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Live the Life You Love
Live the Life You Love
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Many self-help/motivational/positive-thinking writers and speakers assume that if only one were more positive, more determined, more self-disciplined, more whatever, success would be assured! What the mind can conceive, it can achieve, right? When the going gets tough, the tough get going, right? "I get tired," says Barbara Sher.
Weary of ineffective appeals to change her character and improve her positive thinking, the author asked herself, How have I succeeded at anything? How did I get a college degree, hold jobs, and raise a family? She concluded that each person is motivated in unique, individual ways, which can be rediscovered by examining what has worked in the past.
In Live the Life You Love, Sher guides the reader through an easy-to-read, easy-to-use process of ten steps to discover and utilize gifts and talents unique to each of us. Our gifts are inborn, she says. It is essential to identify and develop these gifts and talents because they will lead to activities that one loves. Career and personal satisfaction lie in building a life around these activities that elicit love. Sher goes on to offer techniques that allow the reader to pinpoint the lifestyle and work life that actually match an individual's gifts.
This book is for those of us seeking to cultivate our personal gifts and talents without the travail and self-punishment of positive-thinking approaches that imply the problem is in our head. Even though the "ten-step process" initially struck me as corny, Sher's frank, practical, and humorous style overcame my bias.
Her "memory deck" is one of the simple yet effective techniques worth adopting. You create your own memory deck with a stack of 3 X 5 cards by noting the insights gained as you work through the book's diagnostic exercises. This personal memory deck is then in place to "remind you to take care of yourself by using the right kinds of motivation for you." Sher obviously recognizes that for most of us, change is a gradual process, and she has designed a system for frequently reminding ourselves of the changes we are making for our own good. Live the Life You Love is an encouraging book with a healthy perspective.
Donald Lee is a motivational book junkie living in Nashville, Tennessee.
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