Book Review: Keep the Memories, Loose the Stuff by M. Paxton et al.

Keep the Memories, Loose the Stuff by Matt Paxton with Jordan Michael Smith

Matt Paxton fell into his career as a decluttering specialist when he had to deal with family homes that were full of a lot of stuff. Just sorting out who wanted what and what was valuable (and should be sold) and what was salvageable (and should be donated) and what was just plain junk (and should be thrown away) was an overwhelming task, especially when grieving the loss of a loved one. He got very good at the work and went professional, starting with clients in Richmond, Virginia, and working his way up to hosting a PBS series called Legacy List with Matt Paxton. Over time, he developed the concept of a "Legacy List," a set of items that have stories interwoven with them and are what the owner wants to pass on to family and friends. These are the things to keep from one's home (or someone else's home).

The book is a combination of how-to and self-help. He walks readers through the various stages of sorting, dealing with, and cleaning out all the stuff that accumulates over the years. He gives practical advice on where to take things after figuring out what the personal and economic values of various items are. He has a lot of good, actionable advice to pass on, along with a resource guide at the end of the book detailing what to do with most any item found in a home, from antiques to collections (jewelry, stamps, magazines, comic books, etc.) to paperwork. It's comprehensive and useful.

Paxton also focuses on the emotional side of downsizing or moving. He uses a lot of examples from his work and starts with his own difficult decisions when he was going to move from Virginia to Georgia. People have a sense of loss, especially if the home to be sorted was owned by a deceased relative. Paxton got people to tell the stories of various items or rooms in the house as a way to build trust and to help the person let go (or realize what is really important). He goes back often to the difference between sentimental value and market value. Often something important to a person, something that has a lot of memories attached, is valued more highly than a stranger would value it. Telling the stories helps to clarify the real value and whether something is worth keeping. It also helps with the grieving process.

The book is interesting and helpful. The stories are entertaining and provide drama and practical examples of Paxton's advice. 

Recommended for anyone wanting to downsize for a move or a decluttering project. We could all use less stuff in our lives.

Sample Quote:

Ultimately, that's what my work is about--leaving the past behind in an emotionally satisfying way to step boldly into the future. People tend to tell me the items they want to bring with them in a move--or talk about agonizing over what to bring--instead of telling me the life they want to live where they are going. But you live your best life when you understand that what really matters is not possessions but memories. [p. 121]

Book Review: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey updated with fresh insights by Sean Covey

I was surprised to learn that this classic self-help book was first published in 1989, less than forty years ago. The advice given in it has a timeless feel; the founding principles pre-date the Me-Focused paradigm of the last fifty or sixty years. Covey did a lot of research into self-help literature from the past century, identifying a shift from improvement through building character to improvement through emphasizing personality. Rather than change oneself into someone better, modern self-help focuses on affirming oneself as good enough. Covey's return to principles and character building is a shift in the right direction. 

The seven habits focus on intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. A person needs to identify the principles that will govern their life. He encourages readers to make a personal mission statement that embodies their highest ideals. Working with the goals in the mission statement, behavior can be transformed from reactive and competitive to proactive and cooperative. While others tout the value of working together to achieve goals, Covey presents practical abilities, actions, and attitudes that make cooperation fruitful. 

The book is inspiring but also challenging. Covey gives tips and encourages readers to create a mission statement for themselves as well as for their family and their business. Covey wants readers to think about good and bad relationships and reevaluate their value and how to get the best from others who are easy or hard to deal with. He uses so many examples of clients and others who have put his recommendations to use and had amazing and surprising successes. Many self-help books focus on one technique or one insight that helped the author transform their lives; such books often read like they would not apply in your own concrete situation (just think of all the various types of diet books). This book is much more grounded and holistic, with the sort of advice that will never go out of style or not fit a certain personality.

Highly recommended.

Book Review: microShifts by Gary Jansen

microShifts: Transforming Your Life One Step at a Time by Gary Jansen

This light and quick book is all about making small changes in your life to make it a better life, or more importantly, make you a better person. The challenge is to find a spare fifteen minutes, or five minutes, or one minute, or thirty seconds, or five seconds, to do something new and develop it into a habit by doing it every day. The shift can be something as small as saying "hello" to someone, even a stranger, with eye contact and sincerity. It's a very small thing but can be impactful for the stranger and for you. Another shift might be to foster an attitude of having no opinion. Rather than judging others or yourself, just note the fact that you find problematic and move on--maybe your clothes fit tighter than usual or someone espouses a ridiculous (to you) opinion. The instinct to criticize does not have the concept of constructive criticism built in. Maybe you don't have to correct every wrong person on the internet (which, let's be honest, might sometimes be yourself)? The book is full of a lot of good, actionable advice (over forty examples) that can make a difference in your own life. Jansen ends with a call to make one small change for twenty-eight days and see how it sticks. 

Highly recommended--this is a self-help book that is upbeat and practical and easy to put into action.

Book Review: The Life We're Looking For by Andy Crouch

The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World by Andy Crouch

Modern conveniences have only gotten more and more convenient. We can communicate with almost anyone on the planet, and not just in text or on the phone but with live video. We can order food, drink, books, clothes, entertainment, gadgets, and anything else at the click of a button, often with the item arriving in a matter of hours, let alone days or weeks. The world is at our fingertips. 

