The new message in self help? Realism - Live with your unhappiness

OK, so you’ve sorted your diet, become a star at work but your children are still a pain. What you may be doing wrong is rewarding them for achievement rather than praising them for effort. “The moment you say ‘Well done you got an A grade’ the kid gets scared because to get the praise the next time they have to get an A grade. But saying ‘Well done, you tried really hard’ — that’s under their control, they can do that next time to get that praise again.”

SHOOT: Some intwisting ideas here.

clipped from women.timesonline.co.uk The difference with his book, which is called 59 Seconds: Think a Little. Change a Lot, is that it really can change your life. Well, so he says. “I was interested to find out how psychics convince people that they have powers they don’t have” — in the same way, he thinks, that magicians do, except that magicians are more benevolent than some of the gurus that inhabit the Mind, Body, Spirit section of bookstores. “As a magician you’re fooling people all the time but you’re doing it for fun,” he says. The other big themes besides worrying seem to be: people’s body language, success, talking to your children, correcting “common dog problems”, following your dream, losing weight, stress-free productivity, overcoming depression, understanding the opposite sex, seduction and — it’s possible that this last book was miscategorised by Amazon — a lyrical account of a boy growing up with a lion.