The Power of Meaning- my first Blogging For Books Review

So one of my Bookies has been blogging a lot about books lately.  I'm pretty jealous she blogs about books at least once a week, not once a month like me- there always has to be an over achiever among us :).  So this Bookie introduced me to this great site bloggingforbooks.com.  You sign up and the company will send you a book.  All you need to do in return is blog about it- get the word out about the book they sent you.  Before you can request another book you need to post a review.  So with no further ado here is my first review of my blogging for books Book.  

Emily Esfahani Smith has put together a great read about finding purpose or meaning in your life.  I think no better than the present to be reading this book as I've struggled recently with answering some of life's tough questions: am I making a difference in my patients lives?  Am I having a positive impact on my children as their mom?  What do I need to be doing to figure out what my true purpose is on this earth?  So when I saw this book as an option I jumped at the chance to review it.  

I could tell this book was a good one because since I own it I can write in it and underlie sentences or phrases that catch my eye during reading.  This book has a lot of chattynatty script now written in it- a sign of a good book.  

Overall I gave this book four stars.  Although nonfiction Emily does a great job of weaving real life stories throughout the book and the weaving of educational content on finding purpose/meaning along with these personal stories really makes the book flow quite easily.  It was a fast read and smooth going.  The only reason I couldn't give it a full 5 stars was there was one part of the book that just didn't do anything for me.  I think this is just because of the content and the type of gal I am.  That part was chapter 5 on Transcendence. This however, was just one of the many chapters and I got so much out of the rest of the book that I still would highly recommend this book to anyone who is like me that is always asking the What if's?  or the Why's? or the How come's?  

The words or themes that most impacted me in my reading were her evaluation of four pillars of meaning: belonging, purpose, storytelling and transcendence.   Belonging is such an epic part of having meaning within this life road we are on.  Emily, as I said a few lines earlier, has an amazing way to talk about research studies in one line/paragraph and then the next line or paragraph is tying the research study and it's findings in with a personal story and "belonging" the personal stories definitely impressed upon me the importance of having loved ones, family and friends present in your life to give it meaning and feel purposeful.  The purpose section of the book was great also.  I loved the story in this chapter that highlighted a man named Coss Marte.  He grew up on New York's lower east side.  It wasn't a great neighborhood and he got involved in drugs and went on to become a successful and very rich drug dealer.  However, his dealing and selling drugs ended one night when over two pounds of cocaine and $5000 in cash were found in his apartment.  He was sentenced to prison.  He became very focused on health and wellness within the prison and he also found his faith.  He helped others become healthy through physical fitness on daily basis in prison.    When he left prison he decided to open a gym to continue his purpose of helping others be healthy.  He today is a successful owner of gym that utilizes a prison-style workout program to help his members get in shape.  Emily writes "Coss's story contains an important insight: living purposefully require self-reflection and self-knowledge.  Each of us has different strengths , talents, insights and experiences that shape who we are.  And so each of us will have a different purpose, one that fits with who we are and what we value- one that fits our identity".

The third pillar is storytelling.  This may sound kind of cheap or chintzy, but it makes sense.  I especially liked the discussion and definition of "narrative identity".  Emily writes... "McAdams describes narrative identity as an internalized story you create about yourself- a personal myth, as one writer puts it, 'about who we are deep down- where we come from, how we got this way, and what it all means". Later she comments, "When we want people to understand us, we share our story or parts of it with them; when we want to know who another person is, we ask them to share part of their story in turn." I could totally identify with this idea.  I love to share my life story with others and in turn I also like asking people I meet about their stories.  I am definitely a story teller.  

Although I said I didn't like the transcendence chapter it is one of the four pillars.  Emily defines transcendence as "experience is one in which we feel that we have risen above the everyday world to experience a higher reality."   Maybe this is just to lofty a thought so maybe hard for me to grasp.  However, what I did take away from this chapter was a reminder of how important being present and being mindful is in figuring out or understanding one's purpose or meaning in life.  The famous quote of Jon Kabat-Zinn reads "mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and nonjudgementally."  This was a needed reminder.  

I also very much appreciated in the beginning of the book how she spends time analyzing/evaluating the idea that being happy is equivalent to having meaning/purpose.  I won't give away what she found when she researched this topic.  You'll have to read it to find out what role happiness plays into our purpose in life.  

It was a great book to review, so with that I will say thank you for this book  Blogging for Books