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| Author: Louise Hay
Publisher: Hay House
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $0.64
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New (89) Used (141) Collectible (15) from $0.64
Rating:  288 reviews
Sales Rank: 5829
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Pages: 251
Number Of Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0937611018
Dewey Decimal Number: 158
EAN: 9780937611012
ASIN: 0937611018
Publication Date: January 1, 1984
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Standard used condition.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 288
 Ridiculous! January 2, 2003
mommy in ky (Lexington, KY United States)
56 out of 97 found this review helpful
This book was given to me as a gift. I put it on the shelf, suspecting it was similar to other pop-psych works "shared" with me in the past. I was correct. As I later pulled the book out to donate it to GoodWill, I noticed in the back the index of medical conditions, each with a supposed "probable cause". Can it be that vertigo, glaucoma, diabetes are all the result of failure to know and accept the self? So I read through as much as I could stomach of the text. I can hardly believe the wrecklessness with which Ms. Hay opines on the etiology and treatment of any and all life problems. Medical concerns? Financial distress? Relationship issues? Hay recommends forgiving someone, as this is the common source of all ills. As a mental health professional with strong empirical beliefs, I found Hay's writing to be misleading and self-righteous. What credentials does she have to suggest that her personal knowledge overrides hundreds of years of real research and clinical progress dealing with medical and psychological problems? To offer readers a simple-minded solution to all concerns, despite the existence of validated treatments they might seek, is absolutely unethical. While specific elements of her advice are borrowed from known clinical theory, it appears only accidental that she says anything of real value. I strongly recommend you look elsewhere if you truly desire to improve yourself under the guidance of an "expert". Validated resources for self-improvement I recommend: McKay & Fanning -- Self Esteem, Alberti & Emmons -- Your Perfect Right.
this is so innacurate. December 17, 2004
E. Martin (Philadelphia)
54 out of 84 found this review helpful
if your problem is that you feel sad, and you wish there were more pop-psycology in your life, this book is for you.
I am a rape victim. Are you honestly telling me that because I didn't "Love myself truly enough," I was asking that kid to attack me? Please. This woman has such a limited perspective. It is NOT always as simple as she describes here. Develop your own philosphies, and do NOT base them off of this book.
I want the time I spent on this book back. + edit December 8, 2007
C. E. Freemyer
44 out of 76 found this review helpful
I worked with this book for three months straight. I got this book because it was recommended in Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, and because there were so many great reviews. I'm honestly ashamed that I ever picked this book up. Like I said, I tried this book out for three and some months very diligently, everyday, several times a day (changed my diet and cleaned out my stuff and organized my money the way the author said - absolutely everything in this book) because I was enamored with the idea that by simply changing my thoughts, I could improve my life! (Wow, quick fixes are great, aren't they??) Plus, it has so many great reviews!!
By practicing the concepts outlined in this book the way the book explained for me to, I not only lost touch with who I was (and became a despicable person who couldn't handle the honest truth about any situation, only "the truth" that I thought was actually "the truth" from this book), my perspective got thoroughly messed up as well. I didn't know me from anyone else on the street because I was practicing someone else's thoughts. I was replacing my own thoughts with someone else's (it's called "affirming new ideas" to "improve" your life). Scary concept, isn't it? It must have taken a lot of initial self-loathing to honestly want to reprogram my own brain so thoroughly. These methods did not help me discover "the real me" (even after working through the initial "resistance" phases).
I realized only after I was "snapped out of it" that I hadn't been thinking for myself. I realized this because it felt like my brain was gearing itself up. I will certainly admit that thinking a bunch of overtly negative thoughts is not a good thing and that sort of thinking led me down many very bad paths (including landing me in front of this book), but listening to advice that inhibits my ability to think for myself is absolutely - and logically - really not good. (If you think about this, you will probably agree that yes, it is bad to not think for yourself.)
