Refuse to Choose! , by Barbara Sher -- Book Review

Book Review

Many of us have imagined what it would be like if we could do everything that sounds interesting. I could be a writer on Mondays, an astronomer on Tuesdays, a gardener on Wednesdays. Just for variety, make that ... an astronomer every other Tuesday, and a brain surgeon on the alternate Tuesdays. That's just for next few months. After that, something completely different.

Now, back to reality. The length of a human life span limits the number of careers we can train for. Even if you could live for centuries, no employer would sign you up to make yourself available on alternate Tuesdays. Even to the extent that reality and social institutions do permit some variety in exploring our interests, our culture pushes you to choose and specialize. This pressure seems to attain the urgency of a moral principle. Your parents and teachers told you a thousand times that a normal person will "stick to it" and "buckle down." Your school staff began to pressure you to select a major when you were about 16. If your neighbors were to call you an amateur or a dilettante, that sounds like an obscenity being hurled.

Councelor and author Barbara Sher says that Scanners should be recognized as a personality type. Although society isn't sufficiently advanced to recognize it, being interested by many more things, but each of them to a lesser degree of time commitment, is a valuable skill. It's a talent for exploring new experiences and ideas. It's a gift. Look at Leonardo da Vinci [11-12], who filled numerous notebooks as he jumped back and forth among ideas for works of art, sketches of futuristic inventions, notes on biology and other sciences, and his philosophical observations. Look at Aristotle, who attracted a following who listened to him lecture on physics, politics, poetry, and more. Aristotle, we will note, "never picked a major." [39] If today's society doesn't appreciate the Scanner, this shows as much ignorance as when earlier societies declared people to be misfits if they were left-handed. [21]

About the Author

Barbara Sher is a speaker, career/lifestyle coach, and the best-selling author of eight books on goal achievement. Her books have sold millions of copies and been translated into dozens of languages. She has appeared on Oprah, The Today Show, 60 Minutes, CNN, and Good Morning America, and her popular public television specials air nationally throughout the year. Barbara has taught her revolutionary systems in universities, in Fortune 100 companies, and at professional conferences all over the world.

- From the Publisher

If you're a Scanner -- and, remember, that's a valid personality type, and you're entitled to it -- you may have been misdiagnosed as someone with ADD or depression. (The opposite is also a danger: that a person who really does have ADD or depression, incorrectly rationalizing that he or she is a Scanner, may neglect to have the condition treated.) [8]

How is a Scanner in modern times supposed to survive and be happy at the same time? "Until now," Barbara Sher says, "the manual has been missing." [10] Now the manual is here.

Barbara Sher will guide you, as you begin to keep a Daybook like that of da Vinci, not a journal in the usual sense of the word, but a place to record diversities and tangents. Jot down that plot idea for a great mystery novel -- which you'll probably never write. "Finishing a project is not the issue here," she says. [15] You only need to write enough so that you won't "forget why you were excited." [15] You could also write a blog online. [16] Go ahead and fill containers with a variety of magazine clippings, and let other people, who don't understand what you're doing, call it "clutter." [18] The author shares some of the correspondences she has received. Some of them express that her message give her readers the feeling that they have just been paroled from jail. [35] Now they have permission to be what they naturally are.

Now we can see that other people were wrong when they said that you never finish anything. "We don't know why the scanner is involved with a subject ... so we don't know when he's finished." As Sher likes to point out: although it looks as though the bee is attracted to the flower, the bee only wants the nectar. [29]

You will also begin to understand yourself more. Perhaps you knew generally that you have boredom-intolerance, but you have never tried to verbalize exactly why certain things but not others seem fascinating. Is it a matter of feeling certain sensations, or discovering something new, or learning how things work? [32-34] After knowing yourself better, you will begin to deal with the problem that you "always hear a clock ticking." [36] Consider the six major obstacles that cause your panic, and the six effective actions to address them. [41-44]

When you feel too busy to do what you love, reflect on how it felt the last times "you sat on the steps as the evening grew dark or played with your dog and had nothing else to do." [65] As a gift to yourself, "schedule a Micro Nervous Breakdown at least once a day." [66]

Perhaps the most problematic area, the discussion of which begins in chapter 4, is the fear of being stuck in a boring job. Make that ... "another" boring job. No matter what the job is, it won't take long before it is transformed from an adventure into a routine ... right? But not so fast. Let's first dispel the myths associated with that, and really explore that situation, like the fact that teachers get summers off [130], or the solution found by the author's client who lives in North Carolina and telecommutes by modem to a job in Oregon. [129] We have to survey the facts and highlight the actions that may be helpful.

This reviewer is delighted to have found this book. I'm writing these articles online in the first place because, after obtaining a state teaching certification, I decided that I didn't want teach, and after obtaining two engineering degrees, I decided that I didn't want to be an engineer. Looking at the way I keep my office-den (and my basement), I think I must be a Scanner. And after I upload this review, I'm going to read the book again.

In term of social contribution, if not sales rank, I do not exaggerate when I project that Refuse To Choose! must be one of the top twenty self-transformation books of this century.

Book review by Mike Lepore for crimsonbird.com

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