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Insanely Gifted: Turn Your Demons into Creative Rocket Fuel
From infancy we are taught to edit ourselves, trimming out the darker, weirder, less acceptable parts in order to please others. But this addiction to approval is holding us back.
What if we begin to be ourselves, honestly and fully?
Insanely Gifted shows how to transform our thinking and turn our inner demons into allies. How to reframe disappointment (because not getting what we want can be as interesting and useful as getting what we want). Through techniques to become aware of our Inner Critic, and exercises such as Full Body Listening, Catto invites us to better know our deepest instincts and unlock our true power.
What if we begin to be ourselves, honestly and fully?
Insanely Gifted shows how to transform our thinking and turn our inner demons into allies. How to reframe disappointment (because not getting what we want can be as interesting and useful as getting what we want). Through techniques to become aware of our Inner Critic, and exercises such as Full Body Listening, Catto invites us to better know our deepest instincts and unlock our true power.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published July 14, 2016
65 people are currently reading
341 people want to read
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abandoned
August 9, 2016ARC review.
Book abandoned 25th April 2016, page 67. Did a number of searches of the full text to check my impressions.
I am not the target audience for this book. The only two titles I’ve given one-star ratings on Goodreads were New Age-tinged self-help books. Though I can’t say I expected this one to be New Agey, having assumed that a musician from a dance act like Faithless would have been more down-to-earth and practical. I mean, he wasn’t some out-of-touch dinosaur stadium rocker with a stately home and several personal gurus. At the time I requested it on Netgalley, I was generally curious what I might think of self-help books several years after studying psychology and counselling, followed by several years of real life outside that sphere, that make my standards for myself and others more realistic and humane and less rigidly theory-based. This one sounded like a good title because it seemed to value imperfections, and understand how they can provide insight and advantage. Any enthusiasm for the idea of evaluating self-help books has since evaporated – this one was so not fun; I’ve other priorities; and as physical illness hampered me from finishing the relevant qualifications, it’s not like I’d get paid to assess and review these things. (Though I might still have more orthodox training than some of the authors in the genre.) In any case, Catto’s book wasn’t a good candidate – if I’d had access to a Kindle preview’s length of text, it would have been clear it was going to get on my wick, and I would have demurred. But Netgalley doesn’t have those previews, and it’s time to sort out the sprawling draft that was in this review box into something I can give them as feedback. Even 20% of the book provoked a lot of argument from me, and there isn’t space to say everything I felt like at the time.
I found a lot of the same faults in Insanely Gifted that there were in various self-help books I read in my early twenties, which I feel wasted my time by sending me in the wrong directions. I think self-help publishers and editors need to be more mindful that much of the target audience is unhappy and somewhat impressionable, and be less irresponsibly prescriptive.
• Promotes something closer to egotism and narcissism than to confidence - an attitude which could also depress the impressionable reader who fails to live up to expectations fuelled by the book.
I want every aspect of my life and yours to be a Masterpiece, I want my work to be a Masterpiece, I want my parenting to be a Masterpiece, I want my sex life and all my relationships to be Masterpieces. I want us to explore the edges, gently, to laugh at our foolishness, gently, and see ourselves for everything that we are.
Donald Winnicott’s idea of ‘good enough’ [parenting] can be extrapolated to many areas of life and is likely to be more useful to unhappy people. Wanting to be brilliant at everything is a recipe for disappointment. Which doesn’t mean that finding particular talents and enthusiasms and striving to do well professionally and creatively isn't a good thing too.
• Tiresome gender essentialism.
There’s so much gender-binary stuff in self-help, influenced by bastardised Eastern philosophies, and I think it’s a problem; it held me back for a good while from ‘being myself’ more and I’m sure it does the same to some others. It doesn’t contribute to a progressive society to have all this guff perpetuated about the feminine as passive/waiting receiving, masculine as active etc. I would have thought that in 2016 what with the visibility of the queer and trans movements, and the author being British and liberal (not some bootstraps American who probably votes Republican), this book would have been free of that crap, and encouraged people to do what came naturally in these respects, that it might actually be cool if it doesn’t match the traditional attributes of their physical sex. Some people complain about mainstreaming of queerness in certain areas of culture; however I suspect there is nowhere near enough of it in self-help, a place where people who are feeling a bit lost might look – including those who are somewhat gender non-conforming but don’t feel it so strongly that they’d want surgery.
• Unrealistic or out-of-touch expectations of others (i.e. people around the reader).
No touching expressions of art or intimacy were ever born from the sanitised, appropriate versions of ourselves. Whoever heard anyone say ‘Have you met Brian? Oh, he’s just so . . . appropriate! He turns me on!’
Well, in some sectors, anything that involves working with kids or other vulnerable people, being “appropriate” is one of the most important professional attributes. Also, who would want a friend who has no sense of boundaries or personal space? There’s a lot of stuff here which relates to pushing down internal barriers to creating darker, weirder artistic content, and I’m cool with that – but it is really not the right way to go about treating other real people, including when working in arts settings, and that distinction doesn’t seem clear in the least.
