On Becoming a Person

Written by one of America’s most distinguished psychologists, Carl R. Rogers uses this book to take us through his experiences as a therapist. He discusses personal growth and creativity throughout the book, as well as how they can be successfully developed into making us more flexible in relationships, and less open to suggestion and control.

I found this book incredibly tough to read in parts, it took nearly three months to complete since my background is not in psychology or psychotherapy. Nevertheless, I loved it, it’s a great book and it ties in nicely with Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and Roger Martin’s The Opposable Mind and The Design of Business, which I have previously recommended.

I love learning and improving on my own qualities and if I don’t feel that I am progressing in either of these I become unhappy. So, it was a no-brainer for me to pick this book up.

The particular areas that stuck most with me were The Person Who Emerges and Second Stage of Process. These areas helped increase my understanding of certain types of behavior and helped to teach me new concepts that I had only just begun to grasp.

The Person Who Emerges

This section talked about openness to experience in which the person becomes open to a wider range of experiences that build towards helping them grow.

The most valuable piece I took away from this was that we as people need to learn that reality doesn’t accommodate for us, we need to work with it instead.

Second Stage of Process

This is actually the second of seven stages. It discusses the idea that many people perceive problems as being external to themselves, outside or their control and not their fault.

Nobody likes to admit they are wrong or that they may even be causing their own problems but I think in many cases this is exactly the problem. This also reminds me of the reality model that is discussed in The Opposable Mind.

Final Words

Although I found parts of this book difficult to read, I forced myself through it and I am still to this day happy that I did. Some sections of it were beyond my understanding but that’s OK, I feel that in a year or two I will be able to return to this book and read through it again, further building on the foundations of my understanding so far.

I highly recommend this book to everyone, since I believe from the two sections alone that I have mentioned, everyone could learn a great deal from them and the book as a whole is great in helping people work towards personal growth.

If you want to find out more about the book or purchase your own copy, you can head on over to Amazon.

Phil.

Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking

I read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink several years ago and at the time I thought it was brilliant. I have since come to realise that his books barely scratch the surface of the complex topics but the style in which they are written is so easily digestible that it is almost effortless to read.

It focuses on the the idea of thinking without thinking, or split second decisions.

“An Art expert sees a ten-million-dollar sculpture and instantly spots it’s a fake.”

“A fire-fighter suddenly senses he has to get out of a blazing building.”

Blink: The power of Thinking without Thinking. - Malcolm Gladwell.

As I said at the start of this post, in most of Gladwell’s books he only manages to scrape the surface of these ideas, but he paints a very colourful picture and makes it easily readable for anyone, hence the glorifying testimonials on the back cover, which I feel maybe gives it more credit than it’s due.

The book introduces us to a number of different scenarios and takes us through each of them step by step, shedding light on particular details in an effort to explain why events unfolded the way they did, or how a person came to the decision they settled on.

The book focuses on scenarios where this rapid cognition has both worked and failed, but I felt that his explanations do help give the reader a wider understanding, or perspective at least, on the situations surrounding their own daily lives. I found this to be very insightful and it helped start my journey into the concepts of objectivity and perception.

The reason I’m recommending this book is because from reading it myself, it served as a springboard into these topics, which I began looking into in more detail. I started reading similar online articles and finding more books, of which The Opposable Mind and The Design of Business have been my personal favourites, since they’re written in a similar style but go into much more detail.

final Words

Malcolm Gladwell has a talent for taking complex issues and explaining them in a way that is enjoyable to read. I’ve read all of his books since and they follow the same style and are relatively easy to read through quickly.

If you’ve read the book then I’d love to hear your thoughts, or if you have any similar recommendations, please leave a comment below.

If you still want to find out more about this book or purchase your own copy, you can head on over to Amazon.

Phil.