REVIEW: “Find yourself. How to go beyond stereotypes and find your way”, Bob Deutsch

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Live a vibrant life, maximizing your potential and embodying your true essence. Who doesn't want this? The author of this book assures that he knows how to achieve this. At least he has a hypothesis on this score. Bob Deutsch believes that you can find your way through the disclosure of five inner resources. They and the book as a whole will be discussed later.

To feel at the top of the world, you do not have to conquer it, you just need to find a way to yourself.

The book was co-authored with Lou Aronic.

Deutsch's idea is that changes in life begin with changes within oneself. For the latter, there are five resources, five cores of being.

Curiosity

What makes a child different from an adult? In my opinion, the most obvious difference is curiosity.

Adults are not curious when.

Processed ore.

I'm not stupid, young, proud, It is you

Do not give yourself work. Vera Polozkova "Instead of a Subtotal"

Many people think they know enough. They are comfortable with the mental baggage that they have accumulated by their 30s, 40s, 50s … years. Therefore, most people show little or no curiosity.

But the curious get much more from life. For them, every day is a myriad of opportunities. According to Bob Deutsch, curiosity is based on the love of learning. It's not about education, but about the desire to learn more, learn new things. Curious people all the time ask themselves: "What next?" - and thereby expand the boundaries of their path.

Openness

"If being inquisitive is to tickle and develop the mind through contact with the new, then being open is to give the unforeseen the opportunity to influence the course of your life."

This is the second resource to help you find yourself. Openness means that you do not strive to know the result at the beginning of the path, you are ready to be surprised and take turns of fate. “If you allow yourself to be open to different results and different steps towards them, the horizons expand.” Openness allows you to create things that you would never create with a blinkered mind.

Sensitivity

Sensitivity is the feeling of experiencing one's own experience.

The author calls feelings the third resource leading to a true self and a vibrant life. Hearing and seeing people are often deaf and blind to themselves. For example, being nervous, a person starts talking too quickly. But instead of understanding what feelings catalyze this behavior, he simply tries to overcome this "flaw."

To actively use sensitivity means inevitably to feel more unpleasant. But without this, alas, one cannot find oneself.

Paradox

Life is a contradictory thing. Sometimes what we think we don't want at all turns out to be exactly what we need most. Helen Brown

The fourth resource is the ability to look at the world in a different way. "If you are used to seeing something from one side, looking at it from the opposite point of view adds nuance and depth to your approach." It will help you get out of the box and be creative. According to Deutsch, paradox is not a problem to be solved. This is an opportunity to become real!

Self-history

The previous four resources serve as the fifth and main one. Deutsch calls it self-history.

Self-history is the only thing that is necessary for a life of full self-realization, motivation and improvement, and for happiness. She is more important than money, origin and ability.

At the same time, the author emphasizes that self-history is a biography. This is what drives your own self. Entirely - beauty and flaws, light and dark sides. That is why a person's self-history is not always attractive. But if you understand what its essence is, you can manage it, finding productive use of disadvantages.

These five resources are implemented in five processes. To find yourself and live a vibrant life, you need:

• constantly going home (curiosity);
• master your narrative (openness);
• stop and focus (sensitivity);
• improvise (paradoxical);
• breathe life (self-story).

The second part of Bob Deutsch's book is devoted to how to transform internal resources into these processes.

My references

Deep, kind, exciting. If it were necessary to describe the book by Bob Deutsch in three words, then I would choose these.

Deep, because it touches on complex, sometimes philosophical topics. Who am I? What is my place in this world? Am I living right? What is my mission? These questions run like a red thread throughout the work. Self-knowledge is a difficult process, but thanks to this book you get one step closer to understanding your essence.

At the same time, the author manages to write about the complex as simply as possible. Perhaps this is the merit of the chosen format. The book consists of dozens of stories from real people. Bob Deutsch has been studying the behavior of famous and not very famous personalities for many years, it is no wonder that he has accumulated many examples. He unobtrusively weaves them into the narrative. Thanks to this, scientific maxims come to life, become human. And one cannot fail to notice the warmth and respect with which the author tells the stories of these people. This makes the book truly kind.

Motivation excites her. After reading, I want to be aware of my narrative, I want to work on myself, create a self-history …

The only thing that is a little tiring is the abundance of foreign names (although one of the heroes of the book is Boris Yeltsin), a large number of references to Western culture. But in the end, isn't this a reason to train your curiosity?;)