Title: It’s All About Control (Or Lack Thereof)
Author: Randy W. McDonald, Ph.D.
Publisher: PageTurner, Press and Media
ISBN: ‎ 1638718318
Pages: ‎ 154
Genre: Non-Fiction
Reviewed by: David Allen

Read Book Review

Another self-help book? Yes and no. It’s All About Control (Or Lack Thereof) deserves your attention for several reasons. Its powerful message, predicated on an original concept – that control over your life starts right at home, right in your head – is delivered in one fell swoop. The book is a quick read, delivered intelligently and succinctly in chapters that can be read independently or as a sequence, each building upon the other.

Dr. McDonald is able to get to the living beating heart of each setting and situation that may be critically important to you. He writes in a style that is at once persuasive and friendly, cajoling and avuncular. A sense of humor pervades this obvious achievement of scholarship, personal research and experience.

The best self-help books speak directly to us, and inform one or more sectors of our work, home, and relationship lives. This explains their great appeal. It’s All About Control (Or Lack Thereof) departs from other self-help manuals by offering a rational theory that goes hand-in-hand with an active approach and treatment plan meant to address the clutter and chaos that often accompany our lives today.

Dr. McDonald stands on the shoulders of giants who have come before. He draws from diverse masters, including Tony Robbins and Napoleon Hill – always effectively, never sententiously. Are you in control or are you being controlled? Experiencing burn-out in your career or in your life? The idea that control over one’s life can only be gained when one has achieved control over one’s mind is worked in a refreshing and absolutely convincing way. Scientific experiments and studies bearing out his conclusions are cited as well, always in the service of the main argument. More to the writer’s credit is his impressive ability to marshal the evidence and offer tangible suggestions without excessive list-making and the obsessional clutter that characterizes ‘over-controlled’ thinking.

We strive to be in control; we abhor situations where and when we are not at the helm. A boss who micro-manages, or a mate whose modus operandi is manipulation, can drive us to desperation and tears. So can mismanaged thoughts and feelings. Dr. McDonald’s handy book is an extended Serenity Prayer: Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change. The courage to change the things we can. And the wisdom to know the difference.            

The book starts by describing the fascinating circumstances under which the concept originated. We are then transported to a conference on personal mastery where the author serves himself up as willing volunteer to the guru’s incisive and ultimately revealing interrogative. ‘Helpful Hints’ are authentic, sensible, and eminently practical: How come I didn’t think of that?      

Readers in search of courage and humor and wisdom will find them all here. Self-control (the proper kind, ultimately the self-expressive kind) is a good thing, and is the key to setting the things in your life right.