NO PLAID SUITS

A self-help guide to enriching your life.

In her nonfiction debut, Rose gathers a collection of her essays about “personal resilience, finding joy and creating a life of adventure and freedom.” An experienced yoga instructor and life coach, Rose assures her readers that they already have all the tools they need for a life on the edge. “Now it’s a matter of unlocking what you’ve secreted away inside yourself,” she writes, “thinking it wasn’t right, or good, or enough.” In Rose’s thematic conceit, our lives are full of boring, commonplace “plaid suits” that we hardly consider anymore. “They’re the stories we tell ourselves about who we are,” she writes, “they’re our patterns of behavior, and habits.” And often we don’t even know we’ve “shrugged them on.” In order to change these suits, she insists, it’s vital to first recognize not only that we wear them, but that they can also be counterproductive to our progress in life; getting rid of these suits can enhance our sex lives, bring us deeper contentment, and spur our creativity (“Give yourself permission to think creatively,” she urges her readers, “and you’ll increase your creative output along with building confidence in your own abilities”). In clear and forceful prose, Rose explores all the aspects of human nature that seem to keep everybody figuratively clothed in plaid. She’s always ready with upbeat, straight-talking strategic encouragement, amounting to what she accurately calls “a gritty-nitty-let’s-not-waste-time-get-right-to-it guide” to improving all aspects of our lives by changing the delusional narratives we so often comfort ourselves with. The author is obviously a born teacher; this is a no-nonsense personal motivation book with real heart.

A brisk, useful self-help guide about changing the way we “wear” our lives.