And yet, there is a crisis of genuine contact between people. Text messages are notorious for being misinterpreted; even videos don't quite give us the same experience that we have when we meet in person. Convenience has come at a cost. Do you even make eye contact at checkout counters? Do you even see the same people at the same store? Do you even see them as people? Of course, the opposite is distressingly true--do others sees you as a person? A person is more than the spending power of their credit card or the entertainment value of their presence. What we learn in modern interactions is not knowing a person as a person. 

Andy Crouch looks at this dehumanizing quality of modern life and convincingly documents the ways that life has become less personal. Technology can do amazing things and can be helpful in certain ways, but the dominate tone is a false promise of fulfillment, fulfilling only basic needs and wants, not looking to deeper and more specifically human needs. Crouch provides ideas for how to counteract the numbing and isolating effects of our technologically-dominated world. 

He builds on ideas started two thousand years ago, when the Roman Empire was at its height of world domination. A new movement started, in homes and around tables, where everyone had equal dignity: the scholars, the government officials, the scribes, the slaves, the females. Christianity provided a sea change in human culture with its emphasis on human dignity and care for even the most marginalized and supposedly worthless members of society. While it seems that such a scheme is doomed to failure, look where the Roman empire is today (in history books and museums) and where Christians are (all over the world, in hospitals and hospices, in food banks and soup kitchens). Crouch recommends we build households, places where people of different stages and stations in life gather and truly live together. Some households only have family, but often people who are not blood relations live in common and still develop close bonds and give mutual support. These are communities like the early Christian communities, where people would gather to pray and eat and serve each other. Such a lifestyle is unglamorous and won't wind up in history books or museums, but it will last for generations to come and will make the world a better place.

This book is inspirational without being ham-fistedly religious. While referencing Christianity, Crouch does not argue that we depend on grace or supernatural interventions in order to heal the wounds in modern society. He is not telling anyone to go to church or to pray to God (he does not write about that). Crouch keeps it on a humanist level, even while acknowledging that the problems of hedonistic, materialistic culture are the results of serving Mammon, which Jesus claims in Matthew 6:24 is what you are serving if you aren't serving God. People need to make priorities and some priorities are better than others.

Highly recommended, and it's a quick read too!

SAMPLE QUOTE: "The privacy we cherish is constantly in danger of curdling into isolation." [p. 160]

Book Review: Humor, Seriously by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas

Humor, Seriously: Why Humor is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas

Of all the weapons in the corporate arsenal, the most unwieldy and least wielded is humor. CEOs are not generally known for being clowns or spontaneous or creative. In a big company, the head has a lot of responsibility weighing on it. Can levity help lighten the load? That's the question this book examines in a very light-hearted and well-researched way.

The book starts with a look at humor and different styles that people tend toward (there's even a personal assessment at the back of the book and on the website, I came out as a Sweetheart). The other tendency they look at is the loss of humor, especially as we get older and wind up in a work setting. Employees want to be taken seriously, both the new people who might fear showing vulnerability and the old people who also might fear vulnerability. But humor has some great benefits, easing tense situations and building interpersonal relationships. Any workplace can benefit from better-connected individuals. Connections between co-workers, between companies and clients, and even between rivals can be built through humor and will foster trust and understanding. The authors document such successes using real-life examples, data, and cartoons. The book also examines pitfalls with using humor and how to handle bad situations caused by mishandled humor (e.g. jokes that are in bad taste for a variety of reason, the famous "Gray Areas" of humor). 

The humanizing effects of humor are valuable outside of corporate/work life as is described in "Chapter 7.5" of the book. A lot of other books have talked about the work/life balance and the authors here ably demonstrate the worth of humor in all our human interactions.

The casual, jokey tone (what other tone could they have had?) fits well with the ideas. The tone also helps to get through the never ending lists of researchers who have done studies that support their arguments. The balance between data and anecdotes is good, making this very readable and very convincing.

Recommended.

Book Review: The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton

The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton

In a combination of philosophy and self-help, Alain de Botton looks at six philosophers and considers how their attitudes can help to deal with problems in life. Here's a quick overview:

