Review of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, by Cal Newport

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review 0

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

by Cal Newport

Business Plus, New York, 2012. 273 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out #2 Other Nonfiction

It only took a few chapters of this book to convince me it would make a good Christmas present for both of my young adult sons (and by that I mean adults who are young, not high school students). So I will wait to post this review until after Christmas. Having just finished the book myself, I keep thinking about the ideas and about how they apply to my own career.

All my life, I believed the key to a happy work like was Finding Your Passion. I read books like Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow, and thought I’d found directions for a happy life. Now, in my second career — or really my first career, since teaching college math was just a job — I think I’m happy because I found a job that fits my passion. So why do Cal Newport’s words ring so true?

His subtitle explains what he’s talking about: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. He begins by saying that advice I’d believed in so long — “Follow your passion.” — is dangerous advice.

So, I thought I was following my passion, but why did I feel a certain criticism for others I saw not working, looking for the perfect job? I do think a certain amount of affinity is needed, but maybe that’s just another word for skills? As an example, after I got my Master’s degree in Math, I taught college Mathematics for ten years.

I love math. I even enjoy grading papers. Getting up in front of a class and teaching it? Not so much. I’m an introvert, and when I eventually began working in a library, I found the one-on-one interaction infinitely more to my liking. Even running library children’s programs feels much more individualized and personal than getting up in front of a college classroom and having to test people on what they get from my teaching.

However, to be fair, Cal Newport doesn’t just go with a simple “Don’t follow your passion.” He looks deeper at what things do go into a fulfilling career. The research shows that three key components of fulfilling work are:

Autonomy: the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important.

Competence: the feeling that you are good at what you do

Relatedness: the feeling of connection to other people

If “Follow your passion” is dangerous advice, what should you do? He contrasts “the passion mindset” with “the craftsman mindset.” The craftsman mindset is summed up in the Steve Martin quote he used for the title of the book: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” And that means working hard toward mastery.

The contrast is summed up this way:

Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you. This mindset is how most people approach their working lives.

There are two reasons why I dislike the passion mindset (that is, two reasons beyond the fact that, as I argued in Rule #1, it’s based on a false premise). First, when you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperaware of what you don’t like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness. This is especially true for entry-level positions, which, by definition, are not going to be filled with challenging projects and autonomy — these come later. When you enter the working world with the passion mindset, the annoying tasks you’re assigned or the frustrations of corporate bureaucracy can become too much to handle.

Second, and more serious, the deep questions driving the passion mindset — “Who am I?” and “What do I truly love?” — are essentially impossible to confirm. “Is this who I really am?” and “Do I love this?” rarely reduce to clear yes-or-no responses. In other words, the passion mindset is almost guaranteed to keep you perpetually unhappy and confused, which probably explains why Bronson admits, not long into his career-seeker epic What Should I Do With My Life? that “the one feeling everyone in this book has experienced is of missing out on life.”

It fascinated me that Cal Newport brought up Po Bronson’s book. I reviewed What Should I Do With My Life? in 2003, and discussed the ideas at length — what does it mean to find your calling? At the time, it was the review that generated by far the most discussion among those who read it.

Now, I still think there’s something in the idea of finding your calling. But I did like the way Cal Newport made the case that a meaningful mission comes after you’ve built up some career capital. It takes time. It’s not about deciding ahead of time and then pursuing that calling, but more often builds out of achieving mastery and then finding how to make it meaningful.

Cal Newport argues, “you adopt the craftsman mindset first and then the passion follows.”

He presents research and case studies and excellent arguments and then gives us “The Career Capital Theory of Great Work”:

The traits that define great work are rare and valuable.

Supply and demand says that if you want these traits you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return. Think of these rare and valuable skills you can offer as your career capital.

The craftsman mindset, with its relentless focus on becoming “so good they can’t ignore you,” is a strategy well suited for acquiring career capital. This is why it trumps the passion mindset if your goal is to create work you love.

He goes on to talk about how best to do that. He again looks at examples of people with satisfying, meaningful careers. He shows us the importance of deliberate practice in increasing your skills. He makes some interesting claims:

Even with the craftsman mindset, however, becoming “so good they can’t ignore you” is not trivial. To help these efforts I introduced the well-studied concept of deliberate practice, an approach to work where you deliberately stretch your abilities beyond where you’re comfortable and then receive ruthless feedback on your performance. Musicians, athletes, and chess players know all about deliberate practice. Knowledge workers, however, do not. This is great news for knowledge workers: If you can introduce this strategy into your working life you can vault past your peers in your acquisition of career capital.

He goes on to talk about what constitutes a great job. One aspect is control. But there are two Control Traps. The first one is that you need career capital to acquire sustainable control in your job. The second control trap is that by the time you have enough career capital, you’re going to be so valuable to your employer, they will resist your making the change.

He does offer some good tests to navigate those control traps and figure out if you really have the career capital to make a change. The “law of financial viability” is nice and practical: Are people willing to pay for your new pursuit?

And then he talks about building a Mission. Here’s where passion comes in — later in your career. He argues again that you need career capital for this step. And if you want a mission that makes a difference, you should look at the cutting edge of your career field. So when you’re new to the field and lacking in career capital, it’s not yet time to devise a mission.

