I’ll Put 3 Chips on God, Just in Case There is One by Preeti Gupta

I’ll Put 3 Chips on God, Just in Case There is One reads like what you would get if you crossed Bridget Jones’ Diary with an episode of Seinfeld and added a dash of New Age spiritual musings.

Preeti, in a conversational way, discusses topics ranging from karma to palm reading.

I liked that she didn’t talk down to the reader or apologize for her thoughts. She just puts it out there and lets everybody come to their own conclusions.

My favorite part of this book was when Preeti goes to the astrologist twice to see if he would give her the same natal chart on both visits. She lets some years pass so that she won’t be recognized by her face and compares the results. They don’t match.

Preeti celebrates the fact that the charts were completely different because it backs up her theory that folks who are in the spiritual business only for money are hucksters.

But, at the same time, she doesn’t dismiss astrology as utter nonsense and leaves the door open for more learning on the subject.

It’s refreshing to find an author who is that willing to entertain different traditions even in the face of a fraudulent experience. She freely admits that she doesn’t know the ultimate truth and I think everyone can resonate with that idea… because, who does, really? Not me.

If you enjoyed I’ll Put 3 Chips on God, I’d recommend reading Life’s Operating Manual: With the Fear and Truth Dialogues(Tom Shadyac’s thoughts on life and spirituality) or Tipping Sacred Cows: The Uplifting Story of Spilt Milk and Finding Your Own Spiritual Path in a Hectic World (in the same conversational type of style as this book and with irreverent humor, Betsy Chasse talks about her journey through the New Age Movement).

I received a free digital copy of this book from the author. Thank you, Preeti, for sending it to me.

And, thank you, for reading!

Art Of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander, Benjamin Zander

The Art of Possibility takes a psychologist and a musician and smooshes their ideologies together to create a self help program.

“Our premise is that many of the circumstances that seem to block us in our daily lives may only appear to do so based on a framework of assumptions we carry with us. Draw a different frame around the same set of circumstances and new pathways come into view.” pg 1.

The various practices that are discussed in The Art of Possibility seek to create those new frames.

One of my favorite chapters was: Being a Contribution. In it, the authors suggest playing life like a game. “The purpose of describing, say, your professional life or your family traditions as a game is twofold. You instantly shift the context from one of survival to one of opportunity for growth. You also have the choice of imagining other games you might prefer to play in these realms.” pg 59.

As a gamer, that’s an idea that I can easily assimilate into my life. 🙂

I also enjoyed: The Way Things Are. “Being present to the way things are is not the same as accepting things as they are … It simply means, being present without resistance: being present to what is happening and present to your reactions, no matter how intense.” pg 100.

A little bit of Buddhist philosophy can go a long way.

One of my complaints about this book is that I don’t think that it fit together as seamlessly as they were hoping it would.

Also, I feel like non-musicians may not get as much out of this book as I did. It is rather heavy on the music stories and metaphors.

But, like many self-help books, it is packed with actionable suggestions and feel-good stories. Recommended for those looking to inject a little more possibility into their lives.

Thanks for reading!

The Power of Personality: How Introverts and Extroverts Can Combine to Amazing Effect by Sylvia Loehken

The Power of Personality is more than just another book that picks apart the obvious differences between introverts, centroverts, and extroverts. It delves very deeply into the strengths and possible hurdles that each face in business, social situations, and with each other.

Loehken presents management techniques for the different personality types and how one might leverage innate characteristics for the most positive outcome possible in a variety of ways. I found the book to be very helpful in explaining my own reactions to most perceived conflicts.

I hope to utilize what I’ve learned in the future to harness my strengths while minimizing the others. Some of my more damaging introverted tendencies are that I’m conflict/contact adverse and easily overstimulated in every day life.

I thought when Loehken discusses how the different personality types view each other that her descriptions were spot on. I think I do tend to categorize most extroverts as loud, unthinking buffoons. My mistake.

I suppose that extroverts view me as “boring, lame duck, sensitive flower, unsociable, professional worrier, reader, timid”pg 51. I never considered why.

Perhaps now with a more educated mindset, I can embrace personality differences and work more smoothly with extroverts. Rather than, in my previous experience, pushing them away so that I can have some peace and quiet.