We turn up to work every day pretending we’re not neurotic and obsessed and insatiable and full of doubt, and we waste so much energy keeping up this mutual pretence for each other because we think if people saw the truth, if people really knew what was going on in our heads, all the crazy truth of our dark appetites and self-loathing, then we’d be rejected. But in fact, the opposite is true. It is when we dare to reveal the truth that we unwittingly give everyone else permission to do the same.
I think it’s incredibly important to have a few close friends with whom you can be this way. But the idea that this should or could be the standard form of relationship with colleagues, the postman, people in the supermarket queue or whatever – that’s just setting readers up for disappointment. There are times for opening and times for closing the psychological safety valves. There are times when compartmentalisation can help people get the hell on with difficult stuff.
Yet other times, and quite non-systematically, he suggests people personalise difficulties too much, and seems to imply that venting isn’t helpful. Maybe for some it isn’t, but for others saying nothing = festering. Art can also be a stylised and interesting form of venting. (And he’s also oddly neglectful of the artistic potential of breakups, despite the huge amount of art, great and terrible, they have fuelled.)
This apparently contradictory material needs to be a lot more organised, and to make sense about what applies when or to whom, a problem IME typical of self-help texts.
• I wondered whether a lot of the book had been written c.10 years ago; it misses important, relevant elements in contemporary culture.
I may sometimes use the term SJWs in a derogatory way for those I find too extreme and dogmatic, but know full well that to people further to the right, some of my own opinions are fairly indistinguishable from those of SJWs, and this is one of those instances.
- As above, the gender essentialism and lack of attention to potential boundary issues in personal and working relationships seems behind the times (the latter which has been discussed quite a lot in artistic contexts, such as zillions of articles about MFA courses and others about difficult experiences of women in the music industry).
- Catto uses an unwise example about 'choosing' not to be hurt by listening to racist rants. Now, I don’t believe one has to belong to a group to be allowed opinions on issues affecting said group, but this example just doesn’t work. As a white bloke with a British accent, he’s just not going to feel racism quite so personally and threateningly, even if he does think it’s one of the biggest social problems there is, even if he honestly has a lot of BAME / immigrant friends and colleagues. The idea of 'choosing' not to be hurt by something is also very unhelpful to people with actual psychological trauma, who are inevitably going to be a larger proportion of the readership of self-help books than of the general population, and for whom such 'choice' is not a simple process: physiological and limbic reactions (feelings) in response to traumatic stimuli occur faster than higher thought, and can overwhelm it.
- He seems to think the only sources of potential or imagined disapproval holding people back are friends, family and colleagues. Searching, I found no discussion of the phenomenon of Twitterstorms and social media shaming for politically incorrect creative work or faux pas, or for voicing unpopular opinions – those are surely a major consideration in the arts these days, and could be an interesting point for discussion in a better book on the theme of darkness and creativity: what is going too far?
- There’s something very Blair-boom-era about the ease with which the book assumes people can just do or buy new things, as if there were jobs there for the taking. Perhaps it’s infected by that naïve abundance principle (The Secret &c) that things will always be there if you want them enough, a type of thinking that one can see as being behind the very financial instruments that caused the recession, and in the way many human activities seem to continue with the tacit assumption that oil will always be there. But again I expected better from this author, as for some reason I assumed a band like Faithless would have had more connection with gritty reality.
It’s not that there isn’t something good here.
Catto has an open-minded and balanced attitude to themes in the arts that some conservative psychologists and self-help gurus consider “unhealthy”.
Music – creating and listening to it – is a great tool for enjoying emotions that are less welcome in our everyday lives. Three quarters of all pop music is wallowing in co-dependent love. ‘Baby, I need you, I can’t live without you, I wanna be the only one to hold you, don’t leave, baby, come back . . .’ You would never allow yourself (unless totally desperate) to express yourself in such an unbelievably needy way as those lyricists do, but getting swept away in the music of it gives permission to feel those parts of ourselves safely and without shame.
Movies are great for this, too. Of course it is not attractive to be vengeful, but how delicious it is to totally give ourselves to a cinematic story where there’s an awful, cruel villain getting his or her comeuppance! We follow a carefully structured path of events all perfectly timed to deliver us the greatest satisfaction as we witness the baddies getting exactly what they deserve. Those characters are servants for our denied lust for vengeance.
(Those paragraphs delineate boundaries between artistic content and what works IRL in a way I’d have liked to have seen more often in the book, but sometimes it’s naïve: Musicians are lucky that they can write a killer punk rock song and express the rage that way. Have you ever met a punk rocker? They’re the gentlest souls alive. Why? Because they’ve channelled all that rage into their art so they’re not being yanked this way and that by their anger in their everyday lives. I do know the type of people he means, but has this guy never heard of Johnny Thunders, GG Allin or Sid and Nancy? Sweeping generalisations that make an argument sound silly to the more discerning reader are a big problem in self-help, and can suck in the less-well-informed who take them at face value.)