Once you do get an idea of where you’d like to go, he suggests the strategy of “little bets” — small steps that generate concrete feedback. “Then use this feedback, be it good or bad, to help figure out what to try next. This systematic exploration can help you uncover an exceptional way forward that you might have never otherwise noticed.”

Another strategy he noticed in the people he studied was “the law of remarkability”:

This law says that for a project to transform a mission into a success, it should be remarkable in two ways. First, it must literally compel people to remark about it. Second, it must be launched in a venue conducive to such remarking.

Now, I have some questions about that. What if you aren’t going for “remarkable” success? What if you’re just going for happiness? Looking back at the traits of people happy with their jobs, I’m not sure remarkability is important. But I do like the idea of testing out which way to go — that’s all part of the strategy of building rare and valuable traits, being excellent at what you do.

Now this book, like Po Bronson’s book, didn’t even come close to talking about lifestyle choices like setting aside a career to raise children. But now that my children are grown, I like thinking about and wondering how all the different skills I’ve built in my life can combine into valuable career capital. How can I use deliberate practice and little bets to become a better librarian? And what aspects of my work do I want to deliberately practice? Reviewing? Readers’ advisory? Early literacy? Self-directed learning?

Part of the excellence of this book is that it has things to think about for people at every stage of their careers — for my son who’s just started college, my son looking for a job, for me having found a job I love, and even for someone years into their career thinking about what their mission should be or if they are ready for a change. There’s plenty in this book to get you thinking for a long time to come.

calnewport.com
bizplusbooks.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Attached, by Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Relationships, Starred Review 0

Attached.

The New Science of Adult Attachment
and How It Can Help You Find — And Keep — Love

by Amir Levine, M. D., and Rachel S. F. Heller, M. A.

Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2010. 294 pages.
Starred Review

Perhaps it’s silly for me, recently divorced, to read books on relationships. But I think it’s important to figure out what went wrong and how I could do better next time, if there is a next time. There’s much here that’s applicable to any relationship, not just a romantic one, and it also gives me insight into myself and what makes me anxious. What’s more, I would love to be more secure in relationships, and this book has much to teach me about that, too.

If I ever decide to seriously date again, I am definitely going to buy myself a copy of this book. I think this is one of the best guides I’ve ever read to choosing a partner with whom you can more easily build a harmonious relationship. By the same token, if my ex-husband were ever to want to reconcile, I’d buy myself a copy of this book, in order to avoid some of the mistakes of the past, which I can see clearly written here. Meanwhile, while neither of those conditions is true, I definitely have enjoyed reading the insights this book provides.

The first paragraph of the Author’s Note at the beginning sums up what the authors are doing here:

In this book we have distilled years of adult romantic attachment research into a practical guide for the reader who wishes to find a good relationship or improve his or her existing one. Attachment theory is a vast and complex field of research that pertains to child development and parenting as well as to romantic relationships. In this book we limit ourselves to romantic attachment and romantic relationships.

Some more background from the first chapter:

Adult attachment designates three main “attachment styles,” or manners in which people perceive and respond to intimacy in romantic relationships, which parallel those found in children: Secure, Anxious, and Avoidant. Basically, secure people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving; anxious people crave intimacy, are often preoccupied with their relationships, and tend to worry about their partner’s ability to love them back; avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness.

Armed with our new insights about the implications of attachment styles in everyday life, we started to perceive people’s actions very differently. Behaviors that we used to attribute to someone’s personality traits, or that we had previously labeled as exaggerated, could now be understood with clarity and precision through the lens of attachment. . . .

What we really liked about attachment theory was that it was formulated on the basis of the population at large. Unlike many other psychological frameworks that were created based on couples who come to therapy, this one drew its lessons from everyone — those who have happy relationships and those who don’t, those who never get treatment and those who actively seek it. It allowed us to learn not only what goes “wrong” in relationships but also what goes “right,” and it allowed us to find and highlight a whole group of people who are barely mentioned in most relationship books. What’s more, the theory does not label behaviors as healthy or unhealthy. None of the attachment styles is in itself seen as “pathological.” On the contrary, romantic behaviors that had previously been seen as odd or misguided now seemed understandable, predictable, even expected. You stay with someone although he’s not sure he loves you? Understandable. You say you want to leave and a few minutes later change your mind and decide that you desperately want to stay? Understandable too.

But are such behaviors effective or worthwhile? That’s a different story. People with a secure attachment style know how to communicate their own expectations and respond to their partner’s needs effectively without having to resort to protest behavior. For the rest of us, understanding is only the beginning.

They talk about their quest to translate attachment theory into a practical guide that can help people’s lives.

We discovered that unlike other relationship interventions that focus mostly either on singles or existing couples, adult attachment is an overarching theory of romantic affiliation that allows for the development of useful applications for people in all stages of their romantic life. There are specific applications for people who are dating, those in early stages of relationships, and those who are in long-term ones, for people going through a breakup or those who are grieving the loss of a loved one. The common thread is that adult attachment can be put to powerful use in all of these situations and can help guide people throughout their lives to better relationships. . . .

