Think Straight Book Review: Another Self-help Book?

THINK STRAIGHT: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life is a book by Darius Foroux published in 2017.

Darius Foroux is an entrepreneur and a blogger, well famous for his work “Think Straight”. After mentioning the contents and the quote of William James, “If you can change your mind, you can change your life.” This work begins with the author introducing himself.

He introduces himself in the same way he does at an informal event. Although, it doesn’t seem informal to introduce oneself with such details and mention things like “more than 3 million people have read my articles”. This Think Straight book review presents an ever-new evaluation of the book. A review like none other.

Straight Thinking and Pragmatism!

The author mentions: “Thoughts should serve a useful purpose. If they don’t, they’re useless. That’s straight thinking.”

This book is a reading of one hour or so following an easy language in which the author has centered the philosophy of Pragmatism throughout the book. Opposite to idealism, Pragmatism is an approach that examines theories or beliefs in terms of their practicality. In simple words, “Truth is what works”.

The author focuses on the realization that we have the ability to choose one thought over the other. In other words, we can control what we think.

Some Constructive Aspects – Think Straight Book Review

The author somehow seems successful, especially when he says “I want to sell you on the idea of useful and useless thoughts.”

Some of the constructive aspects are written in such a way that the affinity of reading the book doesn’t decrease and these aspects will let you understand more about the topics that are covered in the book. Let’s get down to the brass tacks of it!

• How the author drew his thoughts on the paper, portraying the mesh of useless thoughts from which our mind is abducted; truly amazed me. (Page#10)
• The book teaches to follow and filter thoughts and shares valuable thoughts on when to leave. (Page#27, 28)
• The book also discusses what and when to think about the past; although one can disagree. (Page#29, 30)
• Moreover, the book brilliantly challenges conventional thoughts that most probably lead to disaster. Our thoughts on smartness and quick answering; how the relevancy of conventional thinking varies from person to person is discussed with example. (Page#39, 59, 60)
• Shift from “why” to “was” and how the unnecessary questions open the pathway of procrastination, moreover, a cliché yet an important lesson, action > thinking. (Page#63, 67)
• On page 69, it says: “The only thinking you need to do is when your system doesn’t give you the results you want.” Plus, “even if it works, a system is never perfect.” So, there is always room for improving the system.
• Most importantly, the book discusses the balance. It says, “Thinking is a double-edged sword. It can help you. But it can also destroy you. The outcome depends on how you use your thoughts.” The author simplified by giving sample thoughts which are arguably effective. (Page#75, 76)

Paradoxical Statement & Being Brief

On page 57, the author writes: “You don’t need yoga, exercise, meditation, music, scents, or whatever it is you think you need. Let go of everything. You can escape your outside world and go inside your mind to find peace.”

Well, the last quoted sentence is the connotation of meditation as well as yoga.

Being brief doesn’t always mean falling short. But here at almost every topic, it seemed that there is room to discuss the topic in detail. For instance, on covering the topic, “Inside Your Control VS Outside Your Control”, the author categorizes two thoughts; the first one serves no purpose and has no room for improving our future, and the second one helps us enhance. Being brief, the question of thoughts that provides pleasure is left unanswered.

Throwing-out Criticism on Other Self-help Books

On page 7, the author writes: “But you know how all these self-help books go, right? I was down and out. I lost all my money. I was depressed. My life sucked. But then I discovered X. And then my life changed.”

First of its Kind!

Almost every self-help book author claims that his/her work is the first of its kind. Similar implies on “Think Straight”.

The author puts it: “I’ve read several books about better thinking and decision making. I liked them. But I had one problem with all the books in this field: They weren’t practical. They do a great job of describing why we think the way we think by sharing stories. But I couldn’t find a practical book that explained how to change the way you think.”

Is it Even a Book?

When I first thought of writing a Think Straight book review, this was one of the first things that came to mind. The work is a collection of unconnected topics. For example, after “Take Time to Reflect”, here comes the next topic “My Money Rules”. It made me wonder that do the topic “My Money Rules” and its text has anything to do with the book topic as the author has mentioned that the book is the first of its kind. Plus, the author says “it contains everything I’ve learned about thinking.”

It’s not like that the writer has concisely written the book yet the author has hardly filled somewhere around 90 pages (≈13×20 cm). With somewhere around 110 pages, some are left blank. The author tried balancing it by writing: “I wrote THINK STRAIGHT in a way that you can read it more than once. And I hope this book serves as an anchor to you _ especially during trying times.”

The author has used that very same technique of handpicking his articles and naming them a book after placing them in his works. In the book “What It Takes to Be Free”, the author handpicked 30 of his articles whom he describes as his best.

Besides, all the above arguments, there is no reason to say that the work is not the book. The work does qualify the book as the book is a written or printed work consisting of pages.

Well, that’s it. I hope you enjoyed reading this Think Straight Book Review and that it helped you know more about the piece of literature from a different angle.