The author is a popular inspirational and motivational speaker. This is a funny no-hype self help guide. Why Your Life Sucks is an in-your-face title, but as Alan Cohen says in the introduction, It is honest and practical, with teeth . The book starts with his own wake-up call, when he was a teaching assistant to a popular professor who locked himself in a garage, turned on the car engine, and asphyxiated himself. Alan was the guy who had to tell the professor’s classes why he wasn’t going to show up any more. He realized that you can look great on the outside, but still be dying on the inside. The core of this book is the ten major things people do that undermine their creativity, purpose, and power, and how they can reverse them. You may already know many of these truths: for example, the subheads in chapter one, called You Give Your Power Away, are: You Put People on a Pedestal; You Imitate Instead of Create; You Don’t Listen to Your Intuition; You Let Others Choose for You; and You Think Your Destiny Depends on Something Outside You. But you could read a hundred self-help books and never see these truths so well nailed in two to three page sections, with humor, great examples, basic kidness, but also a bracing directness. This is not theoretical psychology. It’s first aid for the woman who just got fired, the guy who just got dumped by his girlfriend, the thirty something who’s already blown off two careers, the forty-something who got off the booze and still feels miserable. Alan Cohen shows how we can stop sabotaging ourselves, regain our power, and start enjoying the life we were meant to live.