The other portion of the book that I enjoyed is Chapter 8: Stressful Encounters: Status Games pg 161. It reminded me of a book on body language, I Can Read You Like a Book: How to Spot the Messages and Emotions People Are Really Sending with Their Body Language. But, instead of just focusing on body language, Loehken goes into all manner of status symbols, interactions, and conversational cues.

She dissects how, particularly introverts, do themselves a disservice in their professional and personal lives because of how they perceive and react to conflict. It blew my mind.

It may be because this is a European book (the price on the back is listed in pounds) but I have never read anything like this in an American business book. Loehken talks about the unwritten rules of polite society and how, in sometimes subconscious ways, we shape our relationships and our status to the people around us.

One of her tips for dominating or owning space that I’m going to integrate into my life (right now!) is to sit fully on an office chair instead of perching on the edge. “If you take the whole seating area of a chair, this has a higher status effect than someone who only takes up half the seat or sits on the edge.”pg 175. Lesson learned.

The weak part of this book was any of the bits that dealt with centrovists. Basically, Loehken kept saying (paraphrasing in my own words) ‘If you’re a centrovist, you enjoy the benefits from both types of personalities and will therefore be more successful in whatever it is that we’re talking about in this section.’

It got kind of annoying after awhile because Loehken tells us that everyone exists on a scale of personality (we’re rarely entirely one type or another from situation to situation) so the centrovist advice could have been most applicable for every reader. Unfortunately, it felt more like a ‘Captain Obvious’ moment every time it came up rather than a revelation.

If you enjoyed The Power of Personality, I’d suggest reading I Can Read You Like a Book: How to Spot the Messages and Emotions People Are Really Sending with Their Body Language. It deals with body language rather than the driving personality behind the body, but it is still illuminating. It helps readers monitor the involuntary signals that we send out in our day to day interactions, how to leverage your movements and to send the message that you want to send, rather than broadcasting your internal mindset unintentionally.

I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads. FTC guidelines: check! Thanks for reading!

Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness by Russell Targ

Russell Targ is one of the founding members of the Stanford Research Institute’s studies of psychic phenomena. He worked with Hal Puthoff and Ingo Swann to develop the remote viewing protocols for the CIA.

Remote viewing, though lambasted in popular culture in such films as “Men who Stare at Goats,” is an actual practice. It was utilized by United States and Russian militaries with some success or complete failure- depending on who you ask.

I thought that a handbook on remote viewing from this seminal scientist would delve more into the nitty-gritty of the practice. But, it doesn’t.

Targ does give a broad outline of what remote reviewing is. He also give examples of his research, but it wasn’t all that I had hoped it would be.

Limitless Mind is, however, packed with information about psychic studies from the late 1800’s until the current time. Targ discusses the studies from multiple countries covering such diverse topics as spoon bending, distance healing and psychic diagnosis.

If the reader is looking for remote viewing techniques only, I’d recommend Remote Viewing: The Complete User’s Manual for Coordinate Remote Viewing or The Seventh Sense: The Secrets of Remote Viewing as Told by a “Psychic Spy” for the U.S. Military.

Thanks for reading!

Time in a Bottle: Mastering the Experience of Life by Howard Falco

Time in a Bottle is a self help book about changing your perceptions to improve your life. Though not a new message, some readers may find this book worth the time.

Howard Falco presents this knowledge with a spiritual slant. Readers who are turned off by that kind of thing may want to choose another book.

The main premise: “Our misunderstanding of time- how our thoughts relate to time, how time is actually created, and how time seems limited- is one of the biggest reasons we suffer and at times feel hopeless or powerless in our lives.” pg 1, introduction.

One of the ways to “master the experience of life” is to realize that you are infinite potential like the universe itself: “You are a part of infinity. To the degree that you feel that life is finite and limited, you will act out of this fear, and work to create an experience that is a result of this fear.” pg 33.

I agree that mindset is important to determining your life’s path. Love and fear seem to be the two driving forces of our world. Wonder why that is…

Falco also discusses giving up resistance to how life is: “It is critical that you know that the ending of your resistance toward any particular thing (sickness, layoffs, war, family, financial trouble, death, political chaos, natural disasters, etc.) is not in anyway condoning these terrible things or giving up on change. It is simply the full acknowledgment that for the moment this is what is happening.” pg 40

He talks about giving up regrets about the past that could potentially be holding you back: “This is not about accepting that something had to happen to you; it is about acknowledging that it did happen and standing in front of the universe saying, “I trust that there is perfection and a specific, divine purpose for my past and the exact way it unfolded. Because of this, I am realizing more of my unlimited potential for the future.”