- His ideas about how experience is “stored” in the body are not too bad and also not as unscientific as they might sound to the uninformed but sceptical reader. For a more down-to-earth, systematic and research-influenced and also readable take on that stuff, I would highly recommend the work of psychologist Babette Rothschild. (Who completely refrains from blaming people, unlike, for example, the awful Eckhart Tolle.)
As said at the outset, I'm not really the market for this book - but I felt that its helpful points could be summarised in a mere article (those of many other 'personal development' books could too, stuffed as they usually are with padding and repetition). Otherwise a lot of the material was typical of the less helpful stuff found in self-help books, it remains excessively prescriptive without giving space for individual variation, and the author's background did not, by and large, influence the content in the interesting ways I'd hoped it might.
Book abandoned 25th April 2016, page 67. Did a number of searches of the full text to check my impressions.
I am not the target audience for this book. The only two titles I’ve given one-star ratings on Goodreads were New Age-tinged self-help books. Though I can’t say I expected this one to be New Agey, having assumed that a musician from a dance act like Faithless would have been more down-to-earth and practical. I mean, he wasn’t some out-of-touch dinosaur stadium rocker with a stately home and several personal gurus. At the time I requested it on Netgalley, I was generally curious what I might think of self-help books several years after studying psychology and counselling, followed by several years of real life outside that sphere, that make my standards for myself and others more realistic and humane and less rigidly theory-based. This one sounded like a good title because it seemed to value imperfections, and understand how they can provide insight and advantage. Any enthusiasm for the idea of evaluating self-help books has since evaporated – this one was so not fun; I’ve other priorities; and as physical illness hampered me from finishing the relevant qualifications, it’s not like I’d get paid to assess and review these things. (Though I might still have more orthodox training than some of the authors in the genre.) In any case, Catto’s book wasn’t a good candidate – if I’d had access to a Kindle preview’s length of text, it would have been clear it was going to get on my wick, and I would have demurred. But Netgalley doesn’t have those previews, and it’s time to sort out the sprawling draft that was in this review box into something I can give them as feedback. Even 20% of the book provoked a lot of argument from me, and there isn’t space to say everything I felt like at the time.
I found a lot of the same faults in Insanely Gifted that there were in various self-help books I read in my early twenties, which I feel wasted my time by sending me in the wrong directions. I think self-help publishers and editors need to be more mindful that much of the target audience is unhappy and somewhat impressionable, and be less irresponsibly prescriptive.
• Promotes something closer to egotism and narcissism than to confidence - an attitude which could also depress the impressionable reader who fails to live up to expectations fuelled by the book.
I want every aspect of my life and yours to be a Masterpiece, I want my work to be a Masterpiece, I want my parenting to be a Masterpiece, I want my sex life and all my relationships to be Masterpieces. I want us to explore the edges, gently, to laugh at our foolishness, gently, and see ourselves for everything that we are.
Donald Winnicott’s idea of ‘good enough’ [parenting] can be extrapolated to many areas of life and is likely to be more useful to unhappy people. Wanting to be brilliant at everything is a recipe for disappointment. Which doesn’t mean that finding particular talents and enthusiasms and striving to do well professionally and creatively isn't a good thing too.
• Tiresome gender essentialism.
There’s so much gender-binary stuff in self-help, influenced by bastardised Eastern philosophies, and I think it’s a problem; it held me back for a good while from ‘being myself’ more and I’m sure it does the same to some others. It doesn’t contribute to a progressive society to have all this guff perpetuated about the feminine as passive/waiting receiving, masculine as active etc. I would have thought that in 2016 what with the visibility of the queer and trans movements, and the author being British and liberal (not some bootstraps American who probably votes Republican), this book would have been free of that crap, and encouraged people to do what came naturally in these respects, that it might actually be cool if it doesn’t match the traditional attributes of their physical sex. Some people complain about mainstreaming of queerness in certain areas of culture; however I suspect there is nowhere near enough of it in self-help, a place where people who are feeling a bit lost might look – including those who are somewhat gender non-conforming but don’t feel it so strongly that they’d want surgery.
• Unrealistic or out-of-touch expectations of others (i.e. people around the reader).
No touching expressions of art or intimacy were ever born from the sanitised, appropriate versions of ourselves. Whoever heard anyone say ‘Have you met Brian? Oh, he’s just so . . . appropriate! He turns me on!’
Well, in some sectors, anything that involves working with kids or other vulnerable people, being “appropriate” is one of the most important professional attributes. Also, who would want a friend who has no sense of boundaries or personal space? There’s a lot of stuff here which relates to pushing down internal barriers to creating darker, weirder artistic content, and I’m cool with that – but it is really not the right way to go about treating other real people, including when working in arts settings, and that distinction doesn’t seem clear in the least.
