I rarely read self-help books and when I do, I almost never finish them because: 1) I often find them lifeless, dry and clinical and I’m usually bored by the second chapter, 2) they tend to promote big wonderful-sounding goals without providing any concrete steps to achieve them and 3.) (the biggie for me) I often end feeling worse about myself after reading them than I did before. Talk about defeating the purpose.
The Demon Slayer’s Handbook series has been the exception for me. I hesitate to even call it a self-help book. It feels more like reading a story. A whole series of stories really. These are just a few of the things I really liked and received from working with the books.
The Demon Slayer’s Handbook series:
- Provided realistic goals along with detailed tools and steps for achieving spiritual transformation. From simple awareness exercises to creating meaningful altars, these tools are practical and easily implemented into my daily routine.
- Gifted me with memorable parables and beautiful artwork to help visualize and assimilate the information and how it applies to my physical, emotional and spiritual world.
- Includes blocked, highlighted epigraphs, which I refer to as little jewels or nuggets of wisdom. These are easily located throughout the books and personify the theme of each chapter and amplify the ideas to be focused on. Whenever I’m time-crunched or don’t feel like reading a full chapter, I can simply skim through the book and quickly latch on to a few jewels to carry with me throughout my day.
- Will make you laugh out loud! The title of the books may lead some, mistakenly, to think they are full of gloom and doom. Not so! The books are chock-full of humor. In fact, Book 1, Chapter 1 ends with an epigraph entitled “Making the Most of your Humor” and offers this nugget of wisdom:
Even if you are not in a place to find things funny, or even if you are surrounded by a bunch of sad sacks … now is the time to take the comedy reins. Research proves the pathetic finding that children laugh three hundred to four hundred times a day versus adults who only laugh about fifteen times. … We know that our responses follow our thoughts, our thoughts follow our emotions, and our emotions follow our spirit. Creating a slight shift in perspective on any one of these levels will create change in all of them.
That’s powerful, good stuff!
Margay E.
