Quite simply the wisest and most reassuring book I've read in a long time, written by someone who, it feels, if you met her, you'd instantly want to befriend. Come to think of it I did meet her. She tried on my glasses.
There are a million and one self-help books out there, but it can seem hard to convert the words on the page into meaningful life change. There's a reason Bridget Jones had a whole shelf of them. This, however, I found engaging and inspiring and offered me lots of new ideas that seemed very much like an extension of common sense, but which, like the best therapy, enabled me to see things in a new way – and had me passing on advice to friends for weeks. I folded down the corners of many a page to come back to again.
'Beginning a new habit, or ending an old one can feel like letting go of a
rope that swings a mile above the ground. So we feel reluctant to let
go, after all, we’ve survived so far doing what we’ve done, why risk it.
But if we do risk it, if we do let go of the rope, we find the ground
was only one inch below our feet anyway. That mile we felt was there,
was only in our heads.'
If you have 14 minutes you can watch a slightly nervous looking Philippa talking about the ideas in the book here.
Anyway, reading this felt like a good way to start this year, and I've already bought three copies to give away. I'm inspired to take up new things, push back the edges of my comfort zone and nurture my relationships.
Have I really only read 4 books so far this year? In my defence I'm still ploughing on with Will Self's Umbrella (not that I'm not enjoying it, just not a quick read), and have also been distracted by a book of journalism by Andrew Mueller that came my way. So posts on both of those to come.
