How to Eliminate Negative Thoughts and Emotions (by Beau Norton)

I came across this short ebook when browsing the free Kindle books on Amazon. The title sounded interesting, and the reviews were mostly positive. I hadn’t heard of the author, Beau Norton, and realised that, as with so many free ebooks, it was most likely an advert for something else he had written. Nevertheless I downloaded it a few months ago, and finally got around to reading it.

‘How to Eliminate Negative Thoughts and Emotions with One Simple but Powerful Technique’ (to give the ebook its full title) turns out to be extremely short. It's only about fourteen pages in all. It begins by outlining all the problems that come with stress, anger, bitterness, anxiety and all the other many negative emotions that people carry around with them.

I could certainly take the point that it would be good to be able to get rid of them all, since negative emotions only really hurt the person feeling them, and can’t possibly do any good.

However, when I got to the author’s 'powerful technique’, there was nothing new or original about it at all. He essentially tells people to ask themselves if they can let go, and then to do so. Perhaps this is useful to some folk who are caught up in negativity, or who haven’t realised that this is what they’re doing, but for most people who are well aware of their emotions, and would love to eliminate them, it seemed unbelievably obvious.

Surely anyone who wanted to move forward would already have done what the author suggested?

Admittedly he proposes it as a kind of mantra, asking three questions and repeating them daily, and perhaps this might help people finally accept that they don’t have to hold onto negativity. But for most ordinary people, I don’t think there’s anything in this book that they would not already have thought of.

There’s nothing wrong with the book; it’s not badly written, and is quite interesting as a quick read. But there’s really nothing much in it at all. Not a problem since it was free, but I should think it would be rather annoying to anyone who had paid for it. I gather the author is quite prolific but that many of his books are equally short.

This book no longer seems to be available. 

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews