4.5 stars
A really good book about how to become your own person, the better version of you, not by an 'expert' or teacher but someone who's been there and who's done the work herself. I'd thought this book wouldn't be relatable because the author is well-known and does not have an 'average' life. But surprisingly, her talks and words are down to earth, actionable, and advice everyone can apply and work from. However, it will require that the person is ready to work with their shadow self, to face their deepest motivations and thoughts, to be willing to come out of the relative safety and comfort of being 'sheeple' and to decide to step out of victim mentality willingly...otherwise none of this advice will ever work, whether they read it here or elsewhere. Only go into this book if you are really willing to do the dirty and hard work of exposing everything in you to your own eyes and own up to it

A good book that challenges you to look at things differently than how you might normally. As a reader of many personal development books, I can’t say I read a lot of new information, but the tricks, tips, and action points offer many lessons on empowering yourself. Good writing style, even if a bit matter-of fact. She shares her own stories along the way, which I enjoyed. A good book to delve into and work on mindset.

An enjoyable addition to the self-help shelf. I enjoy this type of book and have read too many to count, and this one held its own.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

Xenia Tchoumi has always been a naturally “empowered” individual. From a young age, she always believed that limits to excellence are to be broken no matter where you come from, what you look like, your culture or religion, the colour of your skin, or your gender. Over the years, Xenia for sure has encountered both quite a lot of resistance to this way of seeing things - as well as setbacks and failures. So she has developed her own ways of dealing with life’s challenges - build confidence, shake off other’s people’s opinions and societal expectations and use (inevitable) pain to your own advantage.

In this accessible, thoughtful and powerful self-help guide, Tchoumi shares this life-vision and #powertricks with the readers and opens our minds to the possibilities if we would only try to make the best out of any situation we may find ourselves in. Empowerment means getting to know your core self at a deeper level. To shake off other people’s influences on you - the media, your cultured or family’s ideas and expectations. Not because they are necessarily bad, but because it is the very best way to choose for yourself. Be yourself. Feel comfortable in your own skin. It reminded me that individuality and non-conformity should be celebrated rather than shirked.

The book reminds you that life isn’t perfect, it might give you lemons - some of which will be good others will be spoiled - it’s what you decide to do with what you’ve been given that truly matters. And to this, there are practical techniques and #powertricks that Tchoumi has developed which I feel will be useful now and in 5 years time. This is the ultimate guide to self-empowerment from motivational speaker and digital entrepreneur Xenia Tchoumi, offering tips and techniques for staying fiercely independent in a world of social conditioning, making the internet work for you (instead of against you) and living your best, most powerful life. Highly recommended.

🌿BOOK REVIEW🌿

Empower Yourself by Xenia Tchoumi

🌼🌼🌼/5

Xenia Tchoumi is the child of recent immigrants and shares her stories of battling against ingrained prejudice in society. She is a fashion influencer, motivational speaker and a digital entrepreneur and so uses specific examples from these areas.

She takes a very straight forward and easy to understand approach to empowerment and how to cultivate it. I think this is a great introductory text in this area so if this is something you are striving towards I highly recommend. As I have been working on my self esteem and self empowerment a lot, I had covered a lot of these concepts before. A lot of habits that I have implemented are included in this book and so I do highly recommend!

I think with all self-help books there were parts that I enjoyed more and others that didn’t resonate the same. Overall, I think it is a really positive book and perfect if you want to start your empowerment journey!

Thank you to Watkins Publishing for providing me with an ARC via NetGalley.

Some parts of this really resonated with me. I enjoyed parts of the book, but found I’d skip through other bits. Overall, quite a positive outlook, but some didn’t feel like it added anything to the book.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, and as much as I'm usually happy with the books I request on NetGalley, this one was a miss for me.

I read a lot of nonfiction, especially personal development books, which I greatly enjoy reading. My ratings usually follow the Goodreads scale, with 1 = did not like it, 2 = it was okay, 3 = liked it, 4 = really liked it and 5 = amazing. Sadly, Empower Yourself by Xenia Tchoumi didn't live up to its hype, as I rated it a 2/5.

So, why such a low rating ?

## What I liked

The book was well organized, with a page of important things to take away from the chapter at the end of each and every one of them. The #Powertrick inserts in the middle of the chapters, with practical tips on how to put in action the advice given in this part of the book, were interesting and well thought out.

On the content itself, most of it was very sound advice, like using daily journaling as a way to know yourself better and figure out your goals and ambitions, or making sure you don't skip your self-care in favor of your work because that's never going to end well... nothing revolutionary, but nothing inherently bad either.

The use of scientific evidence to support these tips was an excellent addition, at it served a lot to support the author's claims that something would be beneficial for you - that's something I'd like to see more in self-help and personal development books, as lately it seems to me that very few of them bother sourcing their advice or supporting their theories with psychological studies or sound research, even when including those references might help convince more strongly their readers of the legitimacy of their opinions.

## What I didn't like

I didn't know anything about the author when I picked up this book, and from the very first chapters, this seemed to come from an extremely privileged place - completely detached from my reality and difficult to reconcile with my personal experiences. I had a hard time finding any flaws to her behavior and character - it seemed, from her descriptions, that she did everything almost perfectly, from eating good food cooked at home to doing physical activity every day, journaling, communicating with loved ones, to being productive while still having time for her personal life... The problem with perfection, however, is that it puts distance between you and your readers, who see your behavior as an unattainable goal - if the people who do it are this immaculate, and I'm not, how and I ever going to succeed ?

Likewise, when I'm reminded more than once that the author "turned down an offer to work full time at a leading investment bank", and that when she was looking for an internship, she was so sure she'd get into a top company that she felt offended and outraged when her therapist told her there was a lot of competition and it wasn't a done deal... I'm having a hard time relating to these experiences.

This specific situation, with the therapist trying to make sure she wasn't setting herself up for a terrible disappointment, served as a way to advance the idea that confidence is the only thing that makes the difference between you and other people - no mater your and their diplomas, experience, skills... of you have the confidence, you'll get that job/internship/work offer! Except... for most of us, that's not how life works. And treating the therapist as if she was actively trying to undermine her self-belief instead of trying to help her and make sure no matter what happened, she'd be okay... isn't a good look at all. (Neither is qualifying people who weren't productive during a worldwide pandemic as "sad and lazy".)

## Overall conclusion

On the positive/negative balance, the scale tips a bit too strongly on the negative side for me. This is not to say that this is a terrible book - to reuse the Goodreads scale qualification, it was *okay*. Sadly, with the amount of self-help and personal improvement books published every year, just *okay* isn't good enough for me anymore.

This book was received as an ARC from Watkins Publishing in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

This book could not have been read at a better time for me. Personally, I am going through this journey myself and the tips, life stories and personal experiences Xenia Tchoumi shared were really helpful, heartfelt, and inspiring that it was clarity of the fact that I have to keep going and this will be the best for me. After I finished reading this book, I had a huge sense of relief and gratification that looking on the bright side and being more optimistic is the way to go to get through any tough times, especially now. I appreciate and value Xenia sharing her knowledge and experience through this book and I know she will have quite the following in our library community.

We will consider adding this title to our Self Help collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.