How to Thrive in Changing Times

How to Thrive in Changing Times
by Sandra Ingerman
Published by Red Wheel/Weiser
Copyright 2010

The subtitle for this book is: Simple tools to create true health, wealth, peace, and joy for yourself and the earth. Quite an undertaking in such a small book, you say? I agree, however, it’s the “simple tools” part that should be stressed and which Ingerman masters in this slight, but packed, little manual of self-help.

I became familiar with Ingerman’s work through her book Soul Retrieval: Mending Your Fragmented Self quite a few years ago when I was going through my own “dark night of the soul.” Her approach to the shamanic path is a focused one which helps to simplify what others can make a real muddle. She does indeed, with both books, provide simple tools to move forward when confusion, depression and old perceptions provide obstacles to any movement at all.

Those who have done the work for many years can often use a refresher on getting back to the simplicity offered in How to Thrive. Ingerman offers clear and concise concepts and exercises to bring about balance in what we often perceive as a very off-balance world.

There is nothing new and startling in these concepts, they are as old as the earth itself. It is Ingerman’s presentation that clears away the detritus of skewed perception to open eyes to the simplicity of these concepts.

In the stillness and the silence, the space is created to come upon something totally new. p. 165

That is so simple. We shake our heads, yes, but tell ourselves how difficult it is to find stillness and silence in our daily hustle-bustle lives! Ingerman offers the tools to do so with simple exercises and practices, such as Starting the Day in Gratitude or Replacing Sabotaging Thoughts with Hopeful Ones. Yes, those sound deceptively simple (and goody-goody?). But these are directions on how to change our perceptions and that is NOT a simple thing for us change-hating human beings to do!

But Ingerman challenges us to BE part of the change that so popularly is said to be needed in our world today. And the only way to be part of that change is to change our own individual perceptions.

It is who we become that changes the world, not what we do. p. 93

That, in particular, is a concept that likely is unfamiliar to many and goes against the grain. We often want to do without looking at our intent behind the doing. Does it really matter? Who says? This is probably one of the biggest incongruities of service-oriented organizations. How do we make service and our perceptions congruent?

This little book could bring about much discussion and discovery for those looking for a way to come to that congruency.