The Best Year Of Your Life Kit: Get Early Copies From US Run [Misc. Supplies]

I went through quite a few books and courses that address self-empowement, and below is my opinion on why you should and shouldn't choose this particular kit:

Positive:

* Some of us are never shown how to love ourselves, instead accustomed to hate and criticism, knowing no better. Wanting to love yourself is the first step, the second is knowing how to actually do it. This kit provides useful and above all practical things you can DO to love yourself, enabling you to turn intention into action.

* There is a good range of advice that, when followed, will also affect productivity, interpersonal relationships, home situation, physical condition, etc. All of this comes from and contributes to your love for yourself.

* Cards are nice, big and durable, and all instructions are written on the card, no need to refer to the booklet. So you can put the weekly card anywhere you like for easy reminder.

* Cards introduce the random element, which can enable whatever processes you believe in select the most suitable card for you for the week.

* The game is easy to get into, instructions are brief and straight-forward.

* The journal only gives you few lines of text for each week/card combo, which is nice because I didn't feel like writing lengthy essays about my discoveries.

* The guided visualisations CD is easy to use, contains instructions and 4 visualisations tracks. One can be used every morning, 1 every evening and other two whenever. Author recommends at least 1 visualisation per week - not a burdening request. And for those who want to really go for it, 3 or 4 per day will work just fine also. You can also not use the CD at all, and just use the cards, as they work separately. But I think it's a nice effective combo.

* Visualisations contain nice music and are open in terms of what insights you get in them, so they can produce different results and understandings every time.

* The whole kit comes in a nice box - you won't have bits of it all over the place.

Neutral:

* Scoring system, which I suppose is optional, helps you keep track and gives an extra motivation. Sometimes keeping track of how many things I've done each day and deciding whether something that I've done deserves points or not was a bit inconvenient for me.

* The box has a big title on it. It's somewhat inconvenient for not fully liberated males such as myself, who do these things but don't necessarily want everyone to know that, so I tend to put it out of sight every time because of that.

Negative:

* After reading the instructions for the game, you will be reminded several times about the possibility of buying Debbie Ford's book "Best Year of Your Life". I was fine with that even though I know some people would be put off. But on most cards there's something like "Want more? Read my book The Best Year of Your Life, and find out how to ..." and this is very irritating. We're trusting Debbie's game to learn to love ourselves and she's utilizing it for some of the heaviest sales tactics I've seen in this genre.

My wish to buy anything from Debbie decreased dramatically as a result of this. So far I've read Dark Side of The Light Chasers, which was really good, and started The Secret of The Shadow, which put me off due to excess of ungrounded assumptions being used to build arguments, but I will read it sometime as I think it also has a lot of good in it.

* Debbie's voice in visualisations is very superficial and just a tad too loud (in relationship with the music) in my opinion. It sounds like Debbie is deliberately trying to create a range of tonal intonation, which turns excessive and sounds out of place at most times, making her sound somewhat ungenuine. But the content of visualisations is good and it's possible to get over thinking about her voice and enjoy the experience. After all, the programme is about accepting imperfections, not being perfect. This I can accept, but not the hard sales bit.

If amazon staff member shows up at the door offering me full refund (including shipping) for return of this item, would I give it back?

No, I'd keep it.

From Dark Side of The Light Chasers I know that Debbie has been seriously involved with Landmark Education. I've done around 1000 hours of coures at Landmark and benefited greatly, also noticing a few things I didn't like about the organisation. I note that Debbie in strongly influenced by both the strengths and what I percieve to be the shortcomings of Landmark Education. I see her shortcomings as:

* using unnecessary self-empowerment jargon (she doesn't seem to do it in this kit though, the kit is very practically written).

* judging her own worth by how many people she can "transform", making exceeding how many people she "transormed" in the last period her success criteria for the next period (she majorly lacks self-acceptance and resorts to "transforming" ever increasing numbers of people to externally gain a sense of worth, in my opinion) - hence rapid production of several different books.

* thinking that people are not wise enough to decide what's good for themselves - hence the sales pressure.

* thinking that people won't listen to her or are stupid - hence many different books and attempts to sound differently from her normal speaking voice on audio recordings.

The best and unique thing about Debbie Ford's work is seeing positive sides of negative aspects of our personalities, which is completely life-chaning and brings great self-acceptance and peace. It feels like "I've never thought about it from this angle" and completely changes the way you look at your "shortcomings". The result is a positive sense of wholeness instead of trying to eliminate aspects of ourselves which we've previously seen as negative. Negative aspects, as if through alchemy, by using Debbie's work, are revealed to have great virtues, when expressed in balance, without excess.

Ford has so many good things to say. I love her for making the shadow a safe place for so many of us that have felt the need to shut parts of oursleves off.

That being said, I feel her message is tainted by her over-marketing and over-pricing of her products (that can only be found on her website). One each of these cards there is a marketing pitch for one of her other products. I wish people in the healing field can come to the understanding that what they do calls for a higher level of integrity.

There is also a cultish energy around her staff and the people that work for her.

This kind of over-marketing taints their message.

I have purchased the Best Year of your Life Book and the kit. Both are full of great guidance to dig deeper than we tend to do to figure out what really is holding us back. Debbie Fords presents material that lets us examine ourselves and find our intent for our lives. The cards in the kit are great! The scoring system didn't mean much for me, but I know they are great for others. The thing I didn't like about the CD was her. Her voice is not inducive to meditation. It is deep and unnatural. I felt like she was reading the introduction as well as reading it to grade schoolers. It was slow, each word over pronounced and the highs and lows of her voice seemed unnatural. I didn't feel the heart felt excitment in her voice that I imagined would be there from reading her books. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not telling anyone not to buy this kit. It has valuable info in it. But I was not impressed with her rendition of a soothing and meditative voice.