One of my most recent reads was very much out of character for me. A self help book of all things. I tend to despise these type of books as I think they are full of fluff and that your time is better spent doing something about your problems instead of wasting time reading about how to do it. This book however had a name that I couldn’t resist and I happened to read an article about it on a day I felt particularly down. It also happens to be a written by an author from I country I haven’t read yet and which I also happened to visit on a weekend trip few weeks ago so I decided to include it in my resolution. The book is called Pippi Power and written by the Danish author Gitte Jørgensen. Its main message of advice is to do like Pippi Longstocking (Swedish children character) and just do what you enjoy doing and not let anything stop you.
Pippi Power
The book was like any other self help book full of fluff but due to its originality of using Pippi as an example and few good pointers I do not actually regret reading it. I am however a bit embarrassed admitting here that I read it 
.
Few advices from the book that I found particularly helpful.
* Find out what kind of scenarios and situations in the past have made you glow/be happy and try to recreate that.
* To get energy to do something you want to do, you must simply start as that will probably give you the energy to continue.
* Instead of focusing on how bad things in your past have made your life difficult, focus on how that experience had made you stronger/better able to cope with things.
And the most interesting thing in the entire book was actually a pointer to Candace Pert, a neuroscientist and pharmacologist that has a theory that we become addicted to our emotions. This also applies to negative emotions. So a person repeatably ending up in difficult situations that make them feel bad might actually be subconsciously seeking out these situations as they are addicted to the negative feelings it gives them. Here is a short article about if you want to know more.
That last part really made sense and made me think of few things both from my life and others around me. I can see some negative patterns that I really need to break. Then there are some things that I want to do that I just need to start doing instead of just thinking about that I am too tired to do them. Tomorrow maybe?
It is a bit difficult to rate a self help book as I think by definition they suck but I think this one deserves at least 3,5 for an original idea and some good advices. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be available in English but at least in Danish and Norwegian. In case that doesn’t work I recommend an ice cold Danish Carlsberg while you wait for the translation.
