Customer Reviews

Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently

5 star:		(57)
4 star:		(74)
3 star:		(55)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Today women are better educated, have better jobs, better pay, more choices about mates, careers ... just about everything. But that has not translated into women being happier. Actually with more choices the opposite is true. Womens overall happiness has been on a steady decline since 1972. This decline in happiness occurs across the board, regardless of whether women have children, how many they have, or how much they earn.

Marcus Buckingham is a well known researcher. He has written five previous books which centered around the concept that each person will be happiest when they are working from their greatest strength. Find Your Strongest Life got its start from a three hour workshop with Oprah. The workshop was conducted with 30 talented but unfulfilled women.

In his mission statement Marcus says, "My mission is to help each person identify her strengths, take them seriously and offer them to the world."

The book starts off by citing 10 myths about women. Here are just a few: As women get older they become more engaged and fulfilled. (False) If women had more free time they would feel less stressed. (False) Having children makes women happier. (children create more stress) At work, women are relegated to the lower level roles. (False) There are ten that Marcus addresses and it is the starting point for the book.

The book is in three parts. The first part deals with the paradox of modern life. Women have more but it is not bringing the happiness they thought/hoped it would.

Part two is a guide to how to live your strongest life. Here the book goes into great detail in how to identify and live your strongest life. Part three is basically a Q & A section.

Most women I know feel over stressed, under-appreciated and unfulfilled. They are trying to juggle too many things. This book is the manual they have been hoping for. It will dispel a lot of false beliefs. There are some very valuable lessons about how to identify your strengths and then start living them.

Marcus cites specific examples of women and how they found their strongest life.

If you are a woman struggling with: "What's life all about? Do I have to settle for or stay in a job I don't like? Do I have to give up my career for my family?" then this is a must read. If you know of a woman going through trying to find her way in life, get a copy and give it to her.

Most people have been taught that to be successful you have to work on your weaknesses. Marcus advocates the totally opposite approach. Identify your strengths and build your life around them. You will only be fulfilled when you work on your strengths. This is your natural state.

This is a well written, easy to read book. It is full of great information that any woman should be able to gain insight into their lives and put the advice to work right away.

Highly recommended.

I do not recommend this book. The title leads you to believe that Marcus Buckingham applies his "decades of research" to once again tell us how simply finding your strength will make you a happier and more successful woman. Don't fall for it - he doesn't prove anything close.

I volunteered to read and review this book as part of the Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers Team. In all fairness, I must reveal that I have read another one of Buckingham's books, First Break All the Rules, and I hated it also. Buckingham is extremely well known for his other books on strengths, and he is a very good writer, so I predict this book will also sell very well.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I is entitled "Something's got to give" and details the unique challenges and stressors that women face. This part is actually pretty good. He makes some very important points in this section, the most important being that "over the last few decades, women have become less happy with their lives, and as women get older, they get sadder" (p. 21). That conclusion appears to be supported by independent research.

Buckingham's explanation for this is that women are not focusing their attention "the challenge of all the different roles you play is not that you don't have enough hours in the day. The challenge of all these roles is that during the hours you choose to work you have too many different things going on at any one time to focus properly no each of them. Your time isn't stretched; your attention is." (pp. 41-42). He supports this conclusion based on the work of Barry Schwartz The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (2005).

Chapters one through three are pretty well supported with notes with references that can be found in the back of the book. The next five chapters, where he presents his strength based solution to the problem he identified in Part I, have no notes - none. We don't get another note until chapter nine and the last six chapters have very few notes to support his claims and advice. So much for a book "packed with research."

Buckingham tells women that they need to be strong, and he defines this as 1) successful, 2) instinctively looking forward to tomorrow, 3) growing and learning, 4) needs fulfilled. He never tells us how he developed and verified this construct definition. He also measures this with only five questions:
* How often do you feel an emotional high in your life?
* How often do you find yourself positively anticipating your day?
* How often do you become so involved in what you are doing that you lose track of time?
* How often do you feel invigorated at the end of each day?
* How often do you get to do things you really like to do?

