BOOK REVIEW OF- Connecting with Yourself: Why We Think, Feel and ACT the Way We Do

By Vishal Jacob

· Paperback: 164 pages

· Publisher: Notion Press, Inc.; 1 edition (7 June 2018)

· Language: English

· ISBN-10: 1643244760

· ISBN-13: 978-1643244761

A BRIEF OVERVIEW-

Every life is an interesting Story, and this story is best written when people go through life’s experiences by staying connected to who they truly are. To stay connected to yourself, you need first to start listening from within.

This book gives a perspective on why we think, feel and act the way we do, through concepts from neuroscience and psychology. It attempts to answer some of life’s key questions, such as-

-Why do we all perceive things differently?

-Why are we designed to do different things?

-Why do we all learn things in different ways?

-How are habits formed?

-What role do emotions play in our lives?

-What makes us happy?

And finally, what it means and takes to stay connected to ourselves and others

THE TITLE

The title gives us an insight to Self Discovery. It urges us not to limit yourself to your own preconceptions of yourself, but throw yourself out onto a blank page that you haven’t written on yet, and see what you find out about you, see what story unfolds, see what happens! I always do this, and sometimes it can be very frightening! To very often have a blank page with nothing written on it yet! I feel as though I am a soul with a single covering–my body of skin– and that’s the only thing between me on the inside and the rest of the world! It’s quite frightening to begin each day on a blank page, forgetting your own preconceptions of yourself and allowing your mind to embrace the new! It is like meeting yourself for the first time, over and over again! The title is indeed well crafted as it tells us to Connect with oneself. If we can draw an analogy from the same context, we can say Self-discovery changes everything, including your relationships with people. When you find your authentic self, those who loved your mask are disappointed. You may end up alone, but you don’t need to stay alone. While it’s painful to sever old connections, it’s not a tragedy. It’s an opportunity. Now, you can find people who understand the importance of looking for truth and being authentic. Now, you can find people who want to connect deeply, like you’ve always wanted to, instead of constant small talk and head games. Now, you can have real intimacy. Now, you can find your tribe. The book although a nonfiction, it narrates various aspects of Life and the way ylu can get connected to them. I feel Narrative nonfiction is an act of conception and construction; it is formation of a personal legend from the mist of memory using mental hydraulics plied with the tools of logic, structure, design, and imagination. An engaged mind possesses a documentary sensibility that fabricates a memoirist identity, which alliance mollifies their bleak interior critic. A conscientious mind hews a residue of meaning from the verisimilitude of a person’s meta-fictional baggage. A basic impulse of all free people is to speak to an appreciative audience. Writing the story of our life constitutes asserting the universal human right to declare and define who we are. When we write our story, we become a stakeholder of our place in the world, we affirm the right to shape our future, and avow the verity to heal our torn souls.

REVIEW OF THE BOOK-

The book beautifully describes the functioning mechanism of the human brain and how it is related to the term ‘Connection’. We have major aspects on which the book focuses on. The first being self discovery. Life is an ongoing journey where the intrepid traveller explores as many tributaries in the river of life as possible. Living consists of probing for the headwaters leading to shimmering effervescence, which exploratory promises to explain the contours in a person’s passage. We each seek to map the miles logged alongside the muddy embankment that spawns our origin, annals our journey, and cradles our crypts. A hearty and weary traveller alike registers, indexes, interprets, and reinterprets their interweaved encounters with a world suffused with good and evil, imbued with love and hate, saturated with greed and evil, laced with acts of unbelievable tenderness, and consecrated with the lifeblood of our ancestors.

The second portrayal being Self Introspection. People often tell themselves lies, in order to reach what they consider acceptance in difficult situations. In reality, they fool themselves into believing they are healed, until that lie is corrected by time, further information or their own personal growth. True healing comes when we learn to not avoid truth, but face it. The book really gives you an insight that only then will we be set free. Everyone loses their class when they travel through hell, but only a few will regain it if they remain humble and accept the part they played in their own misery.

The third is Self Realization. But how that is related to psychology and to this book? Well, Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your Self Realization. You are not to expect an explosion, for the explosion has already happened – at the moment when you were born, when you realized yourself as Being-Knowing-Feeling. There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside, and you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right! You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way.

The fourth is Self assessment in which you realize what is the worst thing about yourself that you like? Your most important “want” should be the one you can control. Life is fundamentally a mental state. We live in a dream world that we create. Whose life is truer, the rational man of action pursuing practical goals of personal happiness and wealth or the philosophic man who lives in a world of theoretical and metaphysical ideas? We ascribe the value quotient to our lives by making decisions that we score as either valid or invalid based upon our personal ethics and how we think and behave.

The last perspective is self perception in which you feel that as you heal, you see yourself more realistically. You accept that you are a person with strengths and weaknesses. You make the changes you can in your life and let go of the things that aren’t in your power to change. You learn that every part of you is valuable. And you realize that all of your thoughts and feelings are important, even when they’re painful or difficult.

The book elucidates on self reflection too. Understanding of oneself is the first act in establishing a transformative philosophy for living a vivid and a reflective existence. Knowing thy self is essential to designing and instigating a meaningful life that is self-directed instead of exclusively controlled by innate traits and external determinates

If you want to get connected to yourself, do order the book from

https://www.amazon.in/Connecting-Yourself-Why-Think-Feel/dp/1643244760/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1530795914&sr=8-2&keywords=connecting+with+yourself

RATINGS-

Overall I would like to rate the book 43 on a scale of 50.

4 stars out of 5

1. Originality of the plot and sub plots- 8/10

2. Net emotions in the story- 9/10

3. Usage of words and phrases-9/10

4. The title, cover and the illustration-9/10

5. The net impact on the readers- 8/10

Reviewed by-

Sayan Basak

Kolkata