We turn up to work every day pretending we’re not neurotic and obsessed and insatiable and full of doubt, and we waste so much energy keeping up this mutual pretence for each other because we think if people saw the truth, if people really knew what was going on in our heads, all the crazy truth of our dark appetites and self-loathing, then we’d be rejected. But in fact, the opposite is true. It is when we dare to reveal the truth that we unwittingly give everyone else permission to do the same.
I think it’s incredibly important to have a few close friends with whom you can be this way. But the idea that this should or could be the standard form of relationship with colleagues, the postman, people in the supermarket queue or whatever – that’s just setting readers up for disappointment. There are times for opening and times for closing the psychological safety valves. There are times when compartmentalisation can help people get the hell on with difficult stuff.
Yet other times, and quite non-systematically, he suggests people personalise difficulties too much, and seems to imply that venting isn’t helpful. Maybe for some it isn’t, but for others saying nothing = festering. Art can also be a stylised and interesting form of venting. (And he’s also oddly neglectful of the artistic potential of breakups, despite the huge amount of art, great and terrible, they have fuelled.)
This apparently contradictory material needs to be a lot more organised, and to make sense about what applies when or to whom, a problem IME typical of self-help texts.
• I wondered whether a lot of the book had been written c.10 years ago; it misses important, relevant elements in contemporary culture.
I may sometimes use the term SJWs in a derogatory way for those I find too extreme and dogmatic, but know full well that to people further to the right, some of my own opinions are fairly indistinguishable from those of SJWs, and this is one of those instances.
- As above, the gender essentialism and lack of attention to potential boundary issues in personal and working relationships seems behind the times (the latter which has been discussed quite a lot in artistic contexts, such as zillions of articles about MFA courses and others about difficult experiences of women in the music industry).
- Catto uses an unwise example about 'choosing' not to be hurt by listening to racist rants. Now, I don’t believe one has to belong to a group to be allowed opinions on issues affecting said group, but this example just doesn’t work. As a white bloke with a British accent, he’s just not going to feel racism quite so personally and threateningly, even if he does think it’s one of the biggest social problems there is, even if he honestly has a lot of BAME / immigrant friends and colleagues. The idea of 'choosing' not to be hurt by something is also very unhelpful to people with actual psychological trauma, who are inevitably going to be a larger proportion of the readership of self-help books than of the general population, and for whom such 'choice' is not a simple process: physiological and limbic reactions (feelings) in response to traumatic stimuli occur faster than higher thought, and can overwhelm it.
- He seems to think the only sources of potential or imagined disapproval holding people back are friends, family and colleagues. Searching, I found no discussion of the phenomenon of Twitterstorms and social media shaming for politically incorrect creative work or faux pas, or for voicing unpopular opinions – those are surely a major consideration in the arts these days, and could be an interesting point for discussion in a better book on the theme of darkness and creativity: what is going too far?
- There’s something very Blair-boom-era about the ease with which the book assumes people can just do or buy new things, as if there were jobs there for the taking. Perhaps it’s infected by that naïve abundance principle (The Secret &c) that things will always be there if you want them enough, a type of thinking that one can see as being behind the very financial instruments that caused the recession, and in the way many human activities seem to continue with the tacit assumption that oil will always be there. But again I expected better from this author, as for some reason I assumed a band like Faithless would have had more connection with gritty reality.
It’s not that there isn’t something good here.
Catto has an open-minded and balanced attitude to themes in the arts that some conservative psychologists and self-help gurus consider “unhealthy”.
Music – creating and listening to it – is a great tool for enjoying emotions that are less welcome in our everyday lives. Three quarters of all pop music is wallowing in co-dependent love. ‘Baby, I need you, I can’t live without you, I wanna be the only one to hold you, don’t leave, baby, come back . . .’ You would never allow yourself (unless totally desperate) to express yourself in such an unbelievably needy way as those lyricists do, but getting swept away in the music of it gives permission to feel those parts of ourselves safely and without shame.
Movies are great for this, too. Of course it is not attractive to be vengeful, but how delicious it is to totally give ourselves to a cinematic story where there’s an awful, cruel villain getting his or her comeuppance! We follow a carefully structured path of events all perfectly timed to deliver us the greatest satisfaction as we witness the baddies getting exactly what they deserve. Those characters are servants for our denied lust for vengeance.
(Those paragraphs delineate boundaries between artistic content and what works IRL in a way I’d have liked to have seen more often in the book, but sometimes it’s naïve: Musicians are lucky that they can write a killer punk rock song and express the rage that way. Have you ever met a punk rocker? They’re the gentlest souls alive. Why? Because they’ve channelled all that rage into their art so they’re not being yanked this way and that by their anger in their everyday lives. I do know the type of people he means, but has this guy never heard of Johnny Thunders, GG Allin or Sid and Nancy? Sweeping generalisations that make an argument sound silly to the more discerning reader are a big problem in self-help, and can suck in the less-well-informed who take them at face value.)