I won't bore you with psychometric theory, but I seriously doubt these five items hang together in a measure that is both reliable and valid. And we will never know how reliable and valid this measure is because Buckingham does not point us to the citation that shows where this measure has been subject to a peer-reviewed evaluation. That is a HUGE problem, and makes everything else he says from this point forward (p. 55) unsupportable.

If only women knew how to find their strengths and focus their attention on them, they would be happier. Sorry, I don't buy it - it is way too simplistic. Let me give you an example:

"To solve the problems in your life - whether a hostile work environment, a sister-in-law who passively-aggressively criticizes your mothering technique, or a husband who doesn't help our at home - you must do the same: focus your attention on what "working" would look like, organize your life to create a few more of these "working" moments, and then celebrate them." (p. 178)

Buckingham tell us to try to see any behavior, whether good or bad, as a thread of strength. Benevolent distortion and positive illusion are other terms he uses to label this technique.

So if you work for a bully boss, the pathway to the positive is to find the strength in what they are doing, focus on that, and celebrate it? Give me a break. If you have a bully boss at work, your misery is NOT YOU. It is a dysfunctional corporate culture that is allowing people to behave badly. The way out is not to change your perspective on the abuse, but to change your situation - work with your company and its leaders to help change the culture or get the hell out of there!

The final sixty-three pages of the book are suggestions for tactics to lead a strong life. There is some appealing advice in this final section, but you should take it for exactly what it is - anecdotal advice.

I strongly recommend you do not waste your time with this book.

If you want a good book on happiness written by a real scientist, read The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyobomirsky

I feel as if Marcus Buckingham has good intentions to lead women toward success, it's just not my vision of success. And his image of a happy woman is nothing like my vision of a happy woman, perhaps because one of us IS a woman.

I like to live and let live because I believe each one of us has a unique path--and that once you find that path, you're on the road to your best life. Find Your Strongest Life seemed to promote one lifestyle: high-end exec who flies the red-eye to be sure to catch her son's school play (that also happens to be Buckingham's description of his own wife).

Which leads me to the comparisons in the book of the successful example of a woman, Anna and the unsuccessful example of a woman, Charlie. Charlie gave up her life to suit her husband's career, but she does have a pretty stable relationship inside the family. Anna went after what she wanted, even when what she wanted caused her to overlook her instinct that something wasn't quite right with the childcare she had chosen (her nanny fell asleep on the floor and the baby cried at the window for his parents all day--this went on for 3 weeks before Anna investigated).

I use those two examples as my example of the one-dimensional book this is. If you want to get on the road to success--you want that partnership at the firm and you're struggling to balance the guilt you may feel leaving everything else in life behind, then this is the book for you. Good luck on your journey. However, if you are looking for more than that, I suggest you keep searching. Try "Harmonic Wealth" by James Arthur Ray or "Finding Your Own North Star" by Martha Beck. And good luck to you too!

This time around, Marcus Buckingham offers many more tools instead of gadgets comparing Find Your Strongest Life to the Truth About You. I could relate to the check points of knowing you are living a strong life: feeling what you do fulfills you, feeling inspired to start each day, wanting to learn something new, and, your most important needs are being met by your circle of support. If prior to reading this book, I was asked to put into words "why" I felt my life was strong and happy, I would have only been able to say, "because I feel like I am in control of what I do." I am a partner in a small business so while I may feel like I often carry the weight of the world on my shoulders as I also wear my mom and volunteer hats, I thrive on knowing I can make things happen instead of having to wait for permission to take a stab at a new idea. Ownership also keeps me inspired to keep learning about what other small businesses are doing. Thanks to Marcus, I can now intelligently put into words why my life is so rewarding.

However, it was not always like this, by far might I add. This is where I had to stop short of a perfect five stars. If I had read this when my four children were still very young, I would have been completely frustrated because I was in no way married to a man who would ever entertain staying home to raise the kids while I went after what made me feel strong. I also did not have the earning power needed to hire a nanny, or housekeeper, or yard service and an evening job was not possible due to his travel schedule. This was not addressed in Find Your Strongest Life. Maybe this needs to be the next book Marcus--How to Find Happiness with Your Strongest Life on Hold while You Do the Right Thing for Your Family.

