Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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'.

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!

No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You is a book about the author's journey through life after losing her job. She begins a new chapter in her life by starting to journal and write. She visits many places all over the world and enjoys journaling in public places. While there, she meets many different people. She then asks the many people that she meets to take part in her book. So, she asks them one question and they must immediately write down their responses. Each response is a different person's meaning of life.

I'll admit that I had trouble at first with this book. I didn't really get where the author was going with it, I wasn't sure that I liked all of the "filler" information between the quotes from the interesting people that she met. That was when I really began to understand the book, the author and where she was going with the story. The author's story is only a part of the book. The quotes are the other part. Once I figured that out, I was able to settle in. That's when it became very inspirational and uplifting. It opened my eyes and has started me thinking about what really is important in life. The message that I took from this book was that we shouldn't sweat the small stuff. We need to cherish the life that we are given and live it as each of us are guided to.

I am so glad that I was able to read this book. My life is truly blessed and it was about time that someone slapped me upside the head with something to point it out. I can't think of a better way to be knocked out than with a good book with a great message. Thank you Ms. Lewis.

Ok, so when I read the background on this book I didn't jump at the chance to read it because, well, I'm a fiction girl. But they really needed some reviewers so I took it, knowing I'd have a little time over the holidays to read it and all that. I am so glad I did. If someone picked up this book and had no belief in God then they would think it was hokey and roll their eyes but I totally appreciated the stories in it. Not something I necessarily would have picked up on my own but the Spirit obviously led it to me, read it and you'll understand what I mean.

What does a 40-something single woman with a mortgage to pay do when she gets laid off after 11 years selling advertising space for high tech publications? We hear these stories on television all the time. Such women can end up marrying the wrong men simply for security, going back to old relationships simply in the interest of stability, taking different unsatisfying jobs, going back to school, and sometimes tragically killing other people or themselves. But in the end the question they all ask is, "what is the meaning of life?" How can life have meaning without this job, this income, this lifestyle?

Look at Louise Lewis. When she was "set free" from the corporate machine and was faced with the "meaning of life" question, she decided to sit and wait and feel what might be the correct direction to take. Raised as a Christian with a close personal relationship to God (or "Spirit"), Lewis decided to listen for a message. And she found many - that this was a positive thing to not have this sales job, that she should take advantage of having time off, that she should keep looking and listening to see what the universe had in store for her, and that whatever was to come it would be great.

As Spirit says to her when she's crying in the airport, "You're going to be OK, Louise. I'll take care of you."

About a month after the shocking news, while watching Oprah join forces with CNN reporters around the world asking people on the street what they thought of America, Lewis realizes her path. Ask everyone the burning question, "What is the meaning of life?" and write a book about the answers.

No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You! is a book about the power of positive thinking, the Secret, the Law of Attraction, and the importance of being true to yourself. Lewis starts traveling and talking to everyone, from strangers at diners to Richard Dreyfuss at the ATM machine and from her own family to the survivors of hurricane Katrina and the 9/11 WTC attack.

And the answers she gets are incredible. From Richard Dreyfuss, "...You choose to give life meaning or not. If you choose to say life has no meaning, it doesn't. You'd be an idiot, but there you go...." From Katrina victim Dorothy Hampton, "The meaning of life is to move on. Deal the hand that's been dealt you." From NYC police officer Bobby Summers, "The meaning of life is to live to its fullest. Enjoy every day, even when things go wrong."

Deeply moving, interesting, and easy to read, No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You! reinforces the basic goodness that is inherent in all human beings.

It has been my experience, women have more than one coming-of-age story to tell. Like the moon, we have many phases before our full potential is revealed.

For Louise Lewis, one of these phases came after losing an ad job of eleven years. Instead of succumbing to depression, which would have been so easy for many of us, Louise listened to her Spirit and let Him guide her into this next phase.

Armed with faith, a journal and her lucky pen, Louise set out on her quest. Her search was to ask a special question. What was the question? What is the meaning of life according to you? She posed this question to numerous people she met on her journey, which is recorded in her book, "No Experts Needed."

Each encounter comes with an insightful story, like a treasure box of wisdom for the reader to absorb. Also, the author shows us that people can be profound if given the opportunity.

" The meaning of Life" takes you on a pleasant journey through the minds of people around the globe and from all walks of life.The journey begins with the author's realization that her twenty year career in sales and marketing had come to an abrupt end. With the help of Spirit she traveled
extensively in search of answers to her question-"what is the meaning of life? From her home in Southern California, to her home-town of Houma Louisiana, to Italy, Austrailia, Hawaii, and many cities throughout the United States, she sought out people to pose her question. The answers were as varied as the people she met, but most followed one line of thought. Love of God, family, friends and life itself. The inspirational aspect of the story is profound and I highly recomend it as a "must read".

I recommend this thought-provoking, well-written, and easy to read story of Louise's spiritual journey following her being "set free" from the rat race. For anyone caught up in the day-to-day pressures of the working world (and even if you are not), this book puts into perspective what's really important in life.

A quick, easy, thought-provoking read. Provides simple life philosophies from everyday people that can be applied to anyone. Everyone finds themselves challenged at times. This is great to pick up and re-visit when those challenges arise. The "gift that keeps on giving".