This book is the product of our translation of attachment research into action. We hope that you, like our many friends, colleagues, and patients, will use it to make better decisions in your personal life. In the following chapters, you’ll learn more about each of the three adult attachment styles and about the ways in which they determine your behavior and attitudes in romantic situations. Past failures will be seen in a new light, and your motives — as well as the motives of others — will become clearer. You’ll learn what your needs are and who you should be with in order to be happy in a relationship. If you are already in a relationship with a partner who has an attachment style that conflicts with your own, you’ll gain insight into why you both think and act as you do and learn strategies to improve your satisfaction level. In either case, you’ll start to experience change — change for the better, of course.

Highly recommended for anyone who is in a romantic relationship or wants to be in one.

attachedthebook.com
tarcherbooks.com
penguin.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Writing 0

The War of Art

Winning the Inner Creative Battle

by Steven Pressfield

Rugged Land, NY, 2002. 165 pages.

Well, I’m reviewing this book partly to figure out what I think about it. There’s a whole lot I agree with, and a whole lot I don’t agree with.

You’ll understand what he’s getting at right at the start of the book:

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? Have you ever bailed out on a call to embark upon a spiritual practice, dedicate yourself to a humanitarian calling, commit your life to the service of others? Have you ever wanted to be a mother, a doctor, an advocate for the weak and helpless; to run for office, crusade for the planet, campaign for world peace, or to preserve the environment? Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

Now I’ve got an automatic resistance to the whole idea that if you want to create something positive, You Will Face Resistance. I don’t like the whole mystique of the Suffering Artist or Tortured Writer. In fact, I loved Jane Yolen’s book on writing Take Joy! because it said what I believe — that if you don’t enjoy the process of writing, you probably shouldn’t do it.

But I can see that sometimes we don’t do the things we want to do if we think we should do them. Actually, I began reading a book that talked about tricking yourself around that tendency. It was called The Art of Procrastination, and I didn’t get around to reading it before it was due back at the library!

So I’m not sure if I want to see Resistance as this big bad force that you will inevitably encounter. But I have to admit that the book does have some excellent tips on getting around whatever Resistance you do encounter. So does that mean I admit I do encounter some?

And in a lot of ways, he’s saying the same thing as Jane Yolen does, just in a different way. Here’s a short chapter I just turned to:

RESISTANCE AND BEING A STAR

Grandiose fantasies are a symptom of Resistance. They’re the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.

But later he says that signing up to be an artist is signing up to be miserable, because war is hell. I don’t think I agree with that!

The second section, though, is about habits of a professional as opposed to habits of an amateur. That whole section was excellent.

I liked the chapter about how we’re all Pros already in one area: Our jobs. In our jobs, we do all these things that define us as professionals:

1. We show up every day.
2. We show up no matter what.
3. We stay on the job all day.
4. We are committed over the long haul.
5. The stakes for us are high and real.
6. We accept remuneration for our labor.
7. We do not overidentify with our jobs.
8. We master the technique of our jobs.
9. We have a sense of humor about our jobs.
10. We receive praise or blame in the real world.

The third and final section gets into more mystical things and is a little less practical. But one excellent concept it contains is the idea of having a territorial orientation as opposed to a hierarchal orientation. You don’t have to be above others to be good at what you do. The value of art lies in its existence, not in where it falls in some ranking.

On the last page of the book, you’ll find these words:

Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do it or don’t do it. . . .

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.

Now, as I’m writing this review, I’m in the middle of reading a book called Too Good to Ignore which says the whole “Find your passion” teaching is dangerous. Reading it is making me look at The War of Art with different eyes.

But I don’t think Steven Pressfield is telling readers to find their passion and quit their jobs and go follow it. He’s talking to people who know they have creative pursuits inside them that aren’t getting out. He’s giving them tips to fool and get around their own Resistance or maybe fight it head on and win.

stevenpressfield.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/war_of_art.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Shiny Objects, by James A. Roberts

Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth 0

Shiny Objects

Why We Spend Money We Don’t Have in Search of Happiness We Can’t Buy

by James A. Roberts

HarperOne, 2011. 353 pages.

Here’s a timely look at materialism in America. The author says in his introduction:

We are a nation in love with shiny objects. Our homes, our cars, our offices, our purses, and that storage unit we hate to admit to are all overflowing with our precious belongings. Whether your personal weakness is shoes, cars, jewelry, cigars, or any other possession (vintage posters, books, and watches are my downfall), we Americans love our money.

When it comes to spending money, are you more of a tightwad or a spendthrift? . . . Given that we are a nation of consumers, you might be surprised to learn that the majority of Americans would be classified as tightwads. With a high percentage of people living from paycheck to paycheck, how can consumerism be so rampant? It all boils down to how we pay for our purchases and the “pain of paying” associated with each payment method — it’s not that tightwads don’t want to spend money, they just don’t want to feel like they’re spending money. We are a nation addicted to plastic. Using credit cards greatly reduces the pain associated with paying for our purchases — so much so, in fact, that credit cards have earned the nickname “spending facilitators” by those of us who do research in this area. When we use credit cards, we make quicker purchase decisions, are more likely to buy, and are willing to pay more. . . .

