You Are What You Say: The Proven Program That Uses the Power of Language to Combat Stress, Anger, and Depression

July 03, 2017

You Are What You Say: “The Proven Program That Uses the Power of Language to Combat Stress, Anger, and Depression” is not just another fluffy self-help book. Its authors, Matthew Budd, M.D. and Larry Rothstein, Ed.D (forward by Patch Adams, M.D.) take us step by step through a proven program of learning, observation, and change, which can alter the way we live our lives. Their premise is that language determines how we feel both physically and emotionally; when we change the words we use, we can improve our health and our lives.

The book is based on a wellness program Budd developed while at the Harvard Community Health Plan, a Harvard Medical School HMO in Boston. It grew out of his own feeling that, as a physician, he was only given half the tools he needed to heal people. He found the missing pieces when he returned to a question posed to him by his grandmother when he was a child: “Why are you sick?” As he asked his own patients this question, he learned that emotions must be considered because emotions impact health.

An initial self-test helps you evaluate your own beliefs about self-efficacy, social ease, and emotional skills and how each affects your well being. Chapters are organized thematically; Budd shows us the fundamental connection between our emotional and physical health: we have bodies, and thus are animals, yet we often try, to our detriment, to separate our bodies from our emotions. He looks at how we carry our history in our bodies, and then moves into how our language usage impacts our well being. In the end, he brings these thoughts together and again has us take the same self-test to see how our awareness has changed.

Each chapter includes a helpful summary and exercises that deepen our understanding of the body/mind/emotion/language connection. Woven throughout are the stories of four of Budd’s patients, and how they came to the program, began the process of self-observation, and implemented what they learned.

The program Budd outlines is not a quick fix, nor is it an easy journey to undertake. It is, however, rich in rewards. It is best worked through slowly, with plenty of time to do each exercise and reflect upon it. As he says, “Be prepared for surprises. This book is unlike any self-help book you’ve ever read. It describes a program that is a unique synthesis of ancient wisdom and new insights into health and healing. It builds on medicine’s recent breakthroughs regarding the mind-body connection, but moves dramatically beyond them to help you learn how literally to create a new mind and build a new body.”

(Crown Publishing, 2001; paperback: 288 pages; list price: $15)

Building Trust In Business, Politics, Relationships And Life

Jul 04, 2017

Roundstone International

Building Trust in Business, Politics, Relationships and Life by Robert C. Solomon and Fernando Flores takes an important, fresh and challenging look at the subject. Both authors have a long history of working as corporate consultants and gracefully talk about this slippery topic with insight and clarity.

The authors pull the elusive and idealized notion of trust out of the realm of individual psychology and ethics and put it right in the path of everyday life. Flores and Solomon address trust on a practical level as a set of emotional skills – all of which involve the responsible making of decisions and choices by all parties in any relationship – friends, couples, coworkers, organizations and employees, citizens and governments. They suggest that we can have a much richer and more functional experience of trust by taking responsibility for how we create and destroy it.

While bringing trust down to earth, the authors challenge the reader to expand his or static or limited concept of trust to include many forms, activities, and contexts and to see trust as a phenomenon that can include distrust and betrayal. Flores and Solomon suggest that trust is a mutable dynamic that increases and decreases depending upon our attention to our commitments and disappointments.

The authors drive home the message that paying attention to trust is an essential need, not just a nice idea. Of businesses, they say executives ignore the importance of building authentic trust “at their peril. Without trust, the corporate community is reduced to a group of resentful wage slaves and defensive, if not ambitious, managers.”

(Oxford University Press, 2001; hardcover: 224 pages; list price: $25)

book

Building Trust in Business, Politics, Relationships and Life by Robert C. Solomon and Fernando Flores takes an important, fresh and challenging look at the subject. Both authors have a long history of…

You Are What You Say: The Proven Program That Uses the Power of Language to Combat Stress, Anger, and Depression

Building Trust In Business, Politics, Relationships And Life

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