Two bullets in the one week – I hope you don’t feel under fire. The reason for this one is that I just received a link to a review of my latest book, the ME MYTH and I wanted to share it with you. There are actually two reasons why I want to share it.
The first is that it is written by Ben Zipper from the Australian Women and Leadership Forum, an excellent organisation the encourages and supports the role of women in leadership roles around the country. It is an honour for me to receive such a review from this organisation. And the second reason for sharing the review is that often other people explain what we do or what our strengths are better than we do ourselves. Ben has captured the very essence of the ME MYTH in ways that I could not. If you struggle to tell other people what you do really well, ask others to define it for you.
I would love you to take a moment and read the review below, perhaps share it with those in your address book and then visit the Australian Women and Leadership Forum – CLICK HERE.
Like many of his peers in the professional development sphere, Andrew Griffiths has written a slew of books on everything from building your business to having a life in the doing.
Two things, however, set Andrew apart. First, his childhood origins are remarkable for the tragedy that he experienced. As an orphan growing up in Western Australia, Andrew survived neglect and abuse.
Second, this upbringing has clearly played a role in the kind of inspiring and motivating consultant that Andrew has become.
He is regularly described as contagiously positive, funny and endlessly enthusiastic. He has taken what life has thrown at him and grown from it rather than letting it overwhelm him.
It’s an outlook that is borne out in his latest book. In The Me Myth, he argues that we are brought down by the overarching attitude that ‘it’s all about me’.
Instead of being self-centred and self-focused in our search for answers, Andrew believes that we need to start looking outwards to find the greatest lessons in life.
Andrew argues his case both passionately and succinctly. He shares stories of his life with frankness as a launching point to provoke us to consider some of his more difficult challenges.
He takes us on the journey of being abandoned by his mother at the age of six months, and shows us the cathartic release he found when, as an adult, he was able to empathise with her difficult decision.
In the context of his tales of teenage delinquency, crime and drug abuse, we are called on to reflect on our own moral code.
Like the author’s life, The Me Myth is a remarkable book. On reading the short chapter on getting back to doing the things that you love, I had to put the book down and write my own list of passionate activities. With a small list that included doing jigsaws and hiking, I quickly realised that I was deeply fortunate to have read this book.
If anything, the book’s title does the contents a disservice. Absent in the title is the subtle paradox that by turning our attention away from our immediate, self-focused pleasures and desires, we can actually focus more on developing our larger, more significant selves.
Nonetheless, if sales of Andrew Griffith’s previous books are any indication, The Me Myth will likely find a wide audience.
In a milieu in which advertising and the media bombard us with constant pressures to tend to our own selves, The Me Myth ought to find a counterpoint to the hegemonic forces that surround us.
Our rating: 10/10
By Ben Zipper, Co-editor, Australian Women & Leadership Forum™ e-newsletter (www.womensforum.com.au).
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