Welcome back to a new article and to this new segment in the blog I am trying to incorporate, hopefully being faithful to it to the best of my abilities. In this new segment I will present some of the books I have read and do a review/ give my impression of them. The first book I wanted to introduce this segment with is Peace From Broken Pieces: How To Get Through What You Are Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant.
In her book Iyanla shares her story, inviting people to know the truth of who she really is. She shares the raw and honest truth about her struggles from childhood to adulthood. She talks about her experience as a daddyless daughter and the dysfunction in the households she grew up in which later perspired into her decisions as an adult. She reveals to the world the patterns she went through in life, opened up about her insecurities, her highs, her lows and her rock bottom. But beyond all that and the heartbreak from losing a multimillion contract/ show, her house, her marriage, but most importantly her daughter, she also talked about the things that got her through when the going got tough and seemed almost impossible. She offered her story as a mirror to all the people going through some things so that we could look at ourselves through her and identify our own patterns and break them, figure out what the pathologies we have inherited are and avoid passing them to our children, use her story to understand how some of the decisions we make and the actions that we take consciously or subconsciously are nothing but the reflection of our inner thoughts and the part of us we cannot or do not want to see.
As per the title, I would put this book in the self-help/ self development category. It is definitely the one your want to grab and read in the midst of a breakdown if you are in need of answers and intentional about finding them and about the journey to find those answers. If it is the case for you, I absolutely recommend this book to you. Although I would say that this is not a book for everybody, you could get your hands on it and read it if you are curious and you feel like you could use more knowledge/ tools to navigate the shallow waters of life. Overall the story is well written but as she go goes back and forth in her story, it can get little bit hard to follow at times. The beginning for me seemed a little bit slow but once I passed the slump of the first chapter, things started to pick up and make more sense as the story unfolds itself. This book was a major eye opener for me and definitely provided me with some of the tools I needed to get through some of my toughest moments so without further due, here are the top five lessons I took away from this book.
1- Look for the lessons and take it with gratitude
I always say that everything happens for a reason but in this book, she talked about how upon coming to this earth, each of us as a soul have a defined curriculum designed by God and that every people, situation we encounter plays a particular role in the assimilation of the skills and lessons we need to live life successfully. It made me look at life differently: it made me stop asking myself why me? And start asking where is the lesson? what do I need to learn or master to move on? And I can tell you it made a huge difference in my attitude and approach to certain situations because once I started seeing the lessons behind the situations I became grateful for the knowledge I have acquired that would ultimately allow me to make better choices and take better decisions.
2- Pay attention to what is happening: recognize the patterns and the pathologies
We live in a society that goes so fast that we do not take time to pause and see things, listen to things and pay attention. We are constantly surrounded by noise, by a thousand things we feel like we have to do to get busy. We keep on repeating the same patterns because deep down we don’t pay attention. When I got to that part of the book I had to pause and take a nap. I had to because in matter of seconds I had an ahah! Moment but not the kind that makes you jump all over the place and be happy. It is the eye opener one where you kind of go :"this is what I have been doing all this time!". But it doesn’t stop there! She doesn’t just stop at helping you see the patterns and pathologies: she helps you debunk them and shift things around. I won't tell you how: you've got to read the book 😉
3- Recognize the role you play in the patterns
One thing that I strongly believe in is that we always have the choice and recreating patterns is one of those areas where we have the choice. Patterns happen because either consciously or subconsciously, we participate in them. By the thoughts we have that translates into our actions, our words or our behavior, we either actively (by playing an active role in making them happen) or passively (by allowing them to exist) engage in recreating patterns we have either learned on our own from personal experiences or being exposed to early in life or simply been passed down as an inheritance (subconscious beliefs, thoughts, affirmations but mostly cultural baggage). Only when you recognize the patterns you can take steps and actions to correct them.
4- Find out where it comes from
Iyanla in her book, describes how her dysfunctional relationship with her father shaped all the relationships she had with man: how the lack of love and affection, the things she had seen growing up in the household she had been in shaped heavily her experience with men. And this is where some things for me started to make sense: this is how I started digging deeper than just the behavior, just the words and just what I think I see. I am one of those person believing that we attract who we are and the things that we are. So no matter how much we try to convince ourselves we are something else, our true nature will show in the interactions that we have and in the people we are around. As Iyanla said (and she says that a lot), the people that we attract in our life reflect some parts of ourselves that are in the shadows. Some parts we cannot not see or that we keep hidden. So if you say you are fine and keep attracting broken men what does that say about you? If you keep attracting emotionally unavailable men what does it say about you? If you keep on letting people abuse you, your trust, disrespect you what does that say about yourself and the relationship you have with your own self? Every relationship is a direct reflection of the relationship with have with our own self and will be to some extend dictated by the previous experiences we have had in the past. So the key to breaking patterns and stopping pathologies is finding where they originate from and correct the belief/ thoughts that we keep feeding ourselves in order to keep the patterns/ pathologies alive.
5- Have your best interests at heart
By not having your best interests at heart, you teach people that it is okay for them to treat you the way they want to and I have learnt this one the hard way. It has nothing with being selfish: it has to do with being clear about what you want, will or will not do, accept and/or tolerate. It has to do with being honest with yourself and others by asking what you want and if you do not get it, decide if it will serve your best interests or not to engage in any type of experience that is outside of what you know/ want. Having your best interests at heart is understanding that you cannot pour from an empty cup and that to be able to pour into other you have to refuel, care for yourself and your soul. You have to do what you think is best for you. After years of putting people before me and catering to their needs and happiness before mine, deciding to do things the other way around made me feel weird and guilty at times, but I had to understand that if I do not have my best interests at heart, nobody else will. I have lost a lot of people along the way, fighting to keep my best interests at heart but you know what? I found myself and to me nothing is more important at this stage of my life.
I am sure there are many more lessons but these are the ones that make the foundations of my life shake and shifted my perspective/ outlook / comprehension of what life is vs. what it is supposed to be.
Overall, I'd rate that book ⭐⭐⭐⭐/ 5 , the last star being knocked out because the story got a little difficult to follow at times. Other than that, I would definitely recommend if you are on a journey to find yourