Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally [Paperback]

Patti Digh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 2008

In October 2003, Patti Digh’s stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died 37 days later. The timeframe made an impression on her. What emerged was a commitment to ask herself every morning: What would I be doing today if I had only 37 days left to live? The answers changed her life and led to this new kind of book. Part meditation, part how-to guide, part memoir, Life is a Verb is all heart. 

 

Within these pages—enhanced by original artwork and wide, inviting margins ready to be written in—Digh identifies six core practices to jump-start a meaningful life: Say Yes, Trust Yourself, Slow Down, Be Generous, Speak Up, and Love More. Within this framework she supplies 37 edgy, funny, and literary life stories, each followed by a “do it now” 10-minute exercise as well as a practice to try for 37 days—and perhaps the rest of your life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Life is a Verb is brilliantly-crafted, raw, gorgeously-designed, and daringly different from 'self-help' books. It relates, through stories that sparkle and astonish and soar, how to move, to be on your way, to realize who you really are through your actions. Through exercises that you participate in, as if in conversation with the author, you will learn, as she promises in the prologue, 'deeper things—how to know what to care about, how to treat others around you (and yourself), what to question, how to love, what to stand up for, and why you should tell stories and listen to the stories of others.' There is no more important learning.

         So read it. Inhabit it. Breathe in every word, because every word of this book is essential. Let it animate you. Annotate it to make it your own. And then let it let you change yourself, and become who you were intended to be. Begin now. You have no time to lose."
--- Dave Pollard, author of The Natural Entrepreneur, and the weblog How to Save the World

 

 

"Patti’s guide for the last 37 days of life will turn every one of your next 3700 days a fully lived experience. If you had some unsolved fear for death, that would be your season ticket to have a free ride on the train with the author. I have never seen such a simultaneously practical, esthetic and soul-caressing book in my life."

--Kichiro Hayashi, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo

 

 

"I laughed.  I cried.  I want the t-shirt!  Seriously, Life is a Verb may well be the single book that will change the world or maybe only your life . . .    Artful, funny, heart-breaking, Digh reminds us that today isn't a dress rehearsal and we can start today celebrating the magic of ordinary life. Reading Life is a Verb is like mainlining goodness. Digh shows us what is real and what matters, and she gives us insiders tips on how to make minuscule life corrections that result in quantum shifts in experience.  She reminds us that life can easily be fun.  This will surely be the last self-help book you will ever need or want to read."
--Patricia Ryan Madson, Stanford Emerita, author of Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up

 

"Life Is A Verb is a wonderful treat! Good exercises, stories, and examples. Reading it will help you appreciate just how much can be gained through living with intention. It's also a lot of fun."
--Roger von Oech, author of A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative

 

"I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I adore Patti Digh’s book Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally.  I love her writing, her depth, her sizzle. This is a book that makes me sing with life and the possibilities we all have for transformation and awareness. It is the best antidote I’ve got these days for the pain and fear raging around us--that and loving hugs, long naps, fervent prayer and letting myself feel whatever I’m feeling."

--Jennifer Louden, author of The Woman's Comfort Book  

About the Author

Patti Digh, the creator and author of the award-winning blog 37days.com, is the author of the best-selling Life is a Verb (Skirt!), a Books for a Better Life nominee. An internationally recognized speaker who has worked in over 60 countries, Patti ’s comments have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The London Financial Times, and The New York Times, among other international press. Smart, funny, and insightful, her Web site is pattidigh.com. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: skirt!; 1st edition (August 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1599212951
• ISBN-13: 978-1599212951
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.5 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"If the Buddha had two kids, a dog named Blue, a Southern accent, and a huge crush on Johnny Depp, his name would be Patti Digh," wrote one reviewer after Digh's grassroots bestseller, Life Is a Verb, was published. In 2003, Patti Digh's stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer and died just 37 days later. She woke up on day 38 and asked herself a question that she has asked every morning since: "What would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?"

Patti's award-winning blog, 37days.com, emerged from the lessons she learned by asking that question and soon the essays were crafted into the bestselling book LIFE IS A VERB: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally. Patti has since written FOUR-WORD SELF-HELP: Simple Wisdom for Complex Lives, CREATIVE IS A VERB: If You're Alive, You're Creative, and WHAT I WISH FOR YOU: Simple Wisdom for a Happy Life.

Her new book, The GEOGRAPHY OF LOSS, is due out from Globe Pequot Press in Summer 2013. In the tradition of her other releases, Geography of Loss will also be beautifully illustrated by readers. This unique book will serve as a guide to help readers Embrace What Is, Honor What Was and Love What Will Be.

In addition to her writing, Patti is a co-founder of an international consulting firm focused on re-imagining K-12 education. Patti is also a sought after Keynote speaker. Audiences come away from her speeches both laughing and crying, and with a clearer sense of what's important in their own lives.

Patti and her family live (intentionally) in the serene mountain town of Asheville, NC.
www.37days.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

484 of 513 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This book contains a radical thought: Your life is bigger than headline news September 23, 2008

By Jesse Kornbluth TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

In the beginning, this book really annoyed me.

Here's the set-up: "In October of 2003, my stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died 37 days later."

Tragic. Though I can't imagine, I can empathize. But then comes the goopy stuff:

"The time frame of 37 days made an impression on me. We often live as if we have all the time in the world, but the definite-ness of 37 days was striking. So short a time, as if all the regrets and joys of a life would barely have time to register before time was up...."

"I tried to reconcile the fact that this fearful death was happening with the understanding that I needed to make something good out of it. What emerged was a commitment to ask myself this question every morning: What would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?"

Well, you know the answer. Savor every second. "Enjoy every sandwich," as the dying Warren Zevon put it. Buddhism 101. The punch line of a million self-help books.

So was I moved by Ms. Digh's approach to her theoretical last 37 days --- pumping out reams of writing so her young daughters would have some idea who Mom was? No. And not because I'm hard-hearted. It's just that I've heard all this. Many times, most recently in "Improv Wisdom", which I consider the last word on Showing Up and Being Here.

But I stumbled on, past the beautifully designed pages with the lovely art and the super-sincere poems by poets I'd never heard of, until I achieved the entrance to Part One. "Inhabit Your Story." The predictable moral arrived on schedule: "Find the change you can make and make it."

On to Part Two: "The Six Practices for Intentional Living." Which includes: "Dance in your car", followed by "carry a small grape" and "always rent the red convertible" and "say wow when you see as bus".

What was I doing in this Birkenstock gulag, surrounded by Good Thoughts?

But then I hit the story of Ms. Digh sitting on a plane next to a boor, and how they became close friends. The next page brought another compelling story. The Jungian analyst Marion Woodman, sick in India, is bothered by a large brown woman who crowds her on the couch of the hotel lobby. For days. On the fourth day, the woman's husband shows up to say he had been sending his wife there to pour her warmth and life energy into the body of the dying Woodman. The woman had, Woodman decided, saved her life. And then came the story of Digh's college lover, back in 1978. Richard was African-American. Her parents were less than thrilled. The relationship withered. Flash-cut to now. Richard is now Amanda. He wears his old girlfriend's earrings.

Tell me enough stories, and one will be an arrow to the heart. Richard-and-Patti was, and then, suddenly, they all were --- and advice like "Go to a black barbershop to get your hair cut if you're a Caucasian" no longer seemed monumentally trite. Reading on, I learned about hikaru dorodango --- shiny Japanese mud balls --- and how to make better ones simply by making more. I learned how to disagree by saying, elegantly, "I don't see the truth in that." I was reminded what a dollar can mean to the person ahead of you in the supermarket line. I encountered some very wise quotations, like this, from Eric Hoffer: "You can discover what your enemy fears by observing the means he uses to frighten you."

In short, as I read on, I found myself getting sharper and smarter. I considered why it might be better to make a mistake --- and learn from it --- than strain to get everything right. And I read the obituary Patti Digh wrote recently for her father --- who died in 1980, when she was in her teens --- and misted over.

The stories in the news these days are so big. Tectonic plates are moving. History is being made. But then, it always is. "Life is a Verb" is a reminder that our lives are bigger than the stories in the headlines. A small thought? Not to me. Now I have to go back to the beginning and start again....

79 of 81 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Equal measures Joy, Responsibility September 3, 2008

By Melissa Capers

Format:Paperback

Inspired by the death of her step-father (and informed by the death of her father), Patti Digh's book offers advice, nudges, and insistence toward joy and responsibility (not quite the word I want), in equal measure.

With essays like "Dance in Your Car," "Follow Your Desire Lines," and "Always Rent the Red Convertible," Digh urges us to loosen up, take chances, take hold of this "one wild and precious life" (as she quotes Mary Oliver).

But she assumes a life of joy will be a life touched and shaped by other people, and she includes their care in her instruction manual. "Save Face for Someone Else," and "Wear Pink Glasses" offer models of graceful ways of being with, seeing, and upholding other people. "Love Unloveable People" gently offers each of us a daunting challenge: to respond to what is good in everyone.

Digh doesn't overlook the challenges of relationship, including our relationship to self. From "Choose Your Seatmates Wisely," to "Burn those Jeans," "Don't Sell Your Red Shoes" and "Say Wow When You See a Bus," she offers fresh perspectives on familiar situations and straight-jackets of "propriety," inviting each of us to find a way to be a little more authentic.

The essays alone would be engaging and provocative, as Digh has proven in her blog, 37days. In the book a precious few are arranged to illustrate her six-point guide to a life marked by Intensity, Inclusion, Integrity, Intimacy, Intuition, and Intention. Each is followed by a short exercise to help the reader respond to and integrate the example, and a longer "movement" exercise that readers are invited to take up for 37 days: be alone for 30 minutes every day, write ten letters (in longhand) over the course of 37 days, ask yourself at lunch (for 37 days) "Am I becoming someone I respect?"

Digh suggests we take on that last question at lunch, so that we have the afternoon to save ourselves, if we are failing. It is just this kind of gentle wisdom, this confidence in all of us, that leads me to embrace this book.

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful Joy August 27, 2008

By Sarah Morgan

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

It makes you think about how to live your life better - not necessarily more organized or efficient or more anything, unless the "more" is some part of your own personal "better". The writing exercises are excellent, bite-sized, and spur you to much deeper consideration of the topics. And the writing itself is funny, real, down-to-earth and extremely moving. I've bought one copy and will buy several more as gifts.