- His ideas about how experience is “stored” in the body are not too bad and also not as unscientific as they might sound to the uninformed but sceptical reader. For a more down-to-earth, systematic and research-influenced and also readable take on that stuff, I would highly recommend the work of psychologist Babette Rothschild. (Who completely refrains from blaming people, unlike, for example, the awful Eckhart Tolle.)
As said at the outset, I'm not really the market for this book - but I felt that its helpful points could be summarised in a mere article (those of many other 'personal development' books could too, stuffed as they usually are with padding and repetition). Otherwise a lot of the material was typical of the less helpful stuff found in self-help books, it remains excessively prescriptive without giving space for individual variation, and the author's background did not, by and large, influence the content in the interesting ways I'd hoped it might.
July 17, 2017
Oh how I wish I had the time to thoroughly go through everything that's wrong about this book, but alas, so much time has already been wasted reading it.
I'm not the target audience for this book, even though I easily could have been, if only the author expressed himself in a better way. One of the rare things I appreciate about is how he shows his vulnerability and openly speaks of his own flaws. Still, it doesn't help.
Catto has the habit of presenting things as black or white, when it suits him, so for example, everything 'feminine' is passive and receiving, while 'masculine' is active. Though he does make some good points, such as giving examples of how people use their suffering to get attention and care, and also sharing his thoughts and experience on meditation, so much of this book is simply to be avoided.
Spoiler alert -
If you forgive me from starting from the end, and here I must shortly mention the last chapter of the book which I guess comprised all the leftover paragraphs that couldn't fit anywhere else in the book (ranting about Bush and Obama, for example), mainly because they're not at all relevant to any other part of it.
Around the end of Chapter 10 (out of 11), the author writes about three things he'd like for the reader to buy when they've finished this chapter. The first one is a nice bag with 'a good zip', explaining how you won't be lying on your deathbed regretting spending the extra £30 or £40 on it. The second is 'a really nice towel', one of those you get when staying at a posh place, and I honestly can't waste any words on this. The third is making sure you own at least one pair of either really good-quality speakers or headphones, explaining that these three things have far-reaching implications on what we feel we deserve.
Finally, I would like to share one of my favourite quotes, under the title "Don't Tell Anyone I Said 'Chakras':
Now, I know I take the piss out of the new-age side of this stuff and please don't get me wrong, the usual trappings of rainbow dolphins and twinkly unicorns do tend to spoil the practical benefits of these tools for many people who don't want to look woo-woo. As with all genres, however, even heavy metal, these is usually ninety-five per cent which is nonsense and to be avoided, but the five per cent that is juicy is unmissable. The cream of nearly any genre has something wonderful to offer. (OK, maybe not techno)."
Another one that made me roll my eyes as loudly as I could was this:
"Later that year we were making some music for a TV station in a country where we have learned the hart way to be very careful about handing over the master tapes before getting paid. I won't mention its name (India)."
What exactly could the purpose be behind this need to write the name of the country? Especially after writing how he will not mention it. Is this a warning sign for the readers to know they can get tricked by some of the 1.3 billion people currently living there?
All in all, this book is about self-care and I wholeheartedly recommend you to take care of yourself and not read it.
I'm not the target audience for this book, even though I easily could have been, if only the author expressed himself in a better way. One of the rare things I appreciate about is how he shows his vulnerability and openly speaks of his own flaws. Still, it doesn't help.
Catto has the habit of presenting things as black or white, when it suits him, so for example, everything 'feminine' is passive and receiving, while 'masculine' is active. Though he does make some good points, such as giving examples of how people use their suffering to get attention and care, and also sharing his thoughts and experience on meditation, so much of this book is simply to be avoided.
Spoiler alert -
If you forgive me from starting from the end, and here I must shortly mention the last chapter of the book which I guess comprised all the leftover paragraphs that couldn't fit anywhere else in the book (ranting about Bush and Obama, for example), mainly because they're not at all relevant to any other part of it.
Around the end of Chapter 10 (out of 11), the author writes about three things he'd like for the reader to buy when they've finished this chapter. The first one is a nice bag with 'a good zip', explaining how you won't be lying on your deathbed regretting spending the extra £30 or £40 on it. The second is 'a really nice towel', one of those you get when staying at a posh place, and I honestly can't waste any words on this. The third is making sure you own at least one pair of either really good-quality speakers or headphones, explaining that these three things have far-reaching implications on what we feel we deserve.
Finally, I would like to share one of my favourite quotes, under the title "Don't Tell Anyone I Said 'Chakras':
Now, I know I take the piss out of the new-age side of this stuff and please don't get me wrong, the usual trappings of rainbow dolphins and twinkly unicorns do tend to spoil the practical benefits of these tools for many people who don't want to look woo-woo. As with all genres, however, even heavy metal, these is usually ninety-five per cent which is nonsense and to be avoided, but the five per cent that is juicy is unmissable. The cream of nearly any genre has something wonderful to offer. (OK, maybe not techno)."
