Traveling Hopefully

The five steps to living freely are clear enough: Accept your past so you can direct your future, link internal clarity with external action, recruit a support squad, create a roadmap with goals, and move toward what you want and away from what you don't. This is a recovery audio, which is not a bad thing. The author's own poignant story shows that almost any bad experience can be put in its place. Her high voice is tolerable, but her excessive emotional enthusiasm is not, especially for audios in this genre. Overall, the program is saved by her refreshing clarity about personal responsibility and her many useful suggestions for getting past family loss and trauma. T.W. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

August 23, 2004
This book takes its title from a quote by Robert Louis Stevenson—"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive," which serves as Gill's core philosophy. The communications consultant and executive coach explores the desire many people have to disentangle themselves from childhood traumas and move forward in life. Gill uses personal stories of her own apparently abuse- and neglect-filled childhood as a way of illustrating that even the biggest emotional obstacles can be overcome. The first section of the book points out that only by acknowledging and processing our past can we get rid of the negative themes that often shape our adult lives. From there it's a journey to discover who we are as individuals and what we can offer the world. She offers 21 "hopeful tools" to aid readers in reassessing themselves and their goals, with lots of exercises along the way (e.g. how to convert a negative self-image into a positive one). This book is sometimes painful but inspiring, as Gill's goal is to transform her readers from dreamers who are dissatisfied with life to doers who have renewed purpose and ambition. (Oct.)

Forecast:
Gill manages Dr. Phil McGraw's franchise—so she should get a leg up from him in the media world, which will boost sales.