Last but not least, while I "get" why you caution being optimistic about everything, this can be a dangerous concept to advocate to the woman whose full time job, not by choice, is raising young kids even though this is not her strong point. What purpose will it serve her to identify the negative aspects of her life when she may not be able to do anything about them at this moment?

I would recommend this book to other women, but only to those women who are in my position, whose kids are older so they are free to create their strongest life.

Find Your Strongest Life had simple, yet powerful tips for living a better life. They were tips that seemed basic, yet they were ideas I had never considered. I am a young, single woman. I'm not married and don't have kids and this book most certainly had advice just for me. In reading some of these other reviews, I'm confused by people who say this book is just for career women or just for moms - I completely disagree. I think this book has great advice for women of all ages and stages of life. Don't look to this book to answer all your life questions or to be your moral compass, that doesn't seem to be its intent. Look to it for good, practical life advice - for tips on how to live life in a way that strengthens you instead of draining you. Who doesn't need that kind of advice?

Buckingham starts off with startling statistics relevant to the modern woman: despite a wealth of opportunities, women are less happy than they were forty years ago and less happy relative to men. While an extra hour of free time will double a man's feelings of relaxation, it will do nothing for a woman. Studies show that having kids only amplifies both of the previous statements. Six major studies of happiness also show that "though women begin their lives more fulfilled than mean, as they age, they gradually become less happy. Men, in contrast, get happier as they get older" (p.19).

These statements are sobering. Buckingham postulates as to why the studies are giving these results: Some women are trying to have it all (all at the same time). Some women are in an unfullfilling career. Some women are multitasking and taking on too much. Some are afraid of change. But all of the unhappy, unsatisfied women have one thing in common: they are not paying attention to what strengthens them.

What are your strengths? What does your strong life look like? Perhaps surprisingly, living a strong life means much more than "doing what you are good at." Living a strong life means being successful (as defined by you), instinctively looking forward to tomorrow, growing and learning, and having your needs fulfilled. You find your stong life by paying attention to those moments that strengthen you: when do you feel an emotional high? When do you positively anticipate your day? When do you become so involved in what you are doing that you lose track of time? When do you feel invigorated at the end of a long, busy day? When do you get to do the things that you really like to do? According to Buckingham, the happiest and most successful women find that they can says "everyday" to at least four out of five of these questions.

There were a good many portions of this book that I felt were applicable to me. I'm a mommy-tracked professional who is still somewhat career-minded. I've always been told that I am pretty good at what I do and I have degrees and certifications that I worked very hard to earn. I've said before that I enjoy my career the same way that I enjoy putting together a jigsaw puzzle: sometimes it's fun to figure things out, other times it is frustrating and I want to give up. The jigsaw puzzle is never really a fulfilling endeavor - even once it is complete, the joy is fleeting. At least the jigsaw puzzle doesn't require a daily commute, time-wasting meetings or office politics.

I can honestly say that my career has rarely strengthened me as Buckingham defines it. I've known this since I graduated from college - maybe even before that. But it's something that I have always pushed aside. I've had the attitude that my career doesn't define me - it's what I do because I am good at it. I'll do the things that I enjoy the rest of the time. I can see the faults in that thinking and I can see how I could become one of those women who is progressively less happy. Because my career doesn't strengthen me, it will gradually weaken me.

There is not an easy solution to this predicament since every person is different. Buckingham advises keeping track of individual moments that strengthen or weaken you. Track these for a few weeks and notice the trend. (He also has developed the "Strong Life Test" which is like a watered-down, simplistic version of David Kerisey's work on temperament.) The book offers some fairly fluffy stories of women who figured it all out: a woman who opened an incredibly successful cupcake store, a woman who became a Hollywood agent, a woman who put together sewing seminars and then was contacted to represent a sewing machine company. They are nice stories, and they are somewhat inspirational while also seeming somewhat unrealistic.

