Book review
Me + You: 100 ways to work out a formula for success in your personal and professional relationships
By Maureen Bowes
Trafford Publishing (2006) £9.99 (paperback)
ISBN 1-4120-8307-9
This is a handy little do-it-yourself book to help you improve your own Emotional Intelligence. Based on the same model of Applied Emotional Intelligence as that explained in greater depth in Amanda Knight and Tim Sparrow’s book Applied EI, it comes with a link to a workbook that you can print out (the workbook is 189 pages) to help you work through the sections of the book that you choose to use.
It starts with some background to Applied Emotional Intelligence presenting it as looking at your self and being aware of your thoughts and feelings after which you can start to manage them. Then it helps you to look at others and be aware of them and their thoughts and feelings followed by an ability to manage the relationship between you.
There is a section on how to use the book, giving several different ways and lists of what you might like to combine when looking at areas you choose to work on. There is a little questionnaire you can fill in to help you to identify areas where you can improve and this is followed by 20 chapters, each with an affirming goal and five things you can do to work on that area. The author thinks of all the different learning styles and you can try one or all five of the suggestions. If you do the work in the accompanying workbook, you have a place to write your findings and keep track of your work.
In between you will find poetry and each section has suggestions of music to listen to (as well as places for you to enter your own suggestions in the workbook itself) that you think will help you to get into the right place. Finally each chapter finishes with a visualisation.
There is a nice little bibliography at the end (for me, just the right amount and not an overly daunting list. It includes also Amanda and Tim’s book) which provides you with extra reading if the subject interests you and you want to find out more.
Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of this little book – if you use it to do some work on yourself, it is far from simple. It requires deep thought and working through the suggestions and takes a fair bit of time for each area you work on. It is best if you do the things that are suggested, not just read about them. And good to keep revisiting to ensure that you change (or have changed) your behaviour.
I think this is a very nice companion volume to Applied Emotional Intelligence. It gives you the background and this gives you tools to improve your own Emotional Intelligence.