Excess Baggage: Getting Out of Your Own Way

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.

What is it that keeps getting in the way of your success, undermines your relationships, dissolves your peace of mind? It's your excess baggage—the hidden aspects of your personality that makes life harder than it has to be.

On this compelling audio, Dr. Judith Sills profiles the five major blind sports of self-defeating behavior and offers simple, pragmatic exercises designed to eliminate them. The steps she recommends are simple, but their impact can be enormous. Because once you discover how you've been holding yourself back, you'll have the power to free yourself from yourself

Publishers Weekly

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.)

A clinical psychologist in private practice since 1975, Judith Sills earned her Ph.D. at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City. She is the author of the bestselling book Excess Baggage. She is well known for her appearances as a guest expert on romantic relationships, family issues and general psychology on numerous television and radio programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show and Sally Jessy Raphael. She has written articles for national magazines including Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle and O magazine. Sills lives in Philadelphia.

A clinical psychologist in private practice since 1975, Judith Sills earned her Ph.D. at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City. She is the author of the bestselling book Excess Baggage. She is well known for her appearances as a guest expert on romantic relationships, family issues and general psychology on numerous television and radio programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show and Sally Jessy Raphael. She has written articles for national magazines including Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle and O magazine. Sills lives in Philadelphia.