Type R by Ama Marston ***

Type R by Ama Marston and her mother is a repackaging of the advice to repackage failures as successes. When one door closes, another opens. Advice and anecdotes are collected from the last fifty years and applied to individuals, families, and businesses.

One of my favorite results from psychological research in the 1960s was about locus of control. People with an internal locus of control felt empowered and in control of their destiny. These people tended to be happier and more resilient when things went wrong. Alternately, people with an external locus of control felt trapped and frustrated. The people tended to be unhappy and easily discouraged. Over my life, I’ve found this to be a helpful concept and have always strived to live with an internal locus of control and help others around me to do the same.

The authors also report more recent, but related, research on the stories we tell ourselves. Like locus of control, research on the stories we tell ourselves finds similar results. If we tell ourselves positive stories, we tend to do better than those whose internal dialogue is negative. Type R behavior includes both an internal locus of control and telling ourselves positive stories.

I found much of the advice, and many of the anecdotes, familiar from similar books. As with all advice, I found some to be pat and simplistic. They presented an “E test,” where people are asked to draw an E on their forehead. The tester then makes a conclusion on whether the E looks right from an external observer, or from the point of view of the test subject viewing the E from inside their head.

I believe this test has more to do with the test subject’s spatial intelligence, something measured by IQ tests as spatial awareness or spatial aptitude, then whether the subject is self-centered or empathetic.

If you’ve never read a self-help or popular management book, this one is a good survey of the genre. Much familiar and proven advice is repackaged into their authors’ Type R (Transformative Resilience) model. A friend of mine observed that such books are repetitive and most of the wisdom can be gotten from the blurb. This one is no exception.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for book recommendations.