This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can't

"This is How" is a book that at times speaks to our darker natures, and I don't think that is a bad thing. On page 9 Burroughs writes, "The truth is humbling, terrifying, and often exhilarating. It blows the doors off the hinges and fills the world with fresh air." I find this statement profound, and there are moments in this text where the book succeeds at doing just that.First off, I would not recommend reading this book straight through like one would a novel. I would read it a chapter at a time, taking a couple of days break in between. I recommend this because there are so many complex issues addressed in the book that to read it as one unit is to detract from some of the parts that deserve your attention and thought after you have read them. I was not enjoying the text until I broke my reading of it up into bits and pieces.A problem I have with "This is How"' is that there are parts of the book that are too targeted to a specific subgroup to be all that interesting to the general reader. The chapter he writes on being skinny, with a heavy focus on anorexia, leaps to mind. Only if you have lived through this disease would you be even mildly interested in what he writes there. Other detractions in the text are the hackneyed moments where he creates imagined dialogues to illustrate whatever point he is making. They are mostly not good, and especially terrible is his imagined rant from an old racist. It reeks of bad television writing.The worst chapter of the book is his chapter on abuse. It is didactic, too broad in its assumptions, and just very self serving. I would skip it.However, I think the book has much more helpful parts than bad. The chapter entitled "How to live unhappily ever after" is by far the best chapter in the book (pages 167-170). Mr. Burroughs argument for being simply "content" with your life is profound! Also very good is the chapter "How to feel sorry for yourself" (pages 56-59). It is a complex idea very simply and succinctly stated.Some reviewers have said that Burroughs is too harsh. He is harsh at times, but I disagree that this is a bad thing. The chapter on "dreams" (of the follow your dreams, etc. variety) is harsh and very honest. It is as honest an assessment I have ever read of this esoteric concept. In the same vein, when he writes about how to "get over" the past he is saying some powerful things that many readers may resent, but he is right.I would recommend this text, and leave this review with some additional thoughts. The ideas on regret in this book come from the author's personal experience and spoke to me even though I don't share similarities with his situation. I think they will speak to a lot of readers. There is also a lovely digression on pages 217/18 about what miracle humans are. It is excellently done, and is an excerpt I will turn to again and again in the future.Regardless of what you feel about the book after reading, it will have made you think and therefore I believe it is worth your time to read.

I intend to update this review to be more thorough, but I have completed 200 pages of the 230 page book, and it has affected me more just in those few pages than many, many other longer and more complex self-help books ever have. Augusten Burroughs has been through it all and lived to tell about it, and he does so in a way that is so refreshingly simple and to-the-point, you know it has to be the truth. Because the truth is not so complex at its core; otherwise, how would anyone ever be happy with themselves? It's not supposed to be so hard, and Augusten Burroughs actually understands that. I've read at least a dozen psychological tomes concerning happiness written by PhD- and doctorate-credentialed authors, and they were very interesting books. But when it comes to the bare-bones of being honest with yourself about your personal happiness, you aren't going to read a better 230 pages than this.UpdateI see the reviews are still just as mixed as when I wrote my original review. I don't know what these critics were looking for when they picked up the book, but the author never claims to be a self-help guru. If you want that sort of thing, there are thousands of other books for you.Listing the chapters of this book would be lengthy (and not really necessary, since Burroughs does slide from one subject to another every couple of pages whether the chapter title changes or not. For me the book read fluidly from start to finish, like a long (and very good) conversation. The effortless segue-ways from one heavy subject to another are a credit to the author, and even more interestingly, I think it proves the interconnected nature of all the subjects in the book.Burroughs' themes in the book center around honesty with the self, not giving in to playing a victim in life, and handling the hardest obstacles with grace by accepting the world for what is is, not what you think it should be. Burroughs may not believe in God (though he does not expressly say so either way), but throughout the book, his awe at life is obvious---with both the terrible and the good, the book seems to say, you must accept everything as it is, and keep breathing even when you'd rather not--literally, and to be grateful when you could be bitter, such as at the serious illness of a loved one. The final chapter, "This is Why," is a simple and elegant closing on the nature of human life. Get the book!On expanding your opportunities to meet a mate:"Maybe you aren't even aware of how small a geographic circle you live in. But until you've stretched your borders just a little, you can't say you've so much as lifted a finger when it comes to finding love . . . it's unrealistic and passive to expect to meet somebody who shares not only your interests and sensibilities, but also your daily routine."Concerning weight loss:"If willpower is required to achieve [a] goal, that's how you know you don't want it enough at a deep, organic level . . . You only need willpower to get what you don't want or what you want to want. . . The reason it's impossible for so many people to ever get thin is because what they truly seek is something that can't be microwaved or ladled into a bowl."

Very sensible book, I love common sense approach to feelings, not the psychological jargon (paid therapy driven). The feelings approach is very unusual in the western world. This guy understands the feelings like nobody else (maybe only the licensed psychiatrist Dr Lastname is his match). He really did break down any major feelings (shame, guilt, despair, grief unhappiness, lack of self-confidence, low self-esteem etc) into the tiniest possible pieces, detached them from anything else, stripped from the images they pretend to be and shows them as they are. And then tells you what to do with them, one at a time so they don’t have such a negative impact on you anymore.

Easy to read, and if you like his other work, you'll love this. He has had an odd life, which makes adult life hard to navigate, so if you can relate to any of his work, you'll really enjoy this. I bought my friend a copy too :)

This book says it like it is and I love that, it also makes total sense (to me that is). This will stay on my bookshelf to be opened again and again for practical no nonsense advice from a man that is truly gifted with words and is a very old soul...please write lots more Augusten!!!!!!!

not for the faint-hearted, but absolutely brilliant.I've read most of the author's memoir and autobiographical stuff, and that gave what he says here a lot of credibility to me.

Not great... and I have every book he's written!