THE 2020 NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS THAT WILL ACTUALLY IMPROVE YOUR LIFE, ACCORDING TO EXPERTS

Podcast hosts Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg, who have lived by the advice of more than 25 self-help tomes for their show By the Book, a podcast that examines the benefits and downsides of popular lifestyle guides, both encouraged focusing on compassion in 2020. "My one recommendation for improving one's well-being in the new year is to commit daily acts of kindness. Start each day asking yourself, 'What can I do to make someone else's life better?' Then find ways throughout the day to answer that question with actions," Meinzer told Newsweek.

Complementing her partner's outward focus, Greenberg reiterated the importance of self-care: "This year, I super recommend trying a resolution that gets you excited or feels like an act of kindness and care you're giving to yourself. For example: I've had a really rough 2019, so my 2020 resolution is to give myself a few minutes each day to crochet or play piano, two things I love to do but sacrifice pretty easily when I'm stressed or depressed."

NON-FICTION BOOK REVIEW - HOW TO BE FINE

Greenberg and Meinzer craft a welcoming tone and strike a perfect balance between sharing their traumas and folding in amusing anecdotes. This will delight fans of self-help books and encourage even the hardest cynics to reconsider the genre.

Say no to the new you: Why opting out of resolutions is the real game changer

“It’s like Valentine’s Day,” says Jolenta Greenberg of the By The Book podcast, on which she and co-host Kristen Meinzer have road-tested more than 50 self-help books. Except instead of candy and greeting cards, what the resolutions crowd is selling you are your own inadequacies — and a handy escape from them.

“First, the message is ‘The way you take care of yourself is flawed,’” says Greenberg. “And then we want to sell you something to make it better. And when that doesn’t work, you feel like a failure, so try this next thing to fix it. It’s built on constant inadequacy. And it’s interesting how eager we all are to eat it up.”

Book nerds, grab your ear buds: Here are 8 of the best literary podcasts

Become your boldest self, create a zero-waste home — wait, what? The “By the Book” podcasts pokes fun at self-help books. Each week, comedian Jolenta Greenberg and her friend Kristen Meinzer abide by the rules of a different self-help book, then dish on whether it worked.

9 Literary Accessories Every Bookworm Needs 

Self-help skeptics, listen up! The intrepid hosts of podcast By the Book, comedian Jolenta Greenberg and her cynical friend Kristen Meinzer, commit to living strictly by the rules of a different self-help book every two weeks—with varying results—so you don’t have to.

21 Podcasts Worth Listening To Over And Over Again

This podcast is great for anyone who has ever wanted to read a self-help book, but never has the time. It lifts my mood every time an episode comes out.

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Jolenta Greenberg and Kristen Meinzer pledge to live their lives according to the rules of a new self-help book for two weeks. The results are often hilarious — especially when they enlist their beleaguered partners to join in — and occasionally life-changing. Come for the hit-and-miss advice of books like The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up or Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Stay for the banter between the hosts.

How to Find the Right Journaling Style to Improve Your Life

“My work is unstructured, so the bullet journal provides a focus for my attention,” says Jolenta Greenberg, a comedian in New York City and cohost of the podcast By the Book, who uses her bullet journal to record events, affirmations, and personal thoughts.

Want A New You For The New Year? These Books Might Actually Help

It's the second week of 2018, and if you are still resolved to improve your life in this new year, Jolenta Greenberg and Kristen Meinzer may be able to help. They host a podcast called By The Book, and for each episode, they choose one self-help book and live by its rules for a couple of weeks. So they're well-equipped to tell us which of these books has actually improved their lives — and which ones to avoid.

9 Favorite New Podcasts Of 2017 (That Aren't 'S-Town')

Walk into the self-help section of any bookstore and you'll be overwhelmed with the selection. There are countless books dedicated to fixing our broken lives. Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg decided to see if any of them actually worked, so the pair read books like French Women Don't Get Fat and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and lived by the books' tenets for two weeks at a time. Naturally, hilarity ensues in this series from Panoply, but the show is also a commentary on the self-help industrial complex.

Resolutions to the max: What to know before trusting a self-help book

Even outside of making New Year's resolutions, Angelenos are known for striving to better themselves, whether it's through exercise or mindfulness or diet. It's just part of the LA lifestyle. But what if, taken to the extreme, trying to improve yourself through some self-anointed guru pushes you to the brink? Jolenta Greenberg and Kristen Meinzer cohost the podcast "By the Book," where they follow one self-help book to a T for two weeks.

'By The Book' Podcast Is Taking On The World Of Self-Help Books, One Experiment At A Time

If you’ve ever wandered through the self-help section of your local bookstore, it probably didn’t take you long to realize that if you’ve got a problem, there’s a book for it. Several books, in fact, all claiming to be the latest and the greatest, the most results-yielding and the quickest success, Oprah-rated and Gwyneth Paltrow-endorsed, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. If you found yourself wishing there were a simple way to narrow down your self-help book prospects(dare I say, maybe even someone to test-drive a title or two for you?) then there's a new podcast you've got to check out-It's called By the Book...

7 Motivational Podcasts To Listen To & Learn From In January 2020

Self-help with a hilarious twist, By The Book sees hosts Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg live by the rules of countless self-help books. Which tips actually work? And which advice should you leave behind in 2019? Listen each week to find out.

How self-help is getting a millennial makeover (and how to use it to live your best life)

“I think we only focus on the word ‘help’ in self-help. If we paid attention to the word ‘self’, we’d realise this genre is targeting people who want to be self-reliant. And isn’t self reliance a good thing?” says Meinzer.

Greenberg, Meinzer’s co-host, agrees, “Admitting you need ‘help’ means admitting a flaw or a weakness. Saying you want to ‘improve’ is safer and less vulnerable, you just want to get even better than you already are. It makes me sad that our society frowns so much upon admitting you need help.”

These 2 Podcasters Are Changing Their Lives, One Self-Help Book at a Time

Every two weeks, Jolenta and Kristen live their lives by the teachings of a specific self-help book and discuss their findings on a podcast episode dedicated to that book. Their findings are totally relatable, surprising, and hysterical. We chatted with the podcasting pair to get the scoop on how it all started and why they’re happy to be, as Jolenta says, “shedding light on what most people consider to be a dirty little secret.”

HERE’S WHAT IT’S ACTUALLY LIKE TO LIVE BY THE RULES OF “THE SECRET”

If you’ve ever perused the self-help section of your local bookstore you know that the only thing harder than finding the perfect book to address your particular needs is actually managing to follow all of its advice to the letter if you do. But that’s exactly what comedian Jolenta Greenberg and producer Kristen Meinzer have challenged one another to do for their new podcast By the Book. The two are living by the rules of a different personal development guide for two weeks at a time, candidly sharing the results on air for each episode...