As a professor at Baylor University, I have spent over twenty years conducting research with thousands of consumers from all walks of life on the related areas of materialism, credit card use, and compulsive buying. Why, in a land of plenty, do Americans want more? And why is more never enough? Given that most Americans would readily admit that money and material possessions are not going to make us happy, why do we continue to act as if they will? This book is the culmination of my efforts and those of other researchers to answer such questions. And though consumers are inscrutable, we have begun to unlock some of the mysteries behind materialism and its impact on our lives.

That gives you the idea. This book looks at studies done on consumer behavior and attitudes toward money. And it also attempts to teach the reader and gives tips for getting your actual behavior more in line with the things that matter most to you — which usually, bottom line, is not money. This book is both interesting and helpful.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/shiny_objects.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Back to Life, by Alicia Salzer

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review 0

Back to Life

Getting Past Your Past with Resilience, Strength, and Optimism

by Alicia Salzer, M.D.

William Morrow (HarperCollins), 2011. 278 pages.
Starred Review

Back to Life is a book about resilience, a book about thriving after trauma.

Here’s what Alicia Salzer says about trauma in her Introduction:

For the purposes of this book, a trauma is any event or situation that fundamentally shakes our understanding of the world and of our place in it.

Certainly this includes all the horrors that one typically thinks of when the word “trauma” is used. But in my opinion it also includes a host of other experiences that leave us reeling because the “rules” of life seem to have suddenly changed. In this view, a trauma might be a health issue, a betrayal, the loss of an apartment or job. When a life event robs you of your sense of well-being and self-esteem and leaves you feeling unsafe or out of control — that’s a trauma, too.

To be fair, I read this book after I’d already dealt with most of the trauma of my divorce. But in many ways, the book was good confirmation that I’m on the right track in healing. I definitely recognized her descriptions of being deep in the trauma, and I thoroughly relished her ideas for dealing with it even at this level.

For a very long time, I had lots of trouble with flashbacks — mostly replaying arguments and piecing together when my husband was lying and what I should have said had I known the truth. (Okay, I’ll stop. Just writing that sentence put me in danger of obsessing again!) It was actually a different book that said betrayal is trauma (NOT “Just Friends”) that helped me realize flashbacks are completely normal, and not to get mad at myself for having them, but just, when I notice, turn my mind a different way.

Alicia Salzer presents several strategies for coping with the coping mechanisms that crop up. One is to name the nasty inner voice:

We talked in a previous chapter about how symptoms like nightmares and flashbacks are misguided but well-intentioned stabs at self-protection. In the same way, much of what keeps us in permatrauma are ways of thinking and coping that were developed in a time of tremendous, overwhelming stress. We bring these coping strategies to our current lives in an attempt to safeguard ourselves from future harm. But the way you learned to cope on the worst day of your life is no way to live the rest of it.

I’ve named my nasty inner voice Moodith because it’s funny and dismissive and reminds me that she’s not a good advisor, but Hatelyn, Buzzkill, or Mr. Misery will work just as well. Feel free to come up with your own dismissive moniker.

You can see from this example that she approaches healing from trauma with humor and humility.

Now, I didn’t do too many of her actual exercises, but I was uplifted and encouraged by her ideas. I do think reading this book helped me stay on the right track. Some of the Resilience Skills she goes through are: Flexibility, Accountability, Self-Efficacy, External Efficacy, Rosewashing, and Community. These are all great skills to build.

I also adapted her strategy at the end for changing how you feel. I modified her version, but basically it involves using a physical prop, a stone, to remind you of a positive thing you need to do or think about.

I fondly hope I will never go through major trauma again, but I know that’s not too likely. If I find myself in the depths again, struggling with discouragement, or if I feel I just need a reminder of the vibrant life I’d like to be living, that would be a good time to reread this book.

harpercollins.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/back_to_life.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Naked Spirituality, by Brian D. McLaren

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Naked Spirituality

A Life with God in 12 Simple Words

by Brian D. McLaren

HarperOne, 2011. 280 pages.
Starred Review
2011 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 Other Nonfiction

I would love to go through this book with a small group Bible study. The subtitle tells us what the book is about. Brian McLaren uses 12 simple words to focus on what’s most important in our life with God. Though coming from a Christian perspective, he tries to transcend religion and talk about what is important in a relationship with God.

He talks about four seasons in our spiritual lives, seasons that we cycle through more than once. For each season, he chooses three words that represent our relationship with God. I think you’ll get an idea of the content of his message if I present the four seasons and the words he looks at for each season, with the practices they represent:

Simplicity: The Springlike Season of Spiritual Awakening

Here: The practice of invocation and presentation, awakening to the presence of God
Thanks: The practice of gratitude and appreciation, awakening to the goodness of God
O: The practice of worship and awe, awakening to the beauty and joy of God

Complexity: The Summerlike Season of Spiritual Strengthening

Sorry: The practice of self-examination and confession, strengthening through failure
Help: The practice of expansion and petition, strengthening through weakness
Please: The practice of compassion and intercession, strengthening through empathy