1. Socrates and the consolation for unpopularity--Socrates often questioned other people about their lives, especially their fundamental beliefs. He drew out the irrational or contradictory aspects of their ideas, often annoying or befuddling people. He wound up under trial for corrupting youth and denying the gods. He was sentenced to death, an outcome he accepting with surprising equanimity. Socrates always judged things with reason and logic; he was indifferent to popular opinion. Sometimes popular opinion is right and sometimes it is wrong. Reason is a safer guide in life.
2. Epicurus and the consolation for not having enough money--Epicurus has a reputation problem. In modern parlance, "epicurean" means having very refined tastes, basically appreciating the best things in life, which are often the most expensive. Desire for the pleasurable is central to Epicurus's philosophy. But he moves pretty quickly from the delights of food, drink, and sex. For him, the highest pleasures are having friends, having basic needs met, and having time to reflect on the truly highest things. Money can buy pleasures, but it does not guarantee friendships or knowledge of what is truly best in life. A poor person can have these and be content. Happiness is possible; an excess of money is not required.
3. Seneca and the consolation for frustration--Seneca lived in a very turbulent time during the Roman Empire. He wound up having to kill himself during the reign of Nero. Seneca was a Stoic, recognizing that chance or fate is not a moral force that rewards the good and punishes the bad. Fate is blind and capricious, doling out good and evil indiscriminately. Complaining about its unfairness is not helpful; resisting its randomness is futile. The wise person looks at the course of what happens and adjusts expectations and actions accordingly.
4. Montaigne and the consolation for inadequacy--Montaigne discoursed on overrated things by pointing out the salient feature of them--they are overrated. To him, education had fallen into the trap of being about ephemeral details of reality rather than about understanding reality and the human condition. In short, they taught facts rather than wisdom. The worst of all were the philosophical types who wrote inscrutable books--if we can't figure them out, is it because we are dumb or because there is no discernible knowledge there? Wisdom and happiness are easier to achieve when the goals are not falsely set too high in the sky. Maybe the solution to inadequacy is to see the measure itself is inadequate.
5. Schopenhauer and the consolation for a broken heart--Schopenhauer was another down-to-earth philosopher who saw a struggle between the individual and the will-to-life which every person has. The will-to-life seeks the continuation of the species, desiring not only offspring but that offspring be better off than their parents before them. The practical consequence is that adults often seek (subconsciously) a mate who will make up for their defects and produce better children. But for Schopenhauer, that means the mates themselves are not a good match--their non-mutual defects become a burden. So a love life is fraught with peril (which was Schopenhauer's personal experience). The only path to satisfaction is to understand the way the world is and to accept it.
6. Nietzsche and the consolation for difficulties--Nietzsche had a roundabout path to his final theory of happiness. He started in school with the chance discovery of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation which he immediately adopted as his philosophical bible. Other experiences drew him away from Schopenhauer and onto his own path. Nietzsche's philosophy morphed into the praise of the man who could overcome difficulties and adversities to achieve great things. He often uses the metaphor of climbing a mountain. It would be easy to stay in the valley, in the mundane. The work to ascend a mountain gives great rewards. He disparaged a lot of other things, including alcohol, Christianity, and just about every other philosopher in the history of philosophy, as pandering to the weakness in humans. Overcoming difficulties, not succumbing to them or dodging them, is the path to fulfillment.

The book is entertainingly written and has a smattering of pictures to illustrate points. Each "consolation" gives a brief biography and a summation of the philosopher's thoughts. But the big picture seems to be lost. There's no unified knowledge here. Schopenhauer and Montaigne talk about the value of lowering expectations while Nietzsche despises such an attitude. Socrates tries to change other people's attitudes by showing their sloppy thinking; Seneca just bears up under the sloppy thinking. The book has no summation at the end because the parts don't fit together so easily. The title would be more accurate as "The Consolations of Philosophies." Readers can pick which one is helpful in the moment, though they may have to choose differently under different circumstances.

Mildly recommended--there's a lot of good bits but an overall disconnect.

Book Review: Humility Rules by J. Augustine Wetta, O.S.B.

Humility Rules: Saint Benedict's 12-Step Guide to Genuine Self-Esteeem by J. Augustine Wetta, O.S.B.

In a semi-parody of self-help books, J. Augustine Wetta crafts a twelve-step program from Saint Benedict's The Rule, his guide to running a monastery. The Rule is amazingly thorough, covering everything from praying at certain hours to dealing with material goods to dealing with monks who have gone bad. Wetta has a surprising amount of material to draw from. Benedict describes a "ladder of humility" by which a monk can grown in holiness. The twelve rungs of the ladder are "fear of God, self-denial, obedience, perseverance, repentance, serenity, self-abasement, prudence, silence, dignity, discretion, and reverence." [p. 19] Most self-help books on the market are trying to boost people up by learning how to love yourself or promote yourself. Wetta (through Benedict) presents a way that requires an honest assessment of personal strengths and weaknesses. But the focus is on relating to other people and to God, not on the self. Wetta gives the rungs new names riffing on self-help standards: self-denial becomes "don't be true to yourself;" repentance becomes "put your worst foot forward;" prudence becomes "think inside the box;" etc. It's a brilliant parody and shows how the life of holiness is so far from the life of pop-culture.

Each step has its own chapter, with light and short discussions of how it is applied in thought, word, and deed. Wetta uses examples from his own life. He's a Benedictine monk at Saint Louis Abbey where he teaches and coaches rugby. He grew up on an island in the Gulf of Mexico and has a great love of water sports. The examples he uses are very relatable and make his points well. Each discussion comes with a little suggested homework, often quite challenging things like "Let someone less competent than you tell you what to do." [p. 34] That will put some humility in you for sure.

Wetta includes a lot of medieval, monk-centric pictures to which he has added humorous elements. Most are sports-related, like the cover showing Saint Benedict carrying a skateboard. They are a lot of fun and add to the lightness of touch that makes the book so charming and convincing.

Highly recommended--I will probably re-read this next Lent!