Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

nonfiction

“Committed” by Elizabeth Gilbert

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Subtitled “A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage,” this is a sequel to Eat, Pray, Love.

I was expecting an exploration of emotional commitment as detailed as the exploration of transformation, self-discovery, and healing in Eat, Pray, Love. Instead, Committed documents the political institution of marriage.

In Linchpin, Seth Godin mentions that Elizabeth Gilbert printed out the first completed draft of this book, read it, threw it away, and started over. He used it as an example of lacking the commitment to shipping a completed work.

In her introduction to Committed, Gilbert mentions that she had trouble finding her writing voice after Eat, Pray, Love became a bestseller, and that she threw away the first draft because the voice was too distant, not recognizable as her own voice. I’m glad she had the commitment to her own voice and the courage to start over in that case, especially since I still see some distance in the book she did ship.

The book contains engaging personal stories about the author, her extended family, and some of the people she encounters in her travels. It also contains generalizations about “tribal” Hebrews vs. “intellectual” Greeks, and a shallow historical overview of the institution of marriage.

I’m glad to know what happened next in the relationship between Elizabeth and Felipe, and wish them the best in their new home.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Get Clients Now!” by C. J. Hayden

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Despite the intimidating cover, this book is filled with compassionate, practical suggestions for getting a marketing program off the ground.

Getting clients is divided into four stages:

  • Filling the pipeline
  • Following up
  • Getting presentations
  • Closing sales

For the 28 day program, the book recommends focusing on a single stage, and committing to a set of 8-10 daily or weekly actions from a menu of suggestions. The actions include both direct marketing and incremental work on longer-term “Success Ingredients” such as a brochure or website.

There are helpful sections on choosing realistic goals and managing resistance when it inevitably arises. As well as choosing activities, you choose a Special Permission, such as “I have permission to ask for what I want” or “I deserve to be successful.”

Worksheets for choosing a program and tracking progress can be downloaded at the Get Clients Now website.

For myself, I find that I need more flexibility than this intense 28-day program provides, but the structured approach makes marketing seem a lot less mysterious. It is reassuring to see how many of the “success ingredients” I’ve created along the way, and how many of the recommended activities I’ve incorporated into my marketing, even if I don’t do 8 of them per day.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?” by Seth Godin

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Recommended to me by: Seth Godin’s blog

Seth Godin brings together several of his ideas about how to survive in our changed economy. His main premise is that non-thinking “factory” work is no longer the road to security. “Factory” is in quotes because he uses it to include any job which involves following the rules and doing what the boss says.

He redefines several other words, including “art” (a gift that changes the recipient), and “artist” (someone who gives such gifts in a business context).

I love his idea of “emotional work”, which is one of the possible ways to make “art.” Emotional work includes both confronting ones own resistance, and creating genuine connections with others. I know I’m much more likely to frequent a shop where the employees or owners give me the gift of emotional connection.

Which brings us to his main definition, “linchpin”: someone who does their emotional work, creates art, gives that little bit extra to both coworkers and customers, and becomes essential to a business.

He talks at length about the importance of “shipping” – completing the art or product and sending out into the world – and the “lizard brain” or resistance that gets in the way. This was the most problematic redefinition for me, because he makes it clear that he’s referring to the amygdala and limbic system, which evolved in mammals, not reptiles.

While it’s useful to think of resistance as a separate voice and notice what it’s saying without letting it take over, I was uncomfortable with the dismissive, combative attitude he seemed to be promoting. I’m more comfortable with the compassionate attitude in Cheri Huber’s How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, which I happened to be reading at the same time.

The writing is choppy, reminiscent of his pithy, paragraph-long blog posts. I read his blog with interest every day, but find the style distracting in a full book.

Seth Godin has also published the book’s ideas in a freely available PDF.

Available at bookshop.org.

“How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want To Be” by Cheri Huber

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In connection with reading Being Bodies, I tracked down this book. It turns out I’d read it a long time ago and remembered many of the stories, although I’d forgotten their source.

Cheri Huber herself admits that the title is a bit of a trick. Rather than trying to move from Here to There, she advocates giving careful attention to Here, since that’s all there ever is.