Another one that made me roll my eyes as loudly as I could was this:
"Later that year we were making some music for a TV station in a country where we have learned the hart way to be very careful about handing over the master tapes before getting paid. I won't mention its name (India)."
What exactly could the purpose be behind this need to write the name of the country? Especially after writing how he will not mention it. Is this a warning sign for the readers to know they can get tricked by some of the 1.3 billion people currently living there?
All in all, this book is about self-care and I wholeheartedly recommend you to take care of yourself and not read it.
May 25, 2020
This started off feeling different from how it finished - but I loved it from start to finish. Absolutely awesome, and already recommended it to other people.
February 10, 2017
Jamie Catto's premise is that everyone is born open, curious, adventurous and limitless. However, by the time we reach adulthood we have edited ourselves down to about 20% of this, and what remains are the parts we need to fit in and be liked. How do we retrieve that lost 80%? Jamie Catto thinks he knows how.
I got 'Insanely Gifted: Turn Your Demons into Creative Rocket Fuel' cheap as it was an audible "deal of the day". I quite enjoy self help books and finding sources of inspiration. As is so often the way, there is a lot of guff to wade through before finding the nuggets. I quite like Jamie's style but this is very repetitive and unstructured.
The beauty of audiobooks is you can listen whilst doing other stuff, so I didn't resent the repetition, or the book’s meandering structure.
Catto claims that reading this book will:
• Help you reclaim and reignite your creative genius.
• Dissolve anything and everything in the way of your clear creative channel
• Help you rediscover techniques for effortlessly accessing the imagination
• Increase confidence and sense of personal power in ALL areas of life
• Show you how to reclaim and unleash hidden parts of yourself to release untapped resources of innate, playful genius
• Free yourself from any imprisoning or limiting beliefs which have held you back
• Allow you to laugh your head off at your humanity so that old depressions and emotional pressures fall away
That's an overstatement, however it does have some good ideas, and Catto is engaging as often as he is annoying.
So, whilst completely inessential, if you can get a cheap or free copy and don’t mind a meandering read (or listen), then it’s worth getting hold of. Alternatively, google whole body listening, focus on the process not the output, and only do what makes you genuinely excited.
3/5
I got 'Insanely Gifted: Turn Your Demons into Creative Rocket Fuel' cheap as it was an audible "deal of the day". I quite enjoy self help books and finding sources of inspiration. As is so often the way, there is a lot of guff to wade through before finding the nuggets. I quite like Jamie's style but this is very repetitive and unstructured.
The beauty of audiobooks is you can listen whilst doing other stuff, so I didn't resent the repetition, or the book’s meandering structure.
Catto claims that reading this book will:
• Help you reclaim and reignite your creative genius.
• Dissolve anything and everything in the way of your clear creative channel
• Help you rediscover techniques for effortlessly accessing the imagination
• Increase confidence and sense of personal power in ALL areas of life
• Show you how to reclaim and unleash hidden parts of yourself to release untapped resources of innate, playful genius
• Free yourself from any imprisoning or limiting beliefs which have held you back
• Allow you to laugh your head off at your humanity so that old depressions and emotional pressures fall away
That's an overstatement, however it does have some good ideas, and Catto is engaging as often as he is annoying.
So, whilst completely inessential, if you can get a cheap or free copy and don’t mind a meandering read (or listen), then it’s worth getting hold of. Alternatively, google whole body listening, focus on the process not the output, and only do what makes you genuinely excited.
3/5
October 6, 2016
If you are reading this and it isn't working for you, skip to chapter 10. That is where Catto begins relating the book you thought you picked up and explains why chapters 1-9 are there in the first place.
May 24, 2021
Reflections and lessons learned:
“The walls that we put up to protect ourselves will inevitably imprison us”
An analysis about honesty and edited living in terms of personality, being a “walking permission slip” in order to act in accordance but accordance with what is more important? Lots covered including the following standout parts for myself: approval addicts and appreciation/rejection - individual castle and rooms use analogy - preventative medicine vs crisis management - blank space usage - inner smile internal organ breathing - life as an after show party from the success of conception - freedom of knowing that we’re all fools - everyone being a person that can potentially be laughing whilst throwing and catching the beachball, but it depends upon with who this is comfortable - spotting the guru in a situation (such as the microphone stand) to stop us from reacting the level of being out of order, and saving us from ourselves.
Overall a book with lots of elements of the individual covered, told in a fairly easy to digest path, in one moment using the great phrase which Freud should have used more often in a study of mental health - hold on to your onions! The three items recommended to invest in quality versions for a level of self love? - bag, towel and headphones
“The walls that we put up to protect ourselves will inevitably imprison us”
An analysis about honesty and edited living in terms of personality, being a “walking permission slip” in order to act in accordance but accordance with what is more important? Lots covered including the following standout parts for myself: approval addicts and appreciation/rejection - individual castle and rooms use analogy - preventative medicine vs crisis management - blank space usage - inner smile internal organ breathing - life as an after show party from the success of conception - freedom of knowing that we’re all fools - everyone being a person that can potentially be laughing whilst throwing and catching the beachball, but it depends upon with who this is comfortable - spotting the guru in a situation (such as the microphone stand) to stop us from reacting the level of being out of order, and saving us from ourselves.
