The Library Shelf - Help Yourself

I have stacks upon stacks of books just waiting to be read. So what did I do yesterday but go to the library book sale for the $3 a bag sale and get ANOTHER bag of books. Gotta love those books!

Up next in the just finished section of the Library Shelf is "Help Yourself" by Dave Pelzer. This isn't one that I got at yesterday's book sale, but one that I've been reading for the past week or so.

From the back of the book: "In Help Yourself, Dave Pelzer explains how we can move beyond a painful history, harmful negative thoughts, and innumerable setbacks by taking control and being accountable for our lives."

This is not necessarily a book for those who have been hurt in the past, but for everyone because we all are bombarded every day with negativity from the world around us.

In Part One (Get Rid of the Garbage in Your Life), he stresses the importance of solving an issue before it explodes. "Even the "best of friends", the "perfect parents", the "perfect marriage", if there were two people stranded on a deserted island they would eventually get on each others' nerves. As long as there is more than one person in the world, there will always be trouble in paradise."

He takes snippets from his own personal history as well as those of others such as Oprah Winfrey and Colin Powell who didn't let their meager backgrounds hold them back from going for their dreams. He ends with this, "If you carry a bad attitude, you have no chance of being happy, let alone living up to your full potential and achieving your greatness."

This author is something else. How he could go through everything that life threw at him as a child, turn it all around and wind up guiding others to find the hope and happiness in their lives is just simply miraculous. The horrific abuse that he suffered at the hands of his mother is chronicled in the books "A Child Called "It" and "The Lost Boy". Simply amazing that he came to be a man full of inspiration and gratitude. He DEFINITELY doesn't believe in feeling sorry for himself.

I'll sum it up with these two sayings from my own personal arsenal of words of wisdom:

It's all in the attitude!
Attitude = Amplitude