So then, unburdened, you step into your future with faith.

Falco incorporates quotes from famous philosophers and scientists along with anecdotal stories to illustrate his points. As I said, no new wisdom here, but plenty of good reminders to trust, forgive and move forward to a life outside of time.

Thanks for reading!

Night by Elie Wiesel

Night is Elie Wiesel’s memoir about his experiences during the Holocaust. It is shocking and sad, but worth reading because of the power of Wiesel’s witnessing one of humanity’s darkest chapters and his confession on how it changed him.

In the new introduction to the ebook version I read, Wiesel talked about the difficulty he had putting words to his experience. “Convinced that this period in history would be judged one day, I knew that I must bear witness. I also knew that, while I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them.” pg. 7, introduction

The original version of Night was written in Yiddish. I wish I knew enough Yiddish to read it. There’s something powerful about reading books in their original form.

Wiesel closes his introduction with his reasons for writing this book:“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. … To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” pg 12, introduction.

Even though a member of his community warned Wiesel’s village about the horrors that awaited them, they didn’t believe him.

After they were placed in a ghetto, the Jewish population of Sighet thought that the worst was behind them. “Most people thought that we would remain in the ghetto until the end of the war, until the arrival of the Red Army. Afterward everything would be as before. The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion.” pg 26, ebook.

If I had been in their place, I don’t think that I would have acted any differently. How could one possibly imagine the horrors that they were going to face?

Wiesel is starved, overworked and beaten in the concentration camps. He loses more than his family and faith: “One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”pgs 110-111 ebook.

Another Holocaust survivor’s memoir that I highly recommend is Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Never forget.

Thank you for reading.

Ghost Box: Voices from Spirits, Ets, Shadow People & Other Astral Beings by Chris Moon, Paulette Moon

Ghost Box is Chris Moon’s collection of paranormal investigations that he has conducted using electronic voice phenomena (EVP) and his own intuitive skills.

There is little to no science presented in this book so if you’re interested in the tech-side of paranormal investigation, you’ll have to keep looking.

Readers who want concrete information about the afterlife may grow a tad frustrated with this book. The majority of Moon’s investigations are conducted through feelings and feedback from the people he’s interacting with.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t have some solid hits. Occasionally, the information that he receives through his “ghost box” is absolutely spot on. It gave me the chills.

I watched a documentary once about Mario Bacci, an Italian man who has been receiving other worldly voices through an old radio for years. He has a group of devoted followers that gathers around him to hear his sessions with his own “ghost box”. They claim to hear their deceased family members through Bacci’s radio.

That documentary convinced me that this phenomena is real because of how the people reacted when they heard the noises coming through the radio.

Moon had his doubts at first too. When he first receives the box, he doesn’t think it will work. But, through using it and the evidence it provides, he becomes convinced that it is the real deal too.

“The machine facilitates real-time two-way communication with the spirit world and, as soon as my dad and I experienced it in action, we knew it would revolutionize the paranormal investigation field.” loc 95, ebook.

He receives this machine from Frank Sumption- an electrical tech who claims to have completed Thomas Edison’s ‘Telephone to the Dead.’

I didn’t even know that was a thing. “Apparently, Edison’s mother was a Spiritualist and he was very close to her. After her death, Edison started to re-examine his views on the afterlife. He realized that since energy could neither be created nor destroyed and that it could only change form, we humans (being energy) had to go somewhere.” loc 224. Fascinating.

The rest of the book, including aliens speaking through the ghost box and sightings of shadow people, I didn’t connect with as much. But, if you’re interested in that type of information, Moon’s book might be something that you’d really enjoy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Llewellyn Publications for a free digital copy of this book. Reminder: the brief quotations that I pulled for this review may change in the final printed version.

Thanks for reading!

Dreams 1-2-3: Remember, Interpret, and Live Your Dreams by J.M. DeBord

J.M. DeBord starts his book about dreams with the idea that dream interpretation used to be the job of a wise man or woman in the community. Dreams were an integral part of living a fully conscious and realized life.

Now, dream interpretation experts charge for their services and not everyone has access to their skills.

