Maintaining Your Rebel Life

I have read the other two books in this serious, Your Rebel Dreams and Your Rebel Plans, and I enjoyed both thoroughly. I thought the author gave a fantastic blueprint to claim the life you want. The two earlier books look at how to figure out your vision and then plan to make it a reality. I’ve actually been anticipating this book for a couple of months because I so enjoyed the other two. This series-ender is a little different from the other two, but once I understood what the author was going for, I appreciated what this book has to offer.

In looking at the big picture of the three books in this series, I think I can liken it to the trajectory of a weight loss plan. In this scenario, Your Rebel Dreams (the first book) is like choosing which diet you think would be best for you and your body. Your Rebel Plans would be the phase where you are actually structuring and implementing your weight loss plan. I would call this book the maintenance phase: You’ve established a plan, worked the plan, and now you need a longer range vision about how to maintain everything that you’ve worked so hard for.

The book has a relatively straightforward structure. There is a section of introductory material, some of which was familiar from the previous books. Here, she sets the foundations about the particular constructs of all these books, like the Passion Pyramid and the Heroine’s Journey. The bulk of the book looks at the ten key pillars of life as defined by the author. Specifically, she has you look at each of these areas and assess your strengths and weaknesses so you can set small goals for improvement. She then gives ten tips that will help with that particular pillar. There are check-ins at the end of each month for each pillar where you state what your goal was, how you did with it, and steps from there. I found this a fascinating approach to try to keep yourself and your life not only in balance but in a constant state of improvement, a little kaizen. If you’ve read the other books, you’ll most likely enjoy this maintenance phase of your Rebel Diva life. If you haven’t read the other two books, you probably should before you delve into this one as those two books will truly set the foundation for this one.

Short Book without Much Substance

This book is an odd combination of parts. The first forty pages or so are a brief look at some Taoist and ancient Chinese concepts. The author certainly overstates in both the subtitle and the book description what this book is. It is certainly not a “proven unique approach to mental health and behavior at the spiritual level,” as the subtitle says. Instead, the bulk of the book is the 20 very short Taoist “lessons”—just a few paragraphs really—on principles and ideas that end with actions to do or actions to avoid. Some of these are written more like affirmations and others more like directions of what to do and not to do. There are just three in each category (do and do not), so there isn’t much substance in these between these and the few paragraphs also in the “lessons.” The book is clearly written by someone who is a non-native English speaker. Not only does this cause problems with grammar, punctuation, and usage—which are unfortunately scattered throughout the book—but it also gives rise to some lines that are just completely nonsensical. For instance, in one of the first lessons, the author states, “ ‘Pile’ is not the opposite of ‘face’, [sic] that have [sic] two sides.” I have no clue what that sentence is supposed to mean. What do “pile” and “face” have to do with each other? I’m thinking something got mistranslated along the way. I believe EVERY writer needs to have their work professionally edited, but it is even more critical when the writer is not a native speaker of the language he or she is writing in.

I did enjoy some of the quotes from Lao Tzu, particularly the one that went with her first lesson, “If you don’t change direction, then you might end up where you are heading.” This is only a 59-page PDF that I received as an ARC, but on page 11, the author already asks for reviews at Amazon. I find that so annoying.

Then the last 20 or so pages is a quiz that you can take to see which Chinese element you most embody. Honestly, I found this book to have so little substance as to not be worth my time, really. I do enjoy reading books on a variety of spiritual topics, so I was looking forward to this book to see what wisdom and information I could glean. The book was so poorly done and so brief that it didn’t have much to offer.

Concepts Standing Between Us and True Understanding

The subtitle of this book definitely intrigues: The little space between what you know and don’t know. In this book, the author seeks to make us aware of this gap that can exist personally, professionally, and culturally. It isn’t a step-by-step blueprint to, say, help you better understand your relationship with your spouse or how to understand your company’s corporate culture. Rather, he looks at several concepts like gatekeepers, intelligence, bias, and specialists; and gives insight into them so that you can better understand what these really mean and how they are reflected in our experience of the world. Within each concept, he gives an example, sometimes a counterpoint, and a one-sentence takeaway. Given that some of the concepts can be a little intangible, the book is surprisingly engaging and makes you think about some of your preconceptions about yourself, others, and the greater world. It is a book best taken in small doses so you can ponder the information presented. The line isn’t always clearly drawn about how a concept is necessarily part of the gap between the known and the unknown, but the ideas are still interesting to think about. If you want to explore some of what could be seen as barriers to true understanding, you may very well enjoy this book. I know I did.