The head of our kids’ school gave my wife a book last year, and as soon as she brought it home, I couldn’t stop eyeballing this thing…
The title is Good Life Practice – A Quick Start Guide To Mindful Self Regulation and it was written by David Mochel.
There is nothing fancy about the cover, kinda plain and boring actually, and I don’t know Mochel’s story at all…
As a matter of fact, I have never even heard of the dude and definitely had no idea about any sort of writing prowess he may possess… Yet, I do know the head of the school and I have a lot of respect for her, so I figured if she went so far to give Tarah a book, this thing must contain some serious intellectual savagery…
Spot on.
When I opened the book, the first section was titled “Top 5 reasons NOT to read this book.”
- There is nothing new here
- I am not enlightened
- This is not a feel-good book
- It is not a quick fix
- You don’t need fixing
I love this approach…
So many people claim to have these revolutionary life hacks that will instantly make us all perfectly happy and healthy for the rest of our lives until the 500 virgins come to rescue us from the planet…
They claim to be more knowledgeable and experienced while oftentimes speaking down to us and scolding us as if we are their kids that can’t stop screwing up. The ironic thing is that a lot of these people are socially inept and actually haven’t done shit with their lives…
Look, we here at the Daily Hustle are 💯 into life improvement strategies and we are constantly on the lookout for anything that has the potential to positively affect our lives…
That said, we must always consider the message and the source.
We all prefer different sorts of people but simply by the honesty and humility shown in the opening of the book, I knew I was going to like the dude and the message…
The funny thing is that Mochel is right…
- None of this shit is new… A lot of what he champions in the book is thousands of years old…
- Mochel is not enlightened… He is somebody just like the rest of us that worries about way too many things outside of his control. He utilizes the practices in the book the same way I use the Daily Hustle to help bring direction into my life…
- This really isn’t a feel-good book… It challenges us to come to grips with reality and actually asks us questions that have the potential to make us uncomfortable…
- No quick fix here… Everything that’s celebrated in the book has to do with making it part of our lifestyles…
- We don’t need fixing… We need to pull our heads out of our asses and realize that we are just fine the way we are. Sure, we can all clean up areas of our life to become more efficient and effective with our actions, and just like my Mom tells our kids all the time… “You are smart, you are beautiful, you are important and Grammy loves you!!!”
Ultimately, when we approach any situation with humble honesty, we may not sell more books but we will have a much greater impact than any wannabe sage blowing absolute smoke up your rear end…
-EB