This is a good book if you find yourself craving balance (Buckingham will tell you sorry, but it doesn't exist) or if you feel that you are in a rut. I think that this book is just as relevant for men as it is for women, and I can't help but wonder if the focus on women is a bit of a marketing ploy. There is good food for thought dispersed randomly throughout the book, but there are no answers given; only a few rudimentary tools that may or may not point you in the direction you need to go.

Okay, I'll just come out and say it. It's been really hard to Find My Strongest Anything lately. There have been two deaths in my family in the last week, yesterday my one and only laptop hard drive crashed (I'm on a borrowed one now) and, I realized just moments ago that this review is actually due today, October 5th, and not tomorrow, October 6th, as I'd thought. Me, strongest life? Hardly.

On the other hand, one could argue the timing of this book in my life couldn't be better. My impressions of the book:

The complete title is actually Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently. I wasn't sure what to expect from a book that was so obviously not geared to me. Despite this though, I found it to be quite fascinating.

What the book ultimately tries to do is to teach you to identify your life's "strong moments," those moments that really get your juices flowing. Sounds pretty remedial, right? But, for me at least, it's so easy to let these moments go by unnoticed. Reading the book, I realized I'd been doing exactly that for a long time. Even as I thought about the last couple of weeks, as Buckingham suggests doing, and tried to pick them out, I kept coming up empty.

What Find Your Strongest Life helped me to do was pinpoint them so that I can now, going forward, focus my attention on them. I discovered, for example, that my Lead Role is as an "Advisor" (You'll learn where you fit after taking the simple test at [...]. The questions are geared to women, but I didn't find it difficult to think of each one in terms of my male role in life). I must say that, as I read the "strongest moments" associated with this trait, I became really excited.

One of them - someone calls you up out of the blue and relies on your opinion - reminded me of two real-life examples from just a few days ago. When I thought back to these two moments, I was instantly reminded of how much I enjoyed these conversations. Is it possible, I thought, to make a living advising people? Duh!?! Of course it is you dolt. People do it every day.

But other than a few brief flashes, I hadn't much thought about my desires in this area. Find Your Strongest Life helped me understand the importance of not treating these flashes so lightly. In short, I came to realize there's nothing I enjoy more than being relied upon for my opinion. In other words, as Marcus writes, to clarify a complex issue for someone who acts upon what I've told them and to see them succeed upon doing so.

Whether you find you're an Advisor, a Motivator, a Weaver, a Care-Taker, I think you'll find new motivation and the direction you're looking for in this new book.

If you are a wife or mother, then this might be the book for you.

If you are NOT a wife or mother, than this book is definitely not for you.

The book is written for the housewife and mother trying to juggle it all. As a single woman in my late 40s without children, there was nothing in there for me. The stories were from women who had children (single mothers and married mothers both), and women who were also wives. Marcus assumes that "women" = "wife and/or mother".

The book is also a follow up to the Oprah special that he had a while back. If you enjoyed that show (workshop), then this is definitely the book for you. Without that show, there wouldn't have been this book.

All in all, I can not recommend it to single childless women,and I find it a bit patronizing that the book sterotypes working women as all mothers/wives. However, because of the emphasis, the book may be of benefit to the working wife/mother.

"Therefore the strong people will glorify You;" -- Isaiah 25:3

I ordered this book thinking that my wife and daughter would be thrilled to find out how to find their strongest lives. I left it hanging around where they tend to pick up books I want them to find and read. That didn't work. Then, I asked each of them if they would like to read it. My daughter turned up her nose and my wife said she's take a quick look. After six minutes my wife commented, "There's not much there."

Although this is a book-length self-help book, my advice to men would be not to buy it for women. They'll buy it for themselves if they want to read it.

Assuming that all men have stopped reading the review by now, let me address women. If you have read Marcus Buckingham's book, Find Your Strongest Life, you probably won't feel that this book adds very much other than some anecdotes. Take a peek at the library or while browsing at the bookstore before buying.

If you haven't read that book, let me ask you a question to help you decide if this book is for you: How happy are you with your life on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being as happy as you can imagine?

