No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You! [Paperback]

Louise Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 27, 2007

Losing a job always delivers a hard blow, but it was especially hard for forty-something author Louise Lewis, one of many victims of the technology industry’s dotcom implosion. No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You! tells the story of how she pulled herself together and discovered a new life of meaning.

Just minutes after being “set free”, Lewis, a single woman with a mortgage to pay, sits in the San Jose, California, airport panicking over her future. While toying with the option of giving into depression, she receives a powerful message from God that instantly releases the weight of her worries. “This is just a new chapter in your life. You hold the pen, I’ll guide your hand, and together we’ll write one hell of a chapter.” through Spirit’s continued involvement, Lewis is inspired to ask normal, everyday people to answer Spirit’s question: what is the meaning of life?

No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You! weaves through a vast collection of spontaneous, thought-provoking answers and inspirational stories that demonstrate how the simple act of listening to Spirit can add meaning to every moment of your life.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Louise Lewis’s twenty-year career in marketing and advertising sales in the high-tech industry ultimately led her to write her debut book. A Louisiana native, she now lives in Southern California, where she spends her time writing and volunteering at a local children’s hospital.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse, Inc. (May 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595429718
• ISBN-13: 978-0595429714
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,038,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Timely, vulnerable and great food for thought!, August 29, 2007

By 

Patrick D. Goonan "see profile for URL" (Livermore, CA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You! (Paperback)

The editorial reviews do a good job of describing the concept of this book. In short, Louise Lewis the author is laid off and suffers an existential crisis. It basically comes down to trusting the Spirit or what arises in the moment vs. being fear driven and trying to manage life from the head. Philosophically, it is easy to make the choice to live in the moment while you are doing well, but to find trust in uncertainty, this is where the juice was for Louise. As part of her proces, she asked people to answer the question what is the meaning of life. Her book is the compilation of various people's answers and is peppered with her own insights.

What is most striking about this book is the informality and vulnerability with which the author writes. After reading it, you will feel like you've gotten to know someone at a deep level and I'm sure you will find many themes that resonate with you as a modern person living in a fast-paced society. You will also find many things to identify with in the answers that people shared to the question above. It's a very clever idea for a book!

Personally, I think there is a crisis of meaning in our society and people are starved for interiority. As we move more quickly, we tend to become atomized although we live among many others. Social bonding is important, yet in some areas people don't even know there closest neighbors. Also, intimate relationships have become increasingly complicated. This book looks at things like this and more. It also explores what it is to have a career vs. a job... by the latter term I mean something to "pay the bills" vs. a deep meaningful engagement with a calling or service to others.

Another good book along similar lines is What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question. This book is written in a different style and approaches the topic somewhat differently. I see the two as complimentary. If you are looking for a meaningful career, I also recommend The Beginner's Guide to Finding Your Perfect Job: How to Discover Your Real Life's Work. This audio provides a very right hemisphere, creative approach to finding your life's purpose and utilizes guided visualizations. I suspect many people reading this type of book would find these resources useful. I also like Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design (Arkana). I offer these as good resources based on my own experiences of career coaching and public speaking. I live in the SF Bay Area and I have seen many of the people laid off from the software industry in my practice. These are people like Louise Lewis the author of this fine book.

It is great to see people writing about the internal experiences of other. It seems that our society has moved to a point of "flatland" where we keep engaging deeper and deeper with surfaces. This book turns that perspective on it's head. It's refreshing like having a heart-to-heart conversation with a good friend.

If you are looking for a more philosphical read to compliment this, then Ken Wilber's A Brief History of Everything would certainly provide good food for thought and a framework to hang new ideas on. I'm guessing most people reading this are going through a transition of some type and this book might be a useful part of a deep inquiry into the meaning of life.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest and enjoyable, January 8, 2008

By 

P. Seely - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You! (Paperback)

So you're not a heavy reader.....that's okay, neither am I. But do you need a little laughter? Or perhaps you've been holding back on a good cry? Well this may be the book for you. Not only will it fulfill those needs but it will probably have you scratching your head, asking yourself, `what is my meaning of life'. I highly recommend reading "No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You. It's thought provoking, warm and enlightening. Who knows, it may have you listening a little closer to `Spirit'.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that offers on a positive look on life., January 26, 2009

By 

Ignacio (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You! (Paperback)

In times like these, when everything seems so gloomy with the economy the way it is, this is a good book to read because it is encouraging, uplifting and filled with hope. Louise Lewis does some searching to find out what exactly is the meaning of life and ends up writing this book during a time when she's unemployed. A time, it turns out, that ends up being a major turning point in her life.

Early in the book Lewis talks about being alone and single. She mentions a time when her friends forgot about her birthday and so she ended up celebrating alone. This, however, happened to be a blessing in disguise; if anything had happened differently, this book might not exist today.

I like the way she did her "research" and interviewed everyday common people, just like you and me, for this book and have them share their thoughts on what the meaning of life is. I think this made the whole book better because it has a sort of spontaneous feel to it as opposed to everything being all planned out.

She writes about a time when she went out driving, not knowing exactly where she was going but knew she had to go somewhere, and right at that moment she was guided by "Spirit" and was told where to go. Once there, she found the reason for being there and ended up getting a different perspective on life. She seems to be a very spiritual person who is often guided by "Spirit" in her daily activities

In this book you'll get to see the many hopes, fears, and dreams of many people and may come to realize that they, not surprisingly, look something like yours.

This is the kind of book you get for your friends and family...I highly recommend it!