Excess Baggage: Getting Out of Your Own Way

by Judith Sills

Overview

Maybe you always have to finish what you start—from a book to a dismal marriage. Or your mother is always there when you need her—but sometimes you wish she had somewhere else to go. Each of us has a little too much of our own good thing—it's excess baggage that's holding us back.

 

As Judith Sills says in this exceptionally wise and refereshingly pragmatic book, everyone has baggage. It's the aspect of your personality that keeps getting in your way.

Excess Baggage shines a light on our blind spots, defining five common obstacles to happiness that we create:

 • We need to be right
 • We feel superior
 • We dread rejection
 • We create drama
 • We cherish our anger

Life doesn't have to be so hard. Using easy-to-follow but powerful psychological excercises, Dr. Sills helps you discover just what it is about yourself that keeps you from getting what you want. Then you can set your excess baggage down foerever—and get out of your own way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780142004197
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/18/2003
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	688,825
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Judith Sills, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist who for the last decade has appeared regularly on such national television shows as Oprah, Sally Jessy Raphaël, and NBC News. She is a contributing editor to Family Circle, the largest-circulation women’s magazine in America, and also writes for O, The Oprah Magazine.

Table of Contents

Excess Baggage Preface
Chapter One - Free Yourself from Yourself
Chapter Two - The Price You Pay for Being Who You Are
Chart: Excess Baggage at a Glance
Chapter Three - You Need to Be Right
Chapter Four - Ain't I Awful? Ain't I Swell?
Chapter Five - You Dread Rejection
Chapter Six - You Create Drama
Chapter Seven - You Cherish Rage
Chapter Eight - Enough
Postscript - The Anxiety of Change
Author's Note
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Many people's strong points are vitiated by their innate weaknesses, according to psychologist Sills ( How to Stop Looking for Someone Perfect and Find Someone to Love ), and these weaknesses--or ``excess baggage''--are our blind spots. They are difficult for us to recognize; hence they make it harder for us to attain our goals and for others to like us. Sills offers deliberately exaggerated profiles of five main psychological types, each of which she sees as fueled by a different ``ruling passion'': control, self-esteem, security, attachment and justice. The person whose ruling passion is security may be very generous, but also dependent and manipulative, for example, and a person motivated by the need to control may be efficient, but could also be a workaholic. Accompanying each profile are exercises to help readers to jettison excess baggage. While Sills's analysis is simplistic, her prose is crisp and entertaining and her advice is practical. 50,000 first printing; author tour. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

According to Sills, a psychologist and author of A Fine Romance ( LJ 9/15/87) and How To Stop Looking for Someone Perfect and Find Someone To Love (Ballantine, 1985), many people overdevelop their strongest traits. Eventually, these traits get in a person's way and make relationships difficult. The author describes five personality types that often accompany one's excess emotional baggage and suggests tips and activities to provide more balance. Since most people can recognize a little of themselves and a lot of others in the personality profiles, this clear, easy - to - follow analysis will be popular with patrons looking for self-help books. For popular psychology collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/92.-- Marguerite Mroz, Baltimore Cty. P.L.

Library Journal