Perplexity: The Autumnlike Season of Spiritual Surviving

When: The practice of aspiration, exasperation, and desperation, surviving through delay
No: The practice of rage and refusal, surviving through disillusionment
Why: The practice of lament and agony, surviving through abandonment

Harmony: The Winterlike Season of Spiritual Deepening

Behold: The practice of meditation and wonder, deepening by seeing
Yes: The practice of consecration and surrender, deepening by joining
[. . . ]: The practice of contemplation and rest, deepening by being with

Here are some words from the Preface:

“This is a book about getting naked — not physically, but spiritually. It’s about stripping away the symbols and status of public religion — the Sunday-dress version people often call ‘organized religion.’ And it’s about attending to the well-being of the soul clothed only in naked human skin. As a result, it must be a vulnerable book, tender in tone, gentle in touch. You won’t find much in the way of aggressive arguments here, but rather shy experience daring to step into the light. It’s an honest book, and I hope a practical one too, perhaps with some awkward spiritual parallels to what they used to call a ‘marital manual.’

“You won’t need to agree with all the planks of my theological platform. I am a Christian, and all I write flows from my experience in that rich tradition, but you may be of another tradition entirely or of no known tradition at all. Instead of seeking theological agreement, this book invites you to experiment with the naked experience of God that provides the raw material from which all worthwhile theology derives.”

Here’s what he says about developing the spiritual practices:

“In the coming chapters, I would like to introduce you to twelve spiritual practices that have passed the simple, doable, and durable test for me. They are part of our ancient traditions, and they can provide twenty-first people like you and me with a basic curriculum for our spiritual novitiate. You can think of them as twelve stretches for runners, twelve moves in martial arts, twelve basic positions in yoga, or twelve warm-up exercises a musician might employ. You can do them in groups, and I hope you will, but you can begin on your own, in private, today. Like learning your first few chords on a guitar, you’ll find it amazingly easy to begin to play with these practices. But like expanding on those basic chords in order to become a guitar virtuoso, you’ll also find these twelve practices endlessly engaging and challenging.”

This is a book I’m going to want to read again, and I’d love to go through with a small group. Because it’s about practices — about living out your life with God.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Gifts of Imperfection, by Brene Brown

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

The Gifts of Imperfection

Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life

by Brene Brown, PhD, LMSW

Hazelden, 2010. 135 pages.
Starred Review
2011 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #2 Other Nonfiction

This is a lovely inspirational book, especially for people like me who are learning to outgrow perfectionism. It’s a book about owning our own stories and loving ourselves, even though we are imperfect. I savored it slowly, and lots of quotes from the book ended up on Sonderquotes, because they really spoke to me and the life I want to live.

The author was doing studies on negative emotions like shame, fear and vulnerability. As she was studying shame resilience, she noticed patterns in people who live wholehearted lives.

“I heard stories about the power of embracing imperfection and vulnerability. I learned about the inextricable connection between joy and gratitude, and how things that I take for granted, like rest and play, are as vital to our health as nutrition and exercise. These research participants trusted themselves, and they talked about authenticity and love and belonging in a way that was completely new to me.”

This book covers what she found, in nice, practical tips. It’s a personal book, because she tried to put the principles she learned into her own life and family. After she did, she says:

“I was healthier, more joyful, and more grateful than I had ever felt. I felt calmer and grounded, and significantly less anxious. I had rekindled my creative life, reconnected with my family and friends in a new way, and most important, felt truly comfortable in my own skin for the first time in my life.”

She explains Wholehearted living in the first paragraph of the main text:

“Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.”

There is lots and lots of good stuff in this book. Here’s a section I particularly liked:

“Love and belonging are essential to the human experience. As I conducted my interviews, I realized that only one thing separated the men and women who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seem to be struggling for it. That one thing is the belief in their worthiness. It’s as simple and complicated as this: If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging.

“When we can let go of what other people think and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness — the feeling that we are enough just as we are and that we are worthy of love and belonging. When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don’t fit with who we think we’re supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving. Our sense of worthiness — that critically important piece that gives us access to love and belonging — lives inside of our story.”

At the start of the book, the author talks about the concepts of love and belonging, and what she learned when she researched shame, which we all have. Then she goes on to chapters that cover Guideposts of Wholehearted Living, complete with ideas for cultivating them and building them into our lives. These Guideposts are:

1. Cultivating Authenticity: Letting Go of What People Think
2. Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of Perfectionism
3. Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness
4. Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark
5. Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith: Letting Go of the Need for Certainty
6. Cultivating Creativity: Letting Go of Comparison
7. Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth
8. Cultivating Calm and Stillness: Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle
9. Cultivating Meaningful Work: Letting Go of Self-Doubt and “Supposed To”
10. Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and “Always in Control”

If this sounds as lovely to you as it did to me, I promise that you will find inspiring and helpful words in this book.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/gifts_of_imperfection.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of ScreamFree Marriage, by Hal Edward Runkel

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Relationships, Starred Review 0

ScreamFree Marriage

Calming Down, Growing Up, and Getting Closer

by Hal Edward Runkel, LMFT
with Jenny Runkel

Crown Archetype, New York, 2011. 276 pages.
Starred Review

Why, you may ask, would someone who’s recently completed a painful divorce want to read a book on improving your marriage?