Oh, plus, I became extremely ungrateful. The truly sad thing about that is that I thought I was being completely grateful, because I was "expressing gratitude" in methods outlined in this book.
I've never felt so internally "abnormal" in my whole life. I only know I felt so abnormal when I started feeling normal again. It took a good friend to snap me out of this mess. Now I get to deprogram myself! Yay! (... someone needs to write a counter-book for how to go about doing *that*. But maybe just a hard slap in the face and a bucket of cold water would do the trick.)
This book fails to take into account so many things in the world that it's only pitiful wishful thinking that made me even try to believe in the book's philosophy in the first place. Don't get me wrong, positive thinking can go so far, but if you could seriously do the stuff presented in this book, if it could seriously dramatically change everything through affirmations, then wars would be won with affirmations, affirmations would be given out instead of medicine, the UN would be a council that sits around and tries to figure out affirmations for situations and get everyone to say them! "Well, it has to be something in the present tense and it also has to be something positive - no negatives now!"
To cover up these obvious aspects, the author says that the medical industry is a business and people want money from "cutting you up" and "poisoning" you. Which assumes that the reader of her book is the only person in the world who knows "the truth" about "the way the universe works" and who wants to improve his or her life. That really, really isn't true. OBVIOUSLY. I honestly don't know how I didn't see through this before - maybe I deserved to waste that three months of my life working on this. I'm honestly ashamed that I ever picked this book up, as I already stated once (it's a deep, burning shame). I think I'm off "self help" books forever thanks to Ms. Hay, so maybe in that respect I owe her something. ... Next time I want some inspiration, I'll watch "The Pursuit of Happyness" or a Disney movie or something.
... The sad thing is is that this book really does seem to be aimed at people who honestly want to improve their lives, or who are at a very bad place in their lives (even if they are looking for any method, "quick fix" or total illogic to do it). I think people who like it are, more or less, "under its spell" so to speak.
The book is based on the concept that each moment is fresh and the past is nothing more than something that can easily be released. ... Maybe external circumstances will change, but you know where you go when you have no past to build on and each moment is "new and fresh and vital"? ... Absolutely no where. Each moment is new + no past = nothing. Nothing to build on. It's one thing forgiving people and growing and learning, or even turning your back on the past and changing, but it's a whole other thing it totally "release" the past the way described in this book. Think about it for even a second. You'd be basing you life off of meaningless whims, disregarding the past. Nothing has meaning anymore, but, under this philosophy, you're giving meaning to everything. Or creating whole new meanings. Or chunking meanings that are *real* and important! You can go wayward with this book. ... Far, far wayward. For this reason, the context for the things presented within this book is all askew, despite the fact that it teaches that forgiveness is the way to healing.
Forgiveness is undeniably good, but this book messes that whole concept up with everything I've admitted so far, and didn't do a great job making that the main focus of the book - the main focus was telling yourself that you love yourself in your mirror. Granted, hating myself in the mirror is not good, but affirming that I love myself while looking at myself in the mirror did *not* make me feel love. Not real love. I just felt like I had repeated something in a mirror and that I was trying to convince myself that it was working.
To be honest, I wanted to recommend this book to other people so I could convince myself that it did work. I wanted it to work so badly. I read the reviews and so thought it ought to. I thought, "maybe if other people I know feel it works, I will, too." I think that's another reason people recommend it. On a deeper level, it feels very hollow to reduce love to a phrase you repeat to yourself in the mirror.
The only things good in this book are things you can learn by listening to uplifting pop music or watching any daytime TV show or morning kids' show (Blue's Clues has way more on this book because that show at least teaches you how to think, this book just gives you thoughts - like that saying, give a man fish verses teach him how to fish). Some of the examples of these types of advice are: there's more than one way to do things, you can do anything you put your mind to, it's important to be nice, you have to go out and make your dreams come true, etceteras. (Actually, I don't even think she says you have to go out and make your dreams come true. Guess the author missed some basics.)
