That’s what brought him through horrific child abuse by his mother.Įverything in this book is built on the foundation of knowing oneself - which is a continuous process. Dave consciously changed his mindset from victim to agent, and consciously chose to focus on the future, not the past. He illustrates this by reference to Dave Pelzer’s autobiography, A Child Called "It". " As long as I was blaming others, I allowed circumstances to control me.Īs soon as I blamed myself, I became empowered to act."Ĭlaiming empowerment means taking responsibility for a better future, rather than clinging to guilt about the past. But Mark shows that isn’t helpful either: I confess, I have not (yet) applied everything to me and my life, in part because I was more interested in reading about Mark.īecause guilt can be a terrible, crippling mindset, we’re often encouraged to cast aside responsibility, possibly after acknowledging it, and move on. The most important ones for me have *Asterisks* in their titles.
Readers can download the test from Mark's website. The final chapter develops a test that allows us to find out how happy we are, and how happy we can become.
Mark discusses a wide range of ideas and explores how a fulfilled life may flow from an ability not to judge others, from learning to control your life as much as possible, understanding how to take advice, finding the right partner, assembling a toolkit to shape your world, developing a positive attitude towards yourself, and telling “right” apart from “wrong”. Eight further chapters explore how we can find out what it is that we want to achieve, and how to achieve it. In a key opening chapter, he discusses methods that we might use to discover who we are. Mark invites us to share his thoughts on how to lead an authentic life. Mark discusses a wide range of ideas and explores how a ful This is self-help for the thoughtful reader. This is self-help for the thoughtful reader.