Feb 05

Books: Bounce, by Gill Hasson and Sue Hadfield


Each blue New Year you’ll find that self-help books begin to appear in shop windows. Browsing, the eye will be drawn to pink, blue or purple covers with stark messages: Believe in the Power of Now! Dream Your Way to Success! For many, these ‘inspirational’ titles chime with the post-Christmas resolutions and the yet enthusiastic wills of the believers. Increasingly huge sellers, these books vary in message, theme, credibility and source, and their most successful (and exploitative) authors include Anthony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle, Rhonda Byrne and the ludicrous Tony Quinn.

Now, two personal development teachers with diverse work experience have brought a new offering to the table, with a new lingo in tow. Gill Hasson and Sue Hadfield want you to ‘Bounce’.
The front cover of Bounce elaborates: you must “use the power of resilience to live the life you want.” To assist you in doing so, Bounce is divided into three parts: The Meaning of Bounce, The Rules of Bounce and, inevitably, Bouncing. As you might imagine, that word is repeated relentlessly throughout, and has come, for this critic at least, to mean something entirely less cheerful. The authors, however, explain the concept of Bounce as “having resilience.” In fact, it means nothing else. When something bad happens you will, if resilient, bounce back. This book teaches you how.

Bounce is filled with paragraph summaries of the resilience (sorry, “bounce”) displayed by well-known people: Eric Cantona, Cinderella, Alistair Campbell, the striking Miner’s of 1983, Emmanuel Jal, Kate McCann, Terry Waite, Nelson Mandela, and Michael J. Fox are all examples of people who have bounced (read: exhibited resilience). Such examples are often contorted savagely to make them fit the mould. For example, Eric Cantona bounced after he was banned from football for attacking a fan. He sure did.

Interspersed with the celebrity examples from the Sky News Popular Culture Archive are case studies that may or may not be fictional, and written exercises that will help you to figure out whether you’ve got bounce or not, and how to up your ‘bounceage’ (the critic’s term, sadly not found in the book itself). The exercises are mostly of the Woman’s Weekly variety, but that’s not to say you won’t enthuse while doing them and indeed learn a thing or two about your behaviour. Part Two teaches you specifically how to live more bouncily (this isn’t fun, honestly). Positive visualisation is at the core of all this, and there is also a handy section on weight loss. Again, everything is explained through a myriad of celebrity examples, a scattering of inspirational quotes, and the written homework.

Part Three then illustrates how Bounce can be applied in the real world. Bounce out of stress and fear! Bounce out of rejection! And so on. Ironically, the opening case study of this section gives the example of Bernard, a teacher who’s had trouble settling into a new school. Bernard bounces out of teaching altogether and heads (b***ces) off to volunteer in Africa. Would he have displayed more Bounce by dealing with his problems at work? But this writer cannot preach: he only bounces after a quantity of alcohol has been imbibed.

This book will no doubt help some number of the people who read it. It is also to be noted that readers are encouraged to join or set up support groups, and this is a noble thing. But it has to be pointed out that Bounce is riddled with problems, and constantly borders on the preposterous. The authors seem to believe that the use of statistics cements any argument, but they don’t realise that such statistics must be grounded in reality. Their assertions that “40% of the things that we worry about never happen,” and “12% of our worries are about health,” are mere speculation and, in essay form, wouldn’t go unpenalised by even the most laid-back, check-shirt wearing First Year Arts tutor. In claiming that, “Whying is dying,” Hasson and Hadfield infer that to ask why a certain ambition, plan or relationship failed is to obsess and, therefore, pointless. But surely we learn by investigating our mistakes, by understanding why things failed?

Similarly, this statement—“It is not misfortune that causes suffering but our reaction to it”—is complete tripe. Would you tell that to a victim of a violent crime? If they react positively does that erase the terrible pain they have gone through?

Some of the theories invoked in Bounce, such as those on the verbalisation of anxieties and hopes, are of course very useful. Mickey Harte, the great Tyrone football coach, gets his players to write down their strengths and weaknesses, not because they don’t already know them, but because to verbalise is to improve awareness of issues and to confront them. So as much as we wish we could practise them without interference from any book or guru, Bounce does offer some valid ideas. If you are vulnerable or in need of positive direction, you may well learn a thing or two here. You may well bounce.

But the crux is this: Bounce is not a new strategy. It is not as well-written or as persuasive (dominant might be a better word) as its competitors in the self-help market. And though old theories may be re-hashed and re-packaged with a jolly or self-important new lingo, the same thing is at each core: common sense and goodwill is always the miracle cure. But it’s okay. Hasson and Hadfield are super-positive authors and they will bounce too, regardless of the bad reviews cynics might barb them with.

Published: New Prentice Hall, 174pp.

Written by :
Danny Denton
 

Add comment

Comments are monitored by OMG Media, we endeavour to keep our sites clean but if you have any complaints please contact us and we'll commit to recitfying the issue as soon as possible.


Security code
Refresh

Culture Features

Culture Reviews

~~ OMG Media Network ~~

(C) 2009 Irish OMG Media Ltd - www.OMGMedia.ie

OMG Network Sites

AudioNetworks.ie Fashion News by OMG

Fashion Guru by OMG FashionIndustry.ie by OMG

Music Industry by OMG Music TV by OMG

Become a Fan

Join Our Conversation