey. I doubt if his single-minded development of a successful practice with his father will strike too many other people as a major sell-out and source of unhappiness. These examples make the book seem inauthentic and forced.

I liked his idea of locating the ten defining moments, the seven critical choices, and five pivotal people. I enjoyed doing those exercises. Making people more aware of self-talk and improving it is a good idea. The advice would have been better if it had included meditation to quiet self-talk as well. Identifying fixed and limiting beliefs is a good idea, but the material here for changing them is below average.

The Five-Step Action Plan is pretty unnatural to use. I suspect that most people will find it hard to use without the emotional support of discussing it with someone else.

One of the book's stated purposes was to make the reader excited about the subject. I found this book the least exciting one I had read in this area. If this book had been tested out with 100 people prior to publication (which I suspect it was not), it could easily have been improved. Hopefully, an improved edition will emerge at some point.

Finally, I must observe that if Dr. McGraw was going to write a book on this subject, it should have preceded Life Strategies and Relationship Rescue. If you do not know who you are and what your purpose is, how can you do those activities properly? I didn't think Dr. McGraw faced up to this contradiction in the book. Presumably, he had all of this knowledge for many years. Why is he sharing it in the wrong order?