Well, I asked myself that a few times as I was in the middle of this book, and I did read it slowly, only a chapter at a time, because in many ways the good advice made me wistful.

If I ever remarry, I will purchase a copy of this book. As it is, for my own growth, I think it’s good to look back and figure out the ways my own immature responses hurt our marriage. It can only help me grow.

And that’s what this book is about: Behaving like a grown-up, an emotionally mature person in your marriage.

I read the book because I was extremely impressed with the author’s earlier book, ScreamFree Parenting. So even though I’m not married any more, I very much wanted to read what he had to say about marriage. His mantra is in the subtitle: “Calm Down, Grow Up, Get Closer.” As the author talks about different scenarios in marriage, you can see what good advice that is.

When Hal Runkel talks about calming down and keeping your cool, he’s not referring to hiding your emotions from your partner. Indeed, that’s one of the ways he describes that some people scream.

“In ScreamFree Marriage, ‘keeping your cool’ does not refer to simple anger-management techniques or artificial rules of engagement (fighting fair). No, becoming ScreamFree in your marriage refers to something far more optimistic. Here, keeping your cool means discovering and holding on to your truest self — and having the courage to openly pursue your truest desires — even in the midst of your greatest conflicts. It means willingly and calmly facing the natural fires of marital commitment, and actually growing up — and getting closer — through them.

“Entering into such conflicts with integrity is not an easy task; it’s not supposed to be. Developing a marriage built on passion, commitment, and deep connection means committing yourself to a new way of relating. It means keeping your cool as you face conflicts with your spouse that may have previously set you off in some form of ‘screaming.’ Being Scream Free means holding on to your deepest desires for connection and boldy making yourself vulnerable . . . without knowing how your spouse will respond. It means viewing old marital patterns through new lenses, no longer seeing those patterns as indications of irreconcilable differences, but rather as opportunities to grow your personal integrity and transform your relationship. It’s not a journey for timid spirits, but the rewards are certainly worth the struggle.”

Now, I used to absolutely hate it when my husband said I was “screaming” at him when I knew full well that I was not. (I can give an example of screaming!) However, the author has this to say:

“Now, I hear what some of you are thinking. ‘But I don’t ever scream at my spouse.’ And that’s what I used to think as well. But what I mean by ‘screaming’ is not just yelling with a raised voice. Screaming is the term I use to describe the greatest enemy we all face in our marriage: emotional reactivity. That’s a big, clinical expression to describe the process of letting our anxious emotions override our clear thinking. Getting emotionally reactive means allowing our worst fears or worries to drive our choices, instead of our highest principles. And whenever we allow ourselves to be driven by our anxiety, we usually create the very outcome we were hoping to avoid in the first place.”

Again, the author is not talking about stuffing feelings. He’s talking about getting to a calm place where you can share your true feelings with your partner and be open to hearing your partner’s true feelings. And the “Grow Up” part of his mantra is about coming from a place of maturity, not from emotional reactivity. I liked this passage, because it rings true:

“The greatest thing you can do for your marriage is to learn to focus more on yourself, yes, I believe you actually need to become more self-centered. Now, before you call this crazy talk, hear me out. Every great marriage is a self-centered marriage because every great marriage requires two centered selves. Every great marriage is a bond between two whole, centered people. These two strong individuals actively work on improving themselves for the other’s benefit, without necessarily depending on the other to do the same. These two are afraid of neither separation nor togetherness, and work to seek a balance of both. These two pay more attention to their own behavior, which they can control, than their spouse’s which, thankfully, they cannot.”

The author goes on to show you the beauty of his formula: “Calm Down, Grow Up, Get Closer.” I’ll just summarize the two sub-steps of each step. For “Calm Down,” you Pause Yourself (self-explanatory) and Go to the Balcony, mentally take yourself out of and above the moment, gain some perspective.

In the “Grow Up” step, you first Spot Your Pattern. Figure out what part of the pattern you are contributing to. What actions that you are taking are contributing? Once you’ve figured that out, “Step on the Scales.” Analyze your own behavior and ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. (And Hal Runkel has a nice example in his own marriage to illustrate these steps.) Ask yourself why this particular pattern means so much to you. But also ask yourself, “What, in this situation, do I want most to see happen?”

The third step of ScreamFree Marriage is “Get Closer.” This begins with part one: “Show Your Cards.”

“And the first step in getting closer is, naturally, quite revealing. It is quite risky. It is the move we so often avoid in all our relationships, especially our marriages, because it necessitates so much openness and vulnerability. And yet, do it we must if we are going to have a chance at getting what we want most. What are we talking about? We’re talking about doing or saying that one thing you’ve been so reluctant to do or say for fear of rejection, abuse, looking stupid, feeling weak, or simply not getting the response you’d hoped for. We’re talking about laying down your hand and showing your cards.

