I read this book when I was struggling with my job, but didn't know for sure what to do next. This was the first book I read that really helped me to break out of my limited way of thinking about my career. The first half of the book encourages you to suspend reality for a while, just like watching a great movie! You can dream as big as you like and get real excited about the possibilities of a life beyond the one you are in. Then the second half brings you gently back down to reality, but provides you with real tools for capturing the essence of your dream and finding a way to start moving toward it. For me, I've always dreamed of "making a difference" in the world. But I spent my time helping companies market their websites. This book helped me to see that if I could find some companies that are "making a difference" and help them with my interactive marketing skills, then I too would be "making a difference"!

This book is a must read for everyone. The first part of the book takes you through deciding what your dreams are and what you want to accomplish in life and why. And the second part, my favorite, takes you step-by-step to accomplishing your goals. All those time management and organizational books out there cannot compare with her system. She takes you dreams and turns them into reality one action at a time.

I truly love this little book. I was originally introduced to it years ago when I was not sure I wanted to stay in mental health, and a mentor suggested I check it out. I found the exercises a blast and very original. My favorite: the one in which Sher suggests you play a spy in your own house or apartment, taking notes on what "the occupant" wears, how they decorate, etc.,in order to find out more about them. These tasks were just as good at increasing my own self awareness as finding career direction. They also reminded me of things I loved or wanted that I hadn't had the chance to do or missed doing....such as living in the town I wanted, getting a particular degree, community theatre, and musical performance.

Interestingly, I remained in mental health, but with a higher degree, working in a different area, and with changes in other things in my life that were important to me. The book was a big factor, though not the only one, in that choice. I'm still glad I made it.

One very practical suggestion in the book is, if you can't have all of what you want right away, get as much of what you want as you can. If you can't afford a trip to Paris yet, put a picture of the Eiffel tower up in the living room and play Edith Piaf music and keep saving. In my case, I wanted to move to a town 100 miles away; so I started spending weekends there, or even taking day trips to shop there or attend seminars at the university.

Sher includes a fairly elaborate time management system. It consists of flow charts,to-do lists, a bulletin board, and pictures of sort of a cheerleading family she encourages you to formulate from characters you admire and believe would understand and be supportive of you (this can be anyone, dead or alive...Einstein & Paul McCartney adorned my board! Hokey, I know, but I found it helpful).

And this is my one complaint. Barbara never upgraded. I kept on hoping to see an edition which incorporated Outlook or Palm Pilot or something like that, or even its own software, but that hasn't happened. She does have a webpage, but the only thing of interest there is a message board in which members share their experiences and she announces appearances. Since I now organize online, it's hard when I want a "review" of some of these exercises...or even when I want to go back to my original plans....to get excited about tacking up paper on a bulletin board.

Nevertheless, I do go back and do the odd exercise now & again, not because I'm dissatisfied with my life, but because there are other plans that have popped up, such as new hobbies and relationships. I also have had to purchase a new copy once in a while because I'm frequently giving mine away to younger relatives or clients.

I would recommend the book...not to stake your life on, but as an amusing & user friendly means of self-discovery, and a way to either confirm your life choices, or to help you get the gumption to put on the brakes if you need to.

Ms. Sher has one of the most accessible writing styles I have found in a book of this type. Her ideas are easy to grasp and practical to implement, and fun! I recommend this book to all my friends who are expriencing general dissatisfaction with their life but who are not sure what direction to take next. The book has excellent goal setting exercises. It can be used again and again to plan and actualize various aspects of your life's dreams. One note of caution: bear in mind one of the other reviewer's comments about accepting everything in this book as gospel truth, especially the case studies and anecdotal results. Then read "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi for some ideas with actual scientific backing. (No that's not a typo!) Then take out "Wishcraft" and get to work. The strength of this book is the clear and imaginative presentation of concrete techniques!

That's a second book by Sher that I've read, which I did because I really liked another one. But, this time, I've been reading really carefully and critically. In other words, what I do is not just saunter along soaking in the feel-good factor, but re-reading a lot and asking myself very specific questions everywhere I can. Well, and so the first and most important question I have is how do you know if it's all true, and if it is, to what degree? I mean the lady's own career went magically from an unemployed anthropologist (divorced, with 4 kids, in NYC - ever tried to live in NYC unemployed with 4 kids? OK, if not, don't try, before checking out the rents in the classified section of the NYT) to some kind of professional councellor with the city social services, to (in a year!) a self-employed advisor to the public (not in issues related to anthropology). I think there's something missing here, or it's not the whole story, or it simply isn't true, or the lady is feeding snake oil to the NYC suckers for a living, which is a good job, of course, but where's a proof of competence? One begins to understand why some professionals must be licensed in order to practise, otherwise how would you know your doctor is not a recent BA in political science disaffected by his original vocational choice.

As the previous Sher book that I read, this one is well written, goes really easy and contains a lot of good insight as far as analyzing personal experiences of the author. That part, imo, is 100% bona fide. But then we get to those energetic, very categorical pronunciamentoes, incantations, and quasi-religious "you can do it" pep talk, and that's where it gets more questionable. The author posits a lot, but where is supporting evidence? Personal history cases, how do I know it's not all made up? Are those real people? Were they interviewed again, 20 years later, to see where they are now, and are they successful, and if so, how much of their success is due to Sher's techniques and how much to something else? I mean, it all seems blatantly deficient in the scientific method department. The fact that the book is published is no proof of concepts offered therein. At the same time, Sher proposes a number of rather radical ideas here, so be careful if you decide to implement them headlong. For example: she completely - no make it COMPLETELY - ignores the factor of time. She goes, you try this, if it's no good, you try something else, and again and again, at least you're accumulating life experience. My man, that's very true about experience, but consider this: you try something at 20, and next time you'll be 30, another try, boom, you're 40. I don't say don't do anything, I say the author's oblivious to that side, so don't be too quick to jump in if you got a mortgage... that usually happens after you reach 30. Another thing, she puts a lot of weight on exploring your, for lack of better word, "inner depths" in order to find general direction. But what about the fact that you simply don't know a lot? The problem is, an individual's progression in life is much more complex and his exposure to different things is much more important that mining the dormant childhood fantasies. Which intersects with the time factor I've mentioned above. So, from that standpoint, the book is simplistic, it ignores important and rather obvious things.

OK, to summarize it all: it's a useful book (the analytical component is flawless) to read if you're very deliberate in interpreting it and super careful in acting out the advice. Otherwise, be careful. It's not really any kind of scientific research, and the author is unlikely to be accountable in any way for the results. The author is a lady who switched jobs herself and it's completely unclear from this book what credentials she can claim to the line of work she's supposedly in at the moment, other than the low quality of social services in NYC that enabled her to enter a field for which she's not qualified professionally - and even that assuming what the book says about it is true, of which I'm certain not at all. I also came to question the mass of glowing reviews here, after all, didn't the things I've mentioned occur to anyone else?