A Book Review
of What's Important Now: Reviewed by Peggy Grall, Editor of Psychologica Magazine, for Psychotherapists and Counselors This book is a refreshing and practical attempt to help ordinary people feel more satisfied with their everyday, real-world lives through learning how to live more fully in the present, free from the burdens of past resentments and regrets. Most of us associate living in the present with Eastern gurus and mystic monks sitting on mountain tops, meditating and contemplating. Author John Kuypers takes this age-old subject and brings it into the twenty-first century. The book begins with a compelling story, a time when Mr. Kuypers had the world by the tail. He could do no wrong as a young business school graduate, excelling athletically and experiencing career and personal success far beyond his immigrant farmer's son roots. Then he makes three career moves in a row that end disastrously. His confidence is seriously rattled and he locks himself into a corporate career for the following nine years, determined not to screw up again. When he collapses on the family room floor out of sheer mental burn out as a thirty-four year old vice-president of sales, he gets a wake up call that begins what turns out to be a seven year journey to find career and personal fulfillment. He finds his answers through learning how to live more fully in the present. In his book, What's Important Now: Shedding the Past so You Can Live in the Present, Mr. Kuypers takes us on a journey to know ourselves and accept who we are. He offers us six "doorways" which is his metaphor for strategies to break through the emotional walls that unconsciously imprison us and block us from fully living in the present. The book emphasizes that we must become true to who we really are. John Kuypers provides practical tips such as four ways to change beliefs that are limiting a person, and causing them emotional angst. He offers three ways to be "authentic", even at the risk of consequences to ourselves like being rejected, criticized and abandoned. He provides tools on how to do this while minimizing the "collateral" damage, like expressing your feelings by separating them from the triggering event, and letting go of your attachments and expectations. The section on Listening in the Present is particularly useful to those therapists who feel they could improve their listening skills with clients. The author tackles this complex subject using straightforward language and numerous pinpointed examples that any reader can relate to, from work to play to personal relationships. He is remarkably open and self-disclosing about his own experiences, though the emphasis on the book is on what the reader needs to consider doing, rather than about the life story of the author himself. His background as a businessman adds to the credibility of his work with today's busy, stressed-out clients. This is a thought-provoking book that will give any student of self-improvement a dramatically new perspective on how to overcome everyday unhappiness. Practitioners of living in the present discover that life becomes an adventure. What's Important Now provides a road map for readers to navigate their way into uncovering what they are really meant to be doing with their lives, regardless of the constraints from past career or relationships failures or even successes that may never be repeatable. I recommend this book as a useful tool to any therapist wanting to give their clients a positive, constructive means by which to focus their lives on the here and now. Reviewed by Peggy Grall, Editor
of Psychologica Magazine,
http://www.oaccpp.on.ca |