Overall a book with lots of elements of the individual covered, told in a fairly easy to digest path, in one moment using the great phrase which Freud should have used more often in a study of mental health - hold on to your onions! The three items recommended to invest in quality versions for a level of self love? - bag, towel and headphones
August 28, 2019
This is an excellent self-development book. The author clearly knows what he is talking about and his writing makes a lot of sense. I felt from the outset that I was in good hands and by the time I finished the book knew that I had made a significant breakthrough in knowing myself better.
The audio version of the book is especially good as it is read by the author and conveys his emphasis well. The anecdotes he tells ring true. Also, his very honest style makes it feel as if you are spending time with him, learning from him in person, which helps to build a sense of trust.
Most importantly for me, the book revealed something in me that had been buried so long that I had forgotten it even existed, namely, a love of adventure. The title's claim that you can turn your demons/frustrations/triggers into creative rocket fuel proved accurate. I came up with lots of new and exciting ideas about how to incorporate adventure into my life in spite of physical challenges.
The audio version of the book is especially good as it is read by the author and conveys his emphasis well. The anecdotes he tells ring true. Also, his very honest style makes it feel as if you are spending time with him, learning from him in person, which helps to build a sense of trust.
Most importantly for me, the book revealed something in me that had been buried so long that I had forgotten it even existed, namely, a love of adventure. The title's claim that you can turn your demons/frustrations/triggers into creative rocket fuel proved accurate. I came up with lots of new and exciting ideas about how to incorporate adventure into my life in spite of physical challenges.
April 10, 2018
I’ve had this book on the go for such a long time, and always found myself reaching for it whenever feeling a little lost or depressed. No doubt, it turned me around every single damn time because this rather frank and honest approach to an emotional compass interlocked with a creative outlet resonated with me like nothing else. I’ve dog-tagged and underlined the crap out of it for future reference and have found myself referring to it when giving friends and family emotional advice.
Would strongly recommend this to ANYONE who needs that little bit of guidance in a simple yet new way.
(I skipped the ‘exercises’ because I never take those things seriously.)
Would strongly recommend this to ANYONE who needs that little bit of guidance in a simple yet new way.
(I skipped the ‘exercises’ because I never take those things seriously.)
August 1, 2016
Thank you Goodreads for sending me this book. An interesting and fun read. The book is designed to help change the way you think and act. It comes with a number of anecdotes based on the authors experiences and views. This is not a book that but the beauty of it is that you can pick and chose the bits that are most relevant to you and review the way your life has been and could be. It is a positive book which is enjoyable to read.
December 15, 2016
I received this as a Goodreads Giveaway. Although the premise of the book sounded interesting - how to take the parts of ourselves we like the least and turn them into a way of making us a more successful person - I soon lost patience with its tone and felt it was covering the same ground repeatedly. It just served to remind me why I shouldn't read self-help books as they just make me cross!
March 29, 2017
I didn't think I was going to enjoy this book, as I have never been keen on the idea of self-help books. I didn't think I would be able to relate to it or see how it would benefit my life. I was completely wrong! I find myself on a daily basis using the techniques Jamie Catto has written. Well worth a read.
January 4, 2021
I detest self-help/improvement books; I do not like being told how to think about things and rarely does this genre offer any novel insights that aren't already blatantly obvious to me. With that said, I have no idea why I chose to read this new-agey garbage. I think, maybe I was intrigued by that weird little creature on the cover.
June 4, 2017
I won this book through Goodreads giveaways.
Usually I am not the one to go to self help books as they tend to irk me and use too many big words to try to look profesional, with no meaning at all at the end.
I kind of enjoyed this one even if I had to fight through some of the chapters as they were complicated to understand and I could not figure out what the author was trying to tell us.
There is a lot of good stuff, good advice and practical exercises you can apply to your life and personality.
That what saved this book for me, the fact that you can take what can be useful for you and leave the rest.
The book becomes very interesting from the chapter 8, all the ones before are a mere introduction in my opinion.
I am glad to have won the book as it did help me out with some of my questions, so thank you for that Jamie Catto.
Usually I am not the one to go to self help books as they tend to irk me and use too many big words to try to look profesional, with no meaning at all at the end.
I kind of enjoyed this one even if I had to fight through some of the chapters as they were complicated to understand and I could not figure out what the author was trying to tell us.
There is a lot of good stuff, good advice and practical exercises you can apply to your life and personality.
That what saved this book for me, the fact that you can take what can be useful for you and leave the rest.
The book becomes very interesting from the chapter 8, all the ones before are a mere introduction in my opinion.