Read the other 1 and 2 star reviews - they got it down pat. Ugh, I really hate this book and the "methods" outlined in it. If I could give it negative stars, I would. It really is sick and cruel and twisted - I don't care if you got a better job after using it (I got over some laryngitis - so what? I could have done it differently), that really is trivial considering what this book tells you to do to get there (and the fact that there are people who have great jobs or more money or whatever the author promises who didn't do the things in this book). And I don't think Hay could tell you what love is if she sat in it. ... Real love not sitting in front of a mirror saying, "I love you," it's a friend who will snap you out of this mess and stick with you despite you having been a foolish jerk. Ugh. I feel the fool. My only hope is that others will learn from my mistakes.
edit - It's been many months now, and I want to edit this review with an update.
This book was the worst influence on me in my entire life.
That "close friend" that snapped me out of it pointed out that I had become excessively hypersensitive - from thinking about myself continually. That's what this book prescribes: thinking about yourself continually. Controlling yourself and the world around you. Thinking about what you can get - materialism.
This book isn't spiritual. It's material. It would sooner kill your soul than remind you that you have one.
You want to believe you have a soul? Do a charitable act. Go to a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter. Help someone in the world who is unappreciated and has nothing.
Controlling yourself and trying to control the world around you completely isn't love. It's hate. It's total 100% intolerance - hatred. It's the exact opposite of love, and the exact opposite of hope. You're free in love. This is trapping. This is hate. This is isolating. This is materialism at its worst.
Spirituality does not cost anything. Giving something of yourself or helping someone doesn't cost anything. If people are charging for it, it's materialism.
It's human nature to want to give. Humans are social creatures. This book is anti-human nature. It's like something a mall would write out before Christmas season. Although imagine is Christmas was not "a season of caring and giving," but a season of "getting and demanding."
That's what this is. It's like an anti-Christmas. Like a grinch. Who stole Christmas. And killed it.
By the way, that close friend was so irritated that we don't talk anymore. Frankly, I don't blame her.
I think I'm just now getting my personality back, just now recovering from this. No single person has ever been a worse influence on me than this author. Although, it's unfair to blame her: it's my fault, for buying it, reading it, trying it, practicing it, clinging to it when everything was going wrong because I chose to.
That's called taking responsibility. So is coming back on here to post how horrible this was for me when I finally got out of the delusion - the horrible horrible delusion. So horrible you could probably be institutionalized for honestly believing your thoughts - and your thoughts alone, despite the 6 billion other peoples' thoughts on the planet Earth - solely control the world around you. That's not even positive thinking, that's not even optimism: it's control, it's materialism, it's intolerance.
And by the way, it didn't clear up my acne - acne[dot]org medicine did.
 Truly a beautiful book that comes from an honest heartfelt December 7, 2001
Bernadette A. Moyer (Lutherville, MD USA)
41 out of 50 found this review helpful
Truly a beautiful book that comes from an honest heartfelt place. The book is artistically beautiful yet has depth and soul. It would be hard for anyone to pick this up and not want to look deep into the pages.I bought a copy for myself and then purchased several other copies for gifts. It is about life and about creating the life that you want in spite of the obstacles set before us. Truly beautiful and rich in soul. You will be inspired by this book - I was!
How can you all defend this? November 5, 2005
jenyum (Tacoma, WA USA)
41 out of 72 found this review helpful
If you have ever been seriously ill and been presented with this book, I am surprised y'all didn't pitch it across the room.
The last thing I needed when wiped out with mono for six months was to learn that my disease was the result of immaturity and selfishness. Thanks. Y'know, I thought it was the result of swapping some tainted saliva, but apparently Louise knows more than I.
This is not to say there are not things once can do to improve one's psychological well being when ill, or that it isn't good to lead a healthy lifestyle. It is extremely insulting however to postulate that serious illness is the result of some emotional wrongdoing on the part of the sufferer. Please, don't purchase this book for a friend who is ill. It's offensive.
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