Customer Reviews
A useful resource - By: Wayne Redhart, 27 Jul 2007 
Carson has written an excellent self-help guide, with a wealth of useful suggestions for taming the negative effects of your 'gremlin' (your internal sense of self-doubt). The book is explainedin a suitably direct manner with a simple, user-friendly tone. There are a number of different exercises that will be sure to keep the gremlin on a leash (subject to regular practise) & stop him from pissing on your bonfire. The chief criticism would be that he goes a little over the top with the whole gremlin metaphor at times. Still, some of the tips are extremely useful, such as 'never expose your gremlin to bright light', 'never get your gremlin wet' & (apparently by far the most important) 'NEVER feed it after midnight'. Wise words indeed.
A fantastic book - By: Paul Foreman, 02 Nov 2006 
This is a fantastic book. If an alien came from another planet & needed a handful of books to find out what it is like as a human being - this would bein his shopping basket! The trouble with that scenario is that the alien would then know more than you do & yet you are a human being!
In "Taming Your Gremlin" Rick Carson exposes & uncovers the most significant reason for human suffering & gives us countless strategies for being one step ahead at all times.
Your Gremlin is the narratorin your head. Simply by noticing your Gremlin you are shining a light on your repetitive & habitual erroneous thoughts. With relaxed detachment & by observing your thinking rather than constantly analysing you no longer need to be imprisoned by your mental chatter. Witnessing the movements of the mind as an independent observer, you realise that you do not have to believe your thoughts - you begin to see how repetitive your thinking can become & how absurd it can be.
Your Gremlin is cunning, it makes things up, fantasizes & draws you into inevitable internal fights - mental torture designed to confuse you into a spiral of depressive thought processes that sap the energy & life from you. When your Gremlin is trapping you it makes you adopt a whinging, poor me attitude, thriving on negativity & leading you into inner turmoil away from the natural you. This can be done so subtly that you start to convince yourself that the `natural you' is what your Gremlin tells you rather than who you really are! In other words your Gremlin is so persuasive that you don't always know when you are being fooled.
Simply noticing your Gremlin (or internal chatter) is a huge step toward taming it. Fighting your Gremlin is pointless - it is far too shrewd - you need to diminish your Gremlin by shining the light on it, by being aware, by taming it.
If you stop to consider what it would be like if all your thoughts came out of your mouth as they enter your mind you can see how those around you might label you insane! And yet, even though we know others would find our constant internal chatterbox absurd we still listen to it & worse still we believe it!
"Taming Your Gremlin" offers you an inner peace & calm that most humans don't know exists. I highly recommend this book to you - it will revolutionise your thinking & transform your life.
Awesome - By: , 23 Apr 2004 Incredible book - very simply written.
I've bought about 6 copies andgiven them to people. I've seen it change lives.
It really makes you think! - By: , 07 Oct 2003 Putting Gremlins into boxes - how weird I thought... then I read it & can picture my Gremlin, find him (yes, mine is a male!) & put himin a box or simply ignore him. A fun way of looking at issues that have probably bugged you for some time (sometimes even without your realising it).
Very Useful - By: , 28 Dec 1998 I'm only about half way through this book, & am not a habitual reader of self-help stuff (my sister recommended this), but I'd have to give this one a serious thumbs-up. I made a funny connection to an old novel by Colin Wilson called "The Mind Parasites," which also posits the existence of a hostile voice within us that kills joy & sows self-doubt.
I think it's interesting that the author distinguishes the Gremlin from Freud's superego & Berne's inner Parent -- as one of the reviewers said above, the notion that the Gremlin is really not us is very interesting & potentially liberating.
