Title: How to Save Your Own Life: 15 Lessons on Finding Hope in Unexpected Places
Author: Michael Gates Gill
Review Copy Provided by: Gotham Books via TLC Book Tours
About the Book: Michael Gill's lemons-to-lemonade memoir chronicled his transformative years working at Starbucks after losing his high-powered job, his marriage, and his health (he developed a brain tumor). In response to overwhelming requests from readers who wanted to know how they, too, could weather downturns, he has distilled his lessons into fifteen meaningful lessons, including:
A-Leap...With Faith: Sometimes it pays to leap without looking and say yes without thinking (Gill accepted the Starbucks job immediately, on a whim).
A-Let Yourself...Be Helped: Pride is even more paralyzing than fear.
A-Look...with Respect at Every Individual You See: Gill was raised to avoid eye contact with those who were different, cloistered in a privileged world. Now he realizes the potential in all who cross his daily path.
A-Lose...Your Watch (and Cell Phone and PDA ): Our obsession with productivity produces madness, not gladness.
Offering living proof that extraordinary happiness is found in ordinary moments, How to Save Your Own Life provides empowering words and hope for anyone facing a reversal of fortune. True fortune, Gill discovered, lies not in fate but in discovering the innate capacity we all possess to rescue ourselves.
My Review: While I haven't completely finished reading this book, because there is so much to it, I am going to give you my thoughts so far for the tour today. Michael Gates Gill wrote another book, How Starbucks Saved My Life, which I haven't read, but got great reviews. This book, is full of new anecdotes from Michael about his father, author Brendan Gill, his mother, family and friends, and people he has met either at Starbucks or out on the road.
Most of us are so busy with life, that we take for granted the little things that are usually common sense. Gill gives us some lessons to remember, like live each day like it's your last and listen to your own heart, for example. These are two that are really sticking with me right now. It's easy to read these, but hard to live. Life gets hard for many, but everyone has it in them to better themselves. Michael Gill is living proof of someone who loses everything in life: getting fired from a job with a six-figure salary, his family in a divorce, and possibly his life when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. If he can come back from that, and find inspiration, then anyone can. His book is an inspiration to me, and one that I look forward to finishing and putting the lessons into practice in my own life. I hope that you will consider picking it up!
Here are the other stops on the tour this week, if you'd like to visit them.
Monday, January 25th: Silver and Grace
Tuesday, January 26th: Inventing My Life
Wednesday, January 27th: Write for a Reader
Thursday, January 28th: Confessions of a Book a Holic
Friday, January 29th: Simply Forties
3 comments:
So glad you enjoyed this!
I liked it, but had read the first book a year before. I figured Michael explained enough for someone who hadn't read the first, but good to hear from your point of view.
Sounds like a book full of good advice!
I'm glad you're enjoying it so far! I liked it too. It isn't easy living each day as if it's your last but the reminder that it really COULD BE is a good one. Helps you to put things into perspective a bit, right?
Thanks so much for taking the time to read/review How To Save Your Own Life, and for telling your readers about it! We really appreciate i
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