Perseverance [Paperback]

Margaret Wheatley (Author), Asante Salaam (Illustrator), Barbara Bash (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2010

Perseverance is designed to offer guidance, challenge, clarity and consolation to all the people doing their work day-by-day. The topics are not the usual inspiring, feel good, rah-rah messages.  Instead, Wheatley focuses on the situations, feelings, and challenges that can, over time, cause us to give up or lose our way.  Perseverance is a discipline—it’s a day-by-day decision not to give up.  Therefore, we have to notice the moments when we feel lost or overwhelmed or betrayed or exhausted and note how we respond to them.  And we have to notice the rewarding times, when we experience the joy of working together on something hard but worthwhile, when we realize we’ve made a small difference. 

 

Each topic is a brief essay, meant to be read as needed. (The book is not intended to be read through all at once.)  You can thumb through the book and find what you need or what attracts you in the moment.  Every essay names a behavior or dynamic, puts it into a broader human or timeless perspective, and offers ways for the reader to either live with or transcend that dynamic.  The reader is also challenged by the direct voice of the book. Wheatley wants people to be able to see themselves, their situation, and to assume responsibility for changing the situation or their reaction to it if it’s one that troubles them. (There deliberately are no examples of other people—the reader is the example; their personal experience is the only case material.)

 

The content (essays and quotes) is drawn from many spiritual traditions and diverse cultures.  The book is deeply grounded spiritually and also quite inclusive—accessing human experience and wisdom from many sources. Both this grounding and inclusiveness support the essential message—human being throughout time and history have persevered.  We’re just the most recent ones to face these challenges.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

 Margaret J. Wheatley is president of the Berkana Institute, a nonprofit education and scientific research foundation supporting the discovery of new organizational forms, and an internationally acclaimed speaker and writer. She is also the author of several books including Leadership and the New Science, a groundbreaking international bestseller (over 350,000 copies sold, translated into 18 languages).

 

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (September 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1605098205
• ISBN-13: 978-1605098203
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Margaret Wheatley writes, teaches, and speaks about radically new practices and ideas for organizing in chaotic times. She works to create organizations of all types where people are known as the blessing, not the problem. She is president of The Berkana Institute, a charitable global foundation serving life-affirming leaders around the world, and has been an organizational consultant for many years, as well as a professor of management in two graduate programs. Her latest book, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future proposes that real social change comes from the ageless process of people thinking together in conversation. Wheatley's work also appears in two award-winning books, Leadership and the New Science and A Simpler Way (with Myron Kellner-Rogers), plus several videos and articles. She draws many of her ideas from new science and life's ability to organize in self-organizing, systemic, and cooperative modes. And, increasingly her models for new organizations are drawn from her understanding of many different cultures and spiritual traditions.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Pocket-sized Prize, September 1, 2010

By 

Margaret Wolff - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perseverance (Paperback)

Several years ago when I was writing IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE, I had the great good fortune to interview Margaret Wheately for the book. Meg is recognized on five continents as one of the foremost organizational consultants of our time. She is smart; sharp. She is deeply perceptive and compassionate. She sees to the heart of things and easily opens herself in service to the Greater Good. Meg wants to make the world a better place.

Though her writing and consulting on organizational management continue, Meg's latest book speaks to the heart of human striving. PERSEVERANCE is a pocket-size prize that offers guidance on how to daily, consciously, choose to keep on keeping on. It is a handsome, richly textured little volume. Inspiring quotes from various world traditions, graceful watercolor images, and handwrought calligraphy enhance Meg's thoughtful essays on what trips us up and what paves our way, and elicit ways of looking at a situation that, in themselves, help lift us above the fray.

Finding fresh perspectives is foundational to Meg's approach to perseverance, to all her work "When we are overwhelmed and confused," she says, "we reach for the old maps, the routine responses, what worked in the past ... To navigate life today, we definitely need new maps ... The maps we need are in us, but not in only one of us. If we read the currents and signs together, we'll find our way through."

To that end, PERSEVERANCE takes a bold look at these currents, the ties that bind, what impedes us -- guilt, anger, fear, blame, boredom, loneliness -- as well as what supports our journey -- steadfastness, choosing, clear seeing, and play. Meg understands how these feelings, how our reticence to ask for what we really need and the names we call ourselves in the night all effect the direction of our lives. Thus, she urges us not to give in or give up; to examine our lives, our thoughts and experiences; and to "speak up about the things we care about." She encourages us to "rename ourselves," to "find a name that calls us to become fearless," that helps us develop our innate capacity for greatness and "calls us to our future self."

Meg's lovely book is both a meditation on perseverance and a call to action. It inspires personal transformation. It makes it easier to entertain the must needs inherent in the spiritual journey. It helps you feel less alone in the thick of things. Where we end up is always up for grabs. "Perhaps," as Meg says, "holding true to the vision and not losing our way is enough for one lifetime."

[...].

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tribute to the Human Spirit, September 30, 2010

By 

Phil Cass - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perseverance (Paperback)

Starting with "Leadership and the New Science" and onto "Turning to One Another" and "A Simpler Way" Margaret Wheatley has informed and helped to transform my leadership and my life over the past 15 years. With the writing and production of this beautiful little book "Perseverance" Meg takes us to yet another whole level of appreciation for who we are and what we are capable of. Start on any page and you will find yourself (ourselves) in all of our ordinariness and all of our majesty. This book doesn't beg us to be anything but who we fully are and in that understand that we are worth something. When reading this book (actually using this book) one experiences not being alone. We immediately know that we are in the presence of another person who truly understands what it means to fully live in our common human dilema of simultaneously being alone and together.

This is one of those books that we refer to as a treasure and like treasures we want others to appreciate it but to please return it. We want to use it as a resource and also just look at it and know that we are holding something special. We may even want to display it as an invitation to others to join us in an inquiry about what we deem important in our lives.

I have already purchased 10 copies of "Perseveranc" as holiday gifts for my loved ones. I will probably purchase more as gifts. This is that kind of book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Margaret Wheatley has done it again!, October 26, 2010

By 

Laura - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Perseverance (Paperback)

Perseverance is superb! This little gem offers much for inspiration, introspection, and setting intention. This contemplative work could have only been written by someone who has traveled deep into their heart to find places of comfort, hope, wonder, and sustenance for a full and meaningful life. Perseverance is a book of grace for the mind, spirit and soul.