[bmhin]

> First, a lot of this is in the abstract and the difficult part is how it gets applied in any given situation.

A lot of these "genre" of books tend to fall into this camp for me. They feel like trying to hold onto sand: sure in the initial moment you have it grasped, but it just as quickly falls away and there's nothing really there to hold onto.

A classic example is one from this list, "Delusional self-confidence causes you to resist change". If you drill into this, it seems like non-delusional self-confidence is what lets you enact control and not simply let life happen to you. In the other case, delusional self-confidence means you are refusing to accept reality and the changes you can't effect. It might be then reformed to "Rational self-confidence causes you to accept change".

What is the take away then? Seems like it's "Don't be delusional / be rational". Which, sure, but that is basically inapplicable and a near truism. If you knew you were in either camp you don't need any of this advice. "Know when you're being rational and when you're being delusional" feels like the general place a lot of stuff like this reduces down to in the end.

I do like the simple compliment / feedback accepting with a "Thank you" one as it's fairly easy to actually do. You will get thrown occasionally when someone wants to dig after the fact however.