“Now, for those of you totally unfamiliar with poker, this metaphor may not mean anything. My guess is that most of us, however, can understand the meaning here quite clearly. Showing your cards is about mustering the courage to recognize that it’s your turn to reveal what you’ve got. In the game of poker, this is always the tensest moment, because it’s the boldest effort to win — and thus carries with it the opportunity to lose. Showing your cards in marriage is daring to risk revealing who you are, what you’re thinking and feeling, and what you want most. This is the clearest, starkest move of Authentic Self-Representation.”

Then, after you Show Your Cards, the final part is to “Champion Your Spouse.” This does not mean telling your spouse he’d better do what you want.

“While getting closer is all about focusing on yourself and representing that self to your spouse, it is also about welcoming, and encouraging your spouse to do the same.

“Now I know that sounds a little contrary to what I was saying earlier about not doing this in order to provoke a particular response from your spouse. That’s not what this is. Championing your spouse is working hard to communicate — not so much with words or actions but by your very calm presence — that you welcome, and even invite, any response at all. Even if that response is reactive screaming (non-abusive, of course). Even if that response is silence. Even if that response is confusion, frustration, or choosing to voice a concern right back at you. By championing your spouse, you are again communicating what you want most — that voluntary connection that makes both partners feel prized, valued, and stronger as individuals. In reality, you cannot have that connection without your spouse choosing to reveal himself, in some way, back to you. . . .

“What you do want your spouse to do is show you what he’s got. You don’t want him to ‘play it close to the vest,’ hiding himself and his true feelings and desires from you. You want him to reveal and represent himself because just as you want to make yourself known, you want to know him. That’s why you got married! To share yourself with someone who wants to share himself with you. It’s ironic that we can’t wait to get to know each other better, until we get a few years under our belt. Then our fears, and memories of disappointment, make us a little gun-shy. We either shy away from conflict or reactively reveal ourselves in aggressive, attacking ways that force our partner to shy away from us.”

So you get the idea. The author talks about how to use these steps in many common areas of marital conflict, and then talks a bit more about developing true intimacy through self-revelation. I wish I could have tried it out in my own marriage!

Before I close my review, I want to cover a section that impressed me toward the end of the book. The author does, very realistically, encourage you to focus on yourself and your own growth — but I liked this section about personal growth and encouraging your spouse to grow:

“I certainly understand the dynamic of one spouse trying to change the other, and the other trying to resist those efforts. In many ways, that dynamic is the exact pattern I’m calling people away from. I’m asking folks to stop focusing on their spouse and return their gaze to themselves. But that applies to both the spouse doing the attempted manipulation as well as the spouse trying to resist being changed. Stop focusing so much on what your spouse is trying to do to you, and start focusing on something much more fruitful: changing yourself.

“What’s fascinating about the Popeye defense” [“I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam.” Your spouse should just accept you for who you are.] “is that when it’s used, it comes across as some healthy self-acceptance that everyone needs to adopt. ‘I can accept me for me — why can’t she?’ On the surface, in our pop-psychology-riddled society, this may have the appearance of wisdom. But dig deeper, and this attitude is not only unwise, it’s actually harmful to both you and your marriage. . . .

“Just think about that for a moment. You want your spouse to just accept you for who you are? Really? Even if you’re lazy? Even if you totally let your body go and become weak, fat, and unhealthy? Even if you drink too much or watch too much TV or read too many romance novels? Even if you neglect your kids, spend without discretion, complain about your spouse to your friends instead of addressing the issue directly? Your spouse is just supposed to sit back and accept all these behaviors as the honest, unchanging you he/she is stuck with forever?

“If your answer is no, then Calm Down, Grow Up, and Get Closer by actually seeking out your spouse’s feedback. Go to him and ask what you could be doing better. Ask her directly how she thinks you’re doing, and what she wishes you would do more or and less of. Why? Because if you’re going to be the best spouse possible, then you need continual feedback on how you’re doing and how you can improve.

“Now, if your answer is yes, that you believe your spouse should just accept you fully, warts and all, then I want you to listen carefully. Your problem is not your spouse’s efforts to change you. Your problem is that you don’t respect yourself — at all. You don’t even like yourself. Anyone who respects herself is going to actively work to improve herself, rarely sitting back and remaining satisfied. Anyone who even likes himself is going to nurture his God-given desire to grow in wisdom, and build on his skills and abilities. Instead, you’re just wallowing in atrophy, using your emotional muscles only to defend yourself against your spouse’s efforts to change you. And you’re wondering why even the good things in life just don’t seem to be as pleasurable as they once were. That’s because you’ve ‘accepted’ yourself and demanded that your spouse do the same.

“But I know you. I know that you don’t want your spouse to just accept you. You want her to respect you. You want her to respect that you are not a child, incapable of doing anything for himself and in need of a mommy to tell him how to behave. You want him to see you as an adult, one who knows herself and knows what she needs to do. Well, there’s one way to gain that respect.

“Let love rule. Call yourself to your own standard. The standard you’ve already set for yourself by saying ‘I love you’ and ‘I do.’ You wish for and work for your spouse to have the best possible life, including the best possible spouse, and you believe you’re the one for the job. That’s what it means to love your spouse, and yourself.”

See what I mean? There’s good stuff here! May it help many, many couples Calm Down, Grow Up, and Get Closer.

