Title: Stop Doing that Sh*t: End Self-Sabotage and Demand Your Life Back
Author: Gary John Bishop
Genre: Self-help, Personal Development
What’s it About: There are three core beliefs that you hold about yourself, life and other people. You have reached these conclusions at some point throughout your childhood, based on your own experiences and background. These conclusions–whatever they may be–are the ones holding you back, and causing you to self-sabotage over and over and over again.
Have you ever had a moment where things were going great, and you thought you were on your way towards a new you, a new life? And then suddenly things went kerplunk and you’re back at where you started? Yep, that’s the work of your core beliefs–called the Three Saboteurs. They hold you back, they keep you on this treadmill where you think you’re going forward but you’re actually staying in the same location.
Once you dive deep and discover what these three saboteurs are, you then can understand where you are going wrong, and leave them where they belong–in the past. Because these conclusions are made on the past, and while we need to learn some important lessons from our pasts, the vast majority of human beings are beholding the future to their past. Their past dictates how they will approach things in the future.
Instead of coming from lessons learned from the past, it’s time to decide what you want to do in the present based on the future. Plan out the future you want, and then work your way backwards. It’s the way large corporations do it when it comes to their missions and their values. They don’t just work on the present–they have a vision of what things will look like in two, five, ten years, and they work their way backwards to the present, in order to start creating the vision. You can apply the same principles to your daily life.
Verdict: There is a lot of good information in the book, and I love Gary’s no-bullsh*t approach to things. I love how he just goes for what needs to be said, that honestly, not many of us want to hear. In this sense, the book is very similar to his prior book, which I read a while back, Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of Your Head and Into Your Life. As per Gary’s style, it breaks down things in easy terms, and actually makes you think about things, wonder how to approach them, and ruminate upon them. So there is a process of self-discovery. I did enjoy his outlook on how to get the life we want–by looking to the future and making plans to act on right now that will lead to that future–which is a form of manifestation that goes beyond happy thoughts and day dreams, and one rooted in taking action that leads you to the future. Once you put all your energy into that, you can walk away from the past, and you’ll see how things build upon each other and you’ll achieve your goals in no time.
That said, I found this book to be a bit dry. While I couldn’t put down Unfu*k Yourself when I read it, this book I struggled to get through, and actually ended up putting it down for a two week period (hence the delay in updating the blog). I feel like there’s a lot of fluff in there; information that doesn’t give much to the book, and rather takes away from the core lessons. There are stories in there and Gary sometimes goes off on a disjointed tangent into things that left me wondering just what the heck does that have to do with the main point he was making. As a result, I feel that if he had removed a lot of that fluff the book would have been more impactful than it was, by being that much shorter (from the 127 pages it is to maybe 40 maximum) and straight to the point.
I still think that this is a worthwhile read, but definitely feel free to skip through certain sections of chapters if it gets boring–you won’t miss much but still understand his approach.
The Girl with The Red Backpack 