She shares harrowing vignettes from her own life with a “that’s just how it is” tone. Her quest for meaning and peace led her to Zen meditation, where she encountered the simple instructions to sit in full lotus and count breaths up to 10, and then begin again.

Desperate for change, she sat in full lotus for hours, and counted breaths no matter what she was doing. After counting breaths during a 10-hour drive, she finally encountered the peace of the present moment. In time, she joined a Zen monastery, started teaching, and went on to found her own Zen center.

Woven with her own journey, she introduces gentle steps for becoming aware of social conditioning and self-hatred, and easing the grip of the resistance they cause. After each exercise, she implores “Please do not allow conditioning to use your awareness against you.”

For example, she introduces meditation by suggesting: Take three full breaths. What did you notice? Do it again. There, you’re meditating! I follow these non-instructions in my own meditation practice. Fortunately, full lotus position is optional!

She summarizes the steps for true, gentle change:

  1. Choose an issue you want to work with.
  2. Sit down, stay still, and be aware of all that goes on.
  3. Notice what belief systems are held in place with this issue.
  4. Notice which subpersonalities [and/or defense mechanisms] are involved.
  5. Listen to what the [internal judging] voices have to say about the issue about who you are for having it.
  6. Become aware of the projections made onto yourself and others because of this issue.
  7. Explore the emotions that keep this issue real.
  8. Find out where the issue is held in your body – where is the epicenter?
  9. Practice disidentifying by moving your focus of attention away from the issue and returning it to the breath.
  10. Remember to do this – and everything you do – in a context of compassionate acceptance of all that is.

She shares stories from her students’ journeys as well. One man at a Zen retreat became angry about a dirty mop bucket left on the steps, and each day muttered to himself, “Someone should do something about that!” Finally he realized that he was “someone” and cleaned the bucket.

This book is full of treasures. I recommend it to anyone looking for compassionate suggestions about how to find center and self-acceptance.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The No Asshole Rule” by Robert Sutton, PhD

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Recommended to me by: Robert Sutton blog post (via Twitter)

It’s a rare business book that focuses on warmth, kindness, and peaceful, loving environments. This compassionate little book, subtitled Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, does so with clarity and conviction.

In this book, you’ll find:

  • A definition of assholes (also known as jerks, bullies, tyrants, etc.)
  • The costs of employing them
  • How to implement and enforce a “no asshole” rule, including heartening positive examples
  • How to avoid behaving badly ourselves, including a self-test
  • Survival tips for unavoidable asshole-ridden situations
  • What people get out of behaving badly

The main message:

Treat the person right in front of you, right now, in the right way.

I am delighted to discover that some corporations and academic departments value respect and kindness. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to follow their example.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The True Deceiver” by Tove Jansson

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Recommended to me by: Ursula Le Guin

In contrast to Tove Jansson’s kind, easygoing, whimsical Moomintrolls, the humans in The True Deceiver are hard-edged, uneasy, complicated.

Yellow-eyed young Katri Kling and her “simple” younger brother Mats are orphans in a blue-eyed Finnish village. Katri fights for survival through observation and analysis, noting her fellow villagers’ hostility towards her and each other. She is also meticulously honest, seeking detached, pure clarity.

Her neighbors both resent her and come to her for advice, receiving fair solutions that nevertheless encourage negative views of each other.

Even with her awkward contempt of social politeness, Katri manages to befriend local heiress and author Anna Aemelin. She successfully arranges to move herself and her brother into Anna’s house, and becomes Anna’s business manager as well.

Anna is vaguely friendly to everyone. Katri challenges her world by showing her how she is taken advantage of at every turn.

In the end, both Katri’s and Anna’s approaches to life are thrown into question. Elderly Madame Nygard, whose warm kitchen still holds an old-fashioned wood-burning stove, seems to offer a kinder but still observant middle ground.

This is not a feel-good book. It accurately portrays the cruelty that can result from desperation and isolation in a claustrophic environment. The ending holds ambiguous hints of change, but doesn’t resolve the tension.

I want the focus to be wider, to show reasons in the past or healing in the future. In this single winter moving into spring, Katri seems trapped without access to her own heart.

Available at bookshop.org.