Review: Stop Self-Sabotage by Pat Pearson
January 23, 2009 by Peggy Rowland
Filed under Women's Health
The Book:
STOP SELF-SABOTAGE! Get Out of Your Own Way to Earn More Money, Improve Your Relationships, and Find the Success You Deserve by Pat Pearson, M.S.S.W. (McGraw-Hill, Dec. 08, 224 pages, $16.95)
The Author:
Pat Pearson is a psychotherapist and motivational speaker who has traveled internationally to share her methods for helping people achieve greater success in their businesses and personal lives.
What’s Inside:
Everyone practices self-sabotage. If you don’t believe that, read this book to see if you really don’t practice one of the methods of sabotage Pearson discusses:
• Resignation Sabotage (Giving up before you begin)
• Denial Sabotage (Unable to acknowledge reality)
• Throwing It Away Sabotage (Getting rid of what you want because you feel you don’t deserve it)
• Settling for Less Sabotage (There’s no point in trying because you won’t get what you want)
• The Fatal Flaw Sabotage (Personality traits that undo your best efforts)
Of course, you don’t practice one of those sabotage strategies! Except you do. The problem is that we sabotage what we want unconsciously. If you knew you were doing it, you could probably stop yourself.
And that’s the point of this book: to wake up to the ways in which you keep yourself from achieving what you want, whether it’s a successful relationship or a promotion at work. Then, you can work on what Pearson refers to as your Deserve Level – what you believe you deserve. Pearson says,
“We all have an internal gauge that tells us how much we deserve what we want in areas of life such as love, work, friends and health. The Deserve Level is what we believe we deserve. No more, no less. We never exceed our own expectations, at least not for long.”
Pearson believes that our Deserve Levels are rooted in the past, often very influenced by our parents. Again, this isn’t something you may consciously consider.
The author also discusses several tools with which you can raise your Deserve Level. The book is peppered with famous relevant quotes (at the beginning of each chapter) and stories from real life, some of them from Pearson herself. She even applies one of the sabotage methods to Bill Clinton (can you guess which one?). The book also contains numerous exercises and quizzes.
Though it’s very accessible, this book isn’t something you’ll breeze through in one weekend.
Getting the most out of Pearson’s book involves a willingness to take a long look into yourself, your life and your actions, and Pearson is a friendly guide through that process.
This book will apply to you, whether you like it or not. I’m not promising that everyone who reads it will have some sort of miraculous breakthrough, but you will learn something helpful about yourself.
Please check back next week for a chance to win a copy of Stop Self-Sabatoge.
(Image via McGraw-Hill)
I would so like to read this book, to learn where my self sabotage is, and how to make some changes to increase my deserve level. I have read books like this in the past. I know I self sabotage, and feel comfortable sharing it with friends, where I know others who would do that, they don’t want to share they have flaws. Some spend a lot of time covering them up, when you deal with them, you are then ahead of the game, so to speak.
Thanks for sharing Jenni. I hope you get a chance to read it.