This clever little book opens the doors of dream interpretation so that average people can again know the meaning of their dreams. It doesn’t stop there- J.M. DeBord also provides suggestions for integrating the dreams into your daily life.

Finally, in Dreams 1-2-3, DeBord empowers readers by reminding us that no matter how expert the dream interpreter, the final meaning for any dream really rests in the hands of the dreamer herself. Only she can feel the “ringing of truth” in the interpretation.

This is by far the best book that I have ever read on dream symbolism. DeBord doesn’t provide lists of animals/colors/scenarios and their most common meanings. He ties whatever shows up in the dream to the rest of its contents and the dreamer’s own internal and external world.

In this way, each dream can be understood and applied in as unique a way as the dream itself.

My one critique of Dreams 1-2-3 is that DeBord made the process seem so simple. I’d read the dream example and think, I have absolutely no clue what that one means, and then DeBord would go on to provide a crystal clear interpretation.

See how simple it is?… he seems to say. Perhaps not.

DeBord may have a gift for it, honed by practice, and he doesn’t realize that what he is doing is rather amazing. I suppose he gives me a goal to strive towards.

I have had a few dreams since completing this book and, with DeBord’s method, have been able to wring some meaning from what I otherwise would have assumed to be nonsense. Dreams 1-2-3 has already changed my life. Read it if you want to change yours too.

Thanks for reading!

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin

Seth Godin draws on his experiences in business and life to convince the reader to be a linchpin rather than a cog in the machine of work.

He says it better than I did: “This book is about love and art and change and fear. It’s about overcoming a multigenerational conspiracy designed to sap your creativity and restlessness. It’s about leading and making a difference and it’s about succeeding.” pg 2

You have our attention, Godin. What do we do?

Through a series of blog-like sections, Godin explains that there is no road map or simple answer. “Our world no longer fairly compensates people who are cogs in a giant machine. … Leaders don’t get a map or a set of rules. Living life without a map requires a different attitude. It requires you to be a linchpin.” pg 19

Essentially, you have to embrace the uniqueness and drive that is inside of you. You have to create a platform of work rather than a resume. You have to decide to discard mediocrity.

“The very system that produced standardized tests and the command-and-control model that chokes us also invented the resume. … Great jobs, world-class jobs, jobs people kill for- these jobs don’t get filled by people e-mailing in resumes.” pg 72

That’s so outside the usual paradigm of work, for most of us, that it can sound scary.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

“Often, when people hear about my radical ideas for how you should train for a career, as well as the best way to present yourself, they object. They point out that not fitting in is certainly going to be an ineffective way of getting one of these average jobs. … If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you’ll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job. … The linchpin says, “I don’t want a job that a non-linchpin could get.” pgs 78-79

It seems like he’s asking a lot, but the alternative is to give up and conform. Godin says that this mindset isn’t impossible: “My fundamental argument here is simple: In everything you do, it’s possible to be an artist, at least a little bit.” pg 94. We can do that, right?

I didn’t agree with everything in Linchpin. I thought that Godin was far too hard on journalists… it is easy to look at an industry, or any situation really, from the outside and criticize the people in the thick of it.

News agencies know that they have to embrace the future or die. Just how to do that is up for grabs and adding Godin’s toolbox of how to excel at work couldn’t hurt. I don’t think that reinvention or evolution is an impossible task. It’s just tricky because, as Godin noted, “there is no roadmap.”

Recommended for people who may be bored with where they are and can see a glimmer of where they want to be- but aren’t sure how to get there. Also recommended for those who work in the newspaper business because we clearly need more linchpins.

The Help Desk Book Blog

Sharing reviews and deep thoughts about life.

Tag: non fiction

I’ll Put 3 Chips on God, Just in Case There is One by Preeti Gupta

Art Of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander, Benjamin Zander

The Power of Personality: How Introverts and Extroverts Can Combine to Amazing Effect by Sylvia Loehken

Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness by Russell Targ

Time in a Bottle: Mastering the Experience of Life by Howard Falco

Night by Elie Wiesel

Ghost Box: Voices from Spirits, Ets, Shadow People & Other Astral Beings by Chris Moon, Paulette Moon

Dreams 1-2-3: Remember, Interpret, and Live Your Dreams by J.M. DeBord

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin

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