Spilling the beans, a very short post on useful self-help books

This morning someone asked me, after I’d mentioned it in an Instagram post, why I’d been reading self help books over the summer. It’s a pertinent question because apart from being coerced into reading the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People on a management course (it’s still a useful book) I’ve never read a self help book until this year.

‘The answer to ‘Why’ is long and involved and probably very dull for you all. Maybe a little of why can be found in my post about Valentine’s Day. There are also some events in my past, the kind we all have, that I’m not ready to share yet.

But ‘what have you learned’ is a question I can definitely start to answer. I’m going to post on Sunday about the amazing revelation I discovered in Gretchen Rubin’s book ‘The Four Tendencies’. But the other, really revelatory book I read was Playing Big by Tara Mohr. This was recommended by Sara Tasker in her Hashtag Authentic podcast and I was immediately drawn to it. Turns out, it really lives up to its reputation. And the main reason for this post is to share the following passage. I’m still digesting how important this could be as a manifesto for women to live by. I think, in time, it might just shape the course of my future years. I feel like I was lost but baby, now I’m found …

“It’s time that we shifted the women’s movement paradigm, from one of participation to one of transformation. For women, this moment in history is like no other. In the developed world, we have on paper equal access to participate in positions of power. We can enroll in higher education. We can participate in professional life. We can hold political office. We can own property and financial assets. Yet more and more women are finding that they want more than equal access to participation in outdated, often harmful systems. We want to transform those systems to make them more just, more compassionate, more sustainable for the planet and for our families. We want to add our ideas, our alternatives, our ways of working. In other words, now that we have more power, we want to use it for good.” from “Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Vision and Make Things Happen” by Tara Mohr