If you answer seven or higher, you are average or above in happiness and much of this advice won't help too much.

If you answer four or lower and loathe either your job or your family life, this is your book. Go for it.

The book is structured around an experience that the author had in counseling 30 women who had achieved so-called success in life, but were dissatisfied.

It begins with 10 myths, which I paraphrase to shorten and for clarity:

1. When women have more opportunities, they are happier.
2. Happiness for women increases with age.
3. Free time reduces stress for women.
4. Women raising children are happier.
5. Kids want to spend more time with their working moms.
6. Women accomplish more by doing lots of things at once.
7. Women like to work for women.
8. Women earn less for men in comparable work.
9. Women have lower level jobs at work than men.
10. Women do a great deal more housework than men.

Okay, so what's the problem with exploding such myths? Well, using averages to come to conclusions can be very misleading. All ten items could be true for you as a woman. If you don't agree that the opposite of this list is the case, you will be gritting your teeth as you read much of the book. Perhaps it's not such a good book for you.

Part One of the book mostly focuses on frustrations that women feel and addresses the ten myths. Unless you find the details fascinating, you could skip that part.

In Part Two, Mr. Buckingham describes what he's pointing women toward: a strong life.

Here the definition:

A woman has an emotional life that is

1. "Successful" (defined as feeling "effective and capable")
2. "Instinctively looking forward to tomorrow" (defined as feeling "hope, excitement, even joy")
3. "Growing and learning" ("getting better at something" and with "a sense of focus")
4. "Needs fulfilled" ("may be tired" but not "overwhelmed and empty")(has a purpose she likes, has relationships she enjoys, and gains recognition)

The rest of Part Two describes roles and tasks to help you understand what strengthens you emotionally and what drains you. Do more of the former and less of the latter.

Part Three of the book is a lot of questions and answers. If one of the questions is yours, it will be helpful. Otherwise, it will be more of a curiosity.

Could this book have been turned into a helpful short article? Yes.

Even though this is a short book, there's not a lot here . . . unless the message is one that resonates with you because parts of your life feel crummy and you don't know what to do about it.

I would dismiss this book as probably not being too valuable for capable women except that I know a woman who struggles with hating her job, even though she is very good at it. I realize from what she says about her work that she hasn't thought of looking for a different job that would help her feel better. This book might help her. I'll share my copy with her.

I suspect this book will be most valuable to women who hate their family lives and aren't quite sure how to get past the guilt to decide to change matters in constructive ways. I'm sorry if that's the case for you, but this book might really help you.

This is a secular book so there's no emphasis on being strong in your faith in the Lord as a way to gain a more satisfying life. I felt that the message of living a strong life was quite incomplete without that advice.

Marcus Buckingham is a consultant that specializes in strengths-based solutions. His newest book, Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently, grew out of a workshop he did for The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Mr. Buckingham and his team counseled thirty women to help them rediscover the passion they were missing in their work. They followed them for six months and then came back together to see what changes had been made.

It was what happened after the show aired that caused him to write this book. After the show aired, over a million (mostly) women downloaded the workshop from Oprah.com and then lit up the message boards.

Mr. Buckingham has created a test called The Strong Life Test. It asks you 23 questions and then tells you what your lead role and supporting role is based on your strengths. In chapter 7, he defines what each of the nine roles are. The nine roles are: Advisor, Caretaker, Creator, Equalizer, Influencer, Motivator, Pioneer, Teacher and Weaver.

I was very interested in reading this book. I am in the midst of a transition and have been trying to decide what type of work I should look for. For me, the best advice that Mr. Buckingham gives is to examine the times in your past that were strong moments. What excited you. What made you look forward to going to work. You must pay attention to those moments and apply what you learn to the decisions you make about the future.

I took The Strong Life Test. It said that my lead role is Teacher and my supporting role is Influencer. These are not the roles that I would have thought described me. I am not saying that it is wrong but I am going to have to think about it more and see where those roles might lead me.

I would recommend this book for any woman who is not satisfied with her work.

Reviewed for Thomas Nelson's Book Review Blogger Program. [...]