Author: Kenneth Martz

Title: Manage My Emotions: What I Wish I’d Learned in School about Anger, Fear and Love

Genre: Self Help

This thoughtful book examines a range of emotions including anger, fear, love, joy, grief, and compassion, offering a variety of tools for successfully navigating these common experiences and improving one’s life by changing the approach and beliefs held concerning them.

The book is nicely organized, arranged to where readers can start with the topics that most appeal to them or read through the entire book, chapter by chapter. The chapters do build on each other, but they do so in a way that feels complete and inclusive, with all the pertinent information provided without excessively repeating what was given elsewhere. Headings further break down the chapters, helping turn this book into a resource for review as one goes through life while encouraging readers to take their time reading through the book, stopping for further thought or contemplation whenever necessary.

The author’s tone is kind, hopeful, and encouraging, viewing emotions not as bad or good but as symptoms that indicate something about the larger picture—how one is balanced or out of balance and where a person might need to focus their energies and efforts. The various psychological tools and techniques included in the book are similarly discussed in a “take what helps and leave the rest” manner, allowing readers to make their own decisions about what they find helpful for their current emotional state while reminding them that, later on, a different tool or approach might be more useful or successful.

Visualization, journaling questions, and yoga exercises are included with explanations as to how these might help and what the physical positions are saying or expressing, offering readers insight into how yoga can be used to change the body’s emotional state or encourage a particular emotional response without changing the book’s focus or indicating that yoga alone can help. Overall, the book is very balanced in the suggestions it offers, and while the visualization techniques can come across as rather similar from one emotion to the next, they offer consistency and a clear picture of what one is supposed to imagine while leaving room for customization and personal interpretation.

Some of the connections between emotions can feel unexpected, to where more elaboration on how anger and fear or respect and grief share emotional space and occupy a similar emotional spectrum, for example, might be appropriate, particular to readers who haven’t encountered this kind of viewpoint on those emotions before. The book could also use some further editorial polish, as there are times when the sentences don’t seem to flow or where words or punctuation appear to be missing, but for the most part, the author’s message comes through despite this.

Perfect for those seeking a new or deeper perspective on emotions, readers will welcome this clear offering on why people feel the way they do and what they could do about changing or altering the way they feel or how they experience a particular emotion. With chapters on politics, addiction, the workplace, culture, and tools from around the world, there is something for readers of all opinions and walks of life. Whether one is seeking to enjoy life more or looking to improve a particular emotional response, this book provides useful tools and perspectives that can help.

This Editorial Review was written by the Book Review Directory staff. To receive a similarly honest, professional review for one of your own books, click here.