Do One Thing Different: And Other Uncommonly Sensible Solutions to Life's Persistent Problems

by Bill O'Hanlon

Book Overview

From the author of Love Is a Verb--who's also one of the developers of brief-solution therapy--comes a helpful and humorous approach to life's everyday troubles. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688164994
• ISBN13: 9780688164997
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Just do it!

These tips really are "uncommonly sensible solutions." I found this book marvelous, as a person and as a personal life coach. I work with clients all the time who are "stuck" and am always looking for ways and means to get them going again and back in touch with their personal power. This book gave me many wonderful ideas. It's well-written, with clear, step-by-step instructions. No jargon, and non-intrusive. Just good, practical stuff. Useful for yourself, useful for helping others. We all need to go toward our heart's and soul's desire. GO BILL!

Do It Because It Works

I was delighted when a client I coach found this book and told me, "He says the same things you do." That was the best compliment I've ever had, but it's Bill O'Hanlon's books and workshops that have taught me how to help people make significant change in their lives. As O'Hanlon writes, the explanations of traditional psychology and psychiatry focus on "why" people have problems but don't always help solve them. These ten "simple" ways are profound, and based on a well-respected and researched tradition that focuses on solutions. I've used these practices in business and personal coaching for years. And they work. O'Hanlon is handing you a wonderful gift for a very small price.

Creative flexibility in thinking and doing

I am glad this very practical and wise book is available so quickly in paperback, with a clearer new subtitle. O'Hanlon applies his expertise in Ericksonian hypnosis, solution-oriented therapy and his possibility therapy to life in general. Through simple language without any jargon, and numerous enlightening true stories, he instills hope by freeing people from the past and limited beliefs, and by helping them to stop analyzing and actually change by doing what works, changing their viewing of the problem and applying the 10 solution keys. He is "painfully aware that life is more complex than anything even the wisest and best-written book can contain." and quotes Mark Twain's warning: "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."(p.195) The whole book is precisely the anti-dote to such obsessive and rigid thinking at the root of many of our problems and stuckness.

Very readable, Best Self-Improvement Book I've Read

Originally, I got this for my girlfriend as a present. We started going through it together and found tools to help our relationship in the first few paragraphs. I've read many books dealing with self-improvement, therapy and relationships. This book has little or no "fluff" and "filler", and is full of very down to earth, practical things anyone can do to break non-productive patterns, whether it's inappropriate arguing, overeating, phobias or sexual issues. What's funny, is the book is full of stuff, that when you read it, you say, "of course, that's intuitive", but it's stuff that few of us seem to actually `do'. The only book I've ever rated 5-stars.

Solution Oriented Techniques That Work

At last! I've been reading O'Hanlon's books written for therapists for years though I'm not a therapist, all the while hoping he'd write a change manual for the general reader. Here it is, and I'm so pleased. This book contains practical, respectful, gentle, yet oh-so-effective change techniques that anyone can use quickly and easily. One of the things I love most about it is that it is solution-oriented, no preoccupation with "why" but focusing on "how," how to get what you want for yourself, and in your relationships. I'm giving copies to several family members and buying extras to have on hand. It's that good.