I am glad to have won the book as it did help me out with some of my questions, so thank you for that Jamie Catto.
November 6, 2021
More of a 3.5, this. I really enjoyed the first two thirds of the book - the last few chapters were less relevant to me and I found my mind wandering.
Like other reviewers, I found the constant use of the 'active, planning, logical = masculine/ receptive, listening, nurturing = feminine' jarring, although I recognise that it is borrowed from the Daoist thought the book uses. I also found some of his very confidently expressed opinions wrong-headed, but he's entitled to them, I suppose.
All that said, there is good for thought here, and there is a lot I want to revisit and integrate into my life.
Like other reviewers, I found the constant use of the 'active, planning, logical = masculine/ receptive, listening, nurturing = feminine' jarring, although I recognise that it is borrowed from the Daoist thought the book uses. I also found some of his very confidently expressed opinions wrong-headed, but he's entitled to them, I suppose.
All that said, there is good for thought here, and there is a lot I want to revisit and integrate into my life.
March 4, 2021
This book was excellent and made a lot of sense. I also enjoyed the audiobook read by the author because he doesn't take himself too seriously and tells how it is.
Some parts I just didn't connect with which is why 4 stars but I'm looking forward to making some changes thanks to this book.
Some parts I just didn't connect with which is why 4 stars but I'm looking forward to making some changes thanks to this book.
May 23, 2021
While some parts were a bit too cosmically hippy for me, I do think he has many relevant ideas. Some of these have actually been mentioned many times in the mainstream, like mindfulness and authenticity, so they won’t be new. Still, worth a read.
January 4, 2023
I look forward to reading this one again, to soak more of it in. There are several parts where he gives "assignments" and mentions doing group work/discussions... Could be fun for a more dedicated book club or therapy group.
August 15, 2018
Found it hard to stay focused after the mention of chakras and other spiritual BS. Good for believers but not my cup of tea. There are however some gems and good humour in this book.
March 11, 2019
i do recommend this book to everybody - it is inspiring & rewarding. It challenged me and made me feel supported and relaxed about life and my place in it. A calming read that makes you nod in approval.
March 22, 2020
I really liked this book and I think there are a lot of takeaway lessons to learn from this. I like the authenticity of the writing.
September 23, 2020
Unfortunately I DNF. Maybe I’ve done too many similar books but this one just didn’t do it for me.
November 2, 2020
Inanely grifted.
Annoying.
Annoying.
December 24, 2020
This book is a must read for creatives everywhere! It certainly helped me change my thinking in regards to certain aspects of my life, and put others into better perspective. Highly recommended!
May 23, 2021
Some good ideas on how to overcome thinking errors. Didn't care for the foul language.
August 31, 2022
Guidebook for hyper sensitive people.
January 30, 2026
Delightful mixture of wisdom and bollocks. Take the good bits, skip the woo.
July 30, 2021
Started off fairly promising but was ultimately a big disappointment. The title really does not have much to do with the content of the book. This book might be helpful to people first embarking on the self-help path but for the more veteran among us it simply does not offer a lot.
January 24, 2021
I am on my second reading of this book as it is filled with so many different ways to think about my brain, really, and has a number of exercises...
So, while I didn't anticipate it - the first time I read it to see if I would like it. (Borrowed book from friend, then spilled coffee on it - so now own it and am waiting for new copy to give back to friend!)
Second time I am reading it ( now) and am highlighting all the things I want to take away - and I think I will have to read it a third time (unprecedented for me) to do the exercises and commit to long term memory a number of the concepts he has in this book.
It is totally hitting me at the right time in my life. Am amazed at how good this book is. (Not a page turner, but an absorber.)
Highly recommend if you are in to learning about yourself and developing new ways to be your best.
So, while I didn't anticipate it - the first time I read it to see if I would like it. (Borrowed book from friend, then spilled coffee on it - so now own it and am waiting for new copy to give back to friend!)
Second time I am reading it ( now) and am highlighting all the things I want to take away - and I think I will have to read it a third time (unprecedented for me) to do the exercises and commit to long term memory a number of the concepts he has in this book.
It is totally hitting me at the right time in my life. Am amazed at how good this book is. (Not a page turner, but an absorber.)
Highly recommend if you are in to learning about yourself and developing new ways to be your best.
August 17, 2016
I was pleased to have won this book in a recent Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
Although this is a well written book, it is not the genre that i would choose to read. Now and again I like to read something totally different. I seldom write what a book is about for fear of spoiling for others, but do recommend if you are interested in self help.
Although this is a well written book, it is not the genre that i would choose to read. Now and again I like to read something totally different. I seldom write what a book is about for fear of spoiling for others, but do recommend if you are interested in self help.
March 29, 2017
Quite an interesting book with some very interesting ways of thinking about things. There is definite value in trying a few .. like full body listening and tagging on "like me" whenever you think something bad about someone. The only qualms I had were to do with the author's religious beliefs which were decidedly against the idea of established Christianity.
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