Customer Reviews

Trusting Your Own Inner Voice: The Most Important Skill to Learn in This Lifetime

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a self-help writer and career coach, I'm always seeking new books to read, recommend and cite in my own work. Kieves offers an interesting but not especially unique perspective of career change. I kept asking myself, "Would this book have sold if Kieves had not graduated from Harvard?"
The title is a little deceptive: Kieves may have it all, but in the book she was young, single and unencumbered. A forty-five-year-old career changer would bring a different perspetive. A twenty-something, very attractive young woman can have fun with a waitress gig. Twenty years later, she wouldn't exactly fit in.
And Kieves did not "leave it all." She had just started her career and had considerably less invested than a forty-year-old who had just made partner.
There are some very fine insights here but let's not underestimate Kieves's youth, personality, looks and apparent charisma, all factors that fast-forwarded her journey to freedom.

I enjoyed this book immensely. It is a must-read for anyone still sitting on the fence wondering which side Life is; it will give just the right impetus to do what is right - follow our dreams and feed our souls. Far from being in any way just another how-to book, Tama tells us of her own experiences in taking the leap and how much richer life is now than before when she was a high paid, Harvard-trained corporate lawyer. It is also a really fun book to read - the author has a wonderful sense of humor and you will find yourself laughing with her all the way through. Laughing as well as celebrating with her. Thank you, Tama Kieves, for sharing this journey with us.

I am a voracious reader and Executive Coach/Life Coach. One of my clients suggested I take a look at Tama Kieves' This Time I Dance. Rarely have I come across such a fresh and real book. It is wonderfully inspirational and funny - but then so are a lot of these types of books. What made it really special for me was the writing style. The author is a poet at heart and her prose is vibrant, rich and delicious. This is an author who talks about catching waterfalls in china bowls.

Below are a few other special quotes:
"It all comes down to this: We can deny our hearts or we can deny our limits."

"Suddenly our desires aren't in the way or our productivity. They are the way. And just in case you're wondering, this current doesn't only favor people who do Hath yoga or chant with quartz crystals or donate money to environmental agencies...You don't have to be Wayne Dyer, Mary Poppins, Yoda or Shirley Maclaine. Just you, you with a mind full of shadows and a lantern of a heart."

"Draw a line. Take back your time. You can't wait for your heart to bloom with a vision in the middle of days teeming with madness and maintenance. Nothing flutters into a cluttered life. The frantic and exhausted mind does not possess the energy to inspire a love-filled path. But you can find a way to curb or flee the madness. And when you do your dream can find its way to you."

"The hero's journey creates the hero. Heroes don't skip steps, bribe the bouncer or jet off to lush destinations. That's tourism. Heroism doesn't mark a change in position - but a change in self."

I was craving for a book that is what this book says it is. If you are, too, I strongly recommend that you give another book a chance and do not waste your money on this one. It's not that the author gives bad advice - the advice is good. But, she just doesn't say much in 200 pages. She says the same thing in 100 different ways, then repeats those again. Chapters are very short, each paragraph is separated with a line or two of space and the font is big. This is all clearly the publisher's trick to extend this book to appear much longer than it should be.
But it is also the content that I disliked. I disliked it so much, I actually skipped about 50 pages towards the end and just jumped to the last chapter to see if I would miss anything - I didn't. Her writing style is more like a transcript of a motivational talk...a motivational talk to a room of children is more like it. She uses rhyming and illiteration constantly, and too many immature adjectives, adverbs and metaphors. Maybe it's just a style that I don't like and you will, but this book is about having trust in yourself enough to leave your current lucrative job to follow your dreams. For something so important, I need to respect the source, and I find it impossible with this author.
Originally, I gave this book some weight because it is written by a woman who is a Harvard law grad and had a great career. But upon reading the book, she really appears to have little intelligence in writing in a way that others can connect to and respect. How can I take this kind of momentous advice from a woman who writes in a 'sing-song' way like she's talking to her 7-yr old niece? And, to boot, writing was HER dream -- if I follow my dream, will I be only mediocre, too?
This review sounds harsh, but I just felt I had to get this review up here since I listened to the other reviews then was completely disappointed. No doubt, this topic is VERY important and if you are thinking of reading about it - GO FOR IT! But I recommend going to someone else to hear what you need to hear.

Like having a good friend at hand. This articulate, experienced, account travels with me whenever I go to contemplate. For career-changers, mid-lifers, artists, looking for new dimensions, just looking for a breath of fresh air seekers! This single text could replace the entire self-help section! Well worth the time and a place you will re-visit again and again.

I've read a lot of "creating your true work" guides lately, and after a while they all begin to sound alike. This is one of the few that didn't. The author's lively, supple prose is worth reading even if you're not planning to emulate her, and her frankness about her own struggles and doubts, as well as her joys and successes, is refreshing. But what makes her book stand out from the rest is the focus on -- as her title states -- "trusting the journey." Changing your life isn't an overnight transformation: it's a journey that can take many months or years; you'll traverse deserts and jungles and rain forests; you'll scale mountain highs as well as (on occasion) fall into the pits; and, although you'll eventually feel at ease with where you're going, in reality the journey never ends. Kieves has been through it all, and provides a reassuring "road map" of the process.

I was especially struck by her chapter on "Only the real dream will do": she points out that, although it's tempting to try to turn your dreams into a "practical" career, only the real dream gives you the emotional strength to put up with the inevitable hardships and setbacks; her efforts to pursue free-lance writing that "sort of" allowed her to follow her dream soon fizzled. I've been there, I've done that, and, believe me, she's absolutely right!

Reading this book is like having a loving angel sitting right on your shoulder, sharing her advice and encouragement -- "go for it! go for it!" Written from the perspective of someone who's "been there" (which lends real credibility to the work), the book is like a mini-support group for those of us who dare to walk OFF the beaten path. I've read TONS of books on this topic, and this by far is the best on, the only one, in fact, which in my mind ranks with Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg.

Buy this book. It really is worth every cent.