I’m going to close with a quotation Hal Runkel included that made me laugh:

“My friends tell me I have an intimacy problem. But they don’t really know me.” — Garry Shandling

After all, if your spouse doesn’t understand you, could there perhaps be something you can do about that?

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/screamfree_marriage.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of A Woman’s Worth, by Marianne Williamson

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth 0

A Woman’s Worth

by Marianne Williamson

Random House, New York, 1993. 143 pages.

I began this book shortly after my divorce was finalized. Honestly, in bad moments, I’m feeling wounded, a failure, and unlovable. My mind knows all that is not true, but my heart needs uplifting messages of truth. And that’s exactly what this book provided for me. I found myself posting resonant quotations from this book over and over on Sonderquotes.

I’ll post some of my favorites here, and that will give you the idea.

“Every woman I know wants to be a glorious queen, but that option was hardly on the multiple-choice questionnaire we were handled when we were little girls. Rarely did anyone tell us we could choose to be magic.”

“We have a job to do reclaiming our glory. So what if we are called grandiose? So what if we are accused of being in dangerous denial of our faults, our neuroses, our weaknesses? It’s an ancient trick this, telling a woman that her glory is her sickness. You bet we’re in denial. We deny the power of weakness to hold us back, be it the weakness of the world or the weakness in our own past. We are on to better things, such as owning our beauty and honoring the courage it has taken us to get here and claiming our natural power to heal and be healed. We’re not grandiose, but we’re tired — tired of pretending we are guilty when we know we’re innocent, that we’re plain when we know we’re beautiful, and that we’re weak when we know we’re strong. For far too long, we have forgotten we are cosmic royals. Our mothers forgot, their mothers forgot, and their mothers before them. We regret their tears; we mourn their sadness. But now, at last, we break the chain.”

“Joy is our goal, our destiny. We cannot know who we are except in joy. Not knowing joy, we do not know ourselves. When we are without joy, we grope in the dark. When we are centered in joy, we attain our wisdom. A joyful woman, by merely being, says it all. The world is terrified of joyful women. Make a stand. Be one anyway.”

“No man can convince a woman she’s wonderful, but if she already believes she is, his agreement can resonate and bring her joy.”

“There’s a lot of talk today about whether a woman can have it all. The problem isn’t having it all but receiving it all, giving ourselves permission to have a full and passionate life when our cultural conditioning has denied us that for centuries. The biggest limit to our having is our small reach, our shy embrace. As long as it’s considered unfeminine to have a full appetite — which it is, because it is recognized that whatever we allow ourselves to truly desire we usually get — then we will not sit down at life’s banquet but only at its diner. This is ridiculous, and it holds back the entire world for women to live at half-measure. It’s also an insult to men to suggest that they can’t dance with goddesses, as though a woman at full power might step on their toes.”

If these uplift you as they did me, I recommend getting the book and reading more of this encouragement for yourself.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/womans_worth.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of As We Forgive, by Catherine Claire Larson

Forgiveness, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review, True Stories 0

As We Forgive
Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda

by Catherine Claire Larson

Zondervan, 2009. 284 pages.
Starred Review

This powerful and moving book tells the stories of seven survivors of the Rwandan genocide, and their difficult journeys to forgiveness and reconciliation.

Each story is heart-wrenching. But each survivor was able to rise above the horrendous things they experienced. That any one of these people is able to forgive is mind-blowing. Taken together, the book clearly makes the case that the path to healing lies in forgiveness.

And you won’t be ever be able to look at people who’ve wronged you as harshly again. If these survivors, whose families were killed, often before their eyes, can forgive and find healing, well, what has anyone ever done to me that even comes close?

And this book even tells stories of survivors who reach out in reconciliation to the one who harmed them, as they begin to put their nation back together again.

I like Appendix 2 at the back. It lists “Choices on the Way to Peace” for both the Victim and the Offender. Here’s the list for the Victim:

Steps to Forgiveness:
Step 1
– I face my truth.
– I move from denial to grieving the loss.
– I open my wounds and begin to heal my pain and shame.
– I forgive myself and cease blaming.
– I accept God’s forgiveness.

Step 2
The first hand of forgiveness …
I let go of my bitterness and the right to revenge.

Step 3
The second hand of forgiveness …
I confront the offender with a request to uphold my dignity by restoring something of what was lost.

Step 4
I become open to accepting the humanity and dignity of the offender — and even the possibility of restoring the relationship.

I especially like Step 3, because when you think of forgiveness, you don’t necessarily think of asking for restitution. But this list affirms that asking for some restitution is part of the forgiveness process. It’s not revenge — it’s just asking the offender to take some responsibility to help make things right.

The steps don’t talk about what happens if the offender won’t respond to the request, but the book did. The victim CAN forgive and still seek justice in court. The victim is upholding their own dignity by asking for some restitution, whether that restitution is granted or not.

The steps do make it pretty clear that reconciliation is not going to happen if the offender doesn’t respond to that request. (And the four steps for the offender are necessary, too.) But if the victim has already let go of bitterness, their own life will be transformed in a beautiful way, regardless of how the offender responds.

This is a beautiful book about forgiveness played out in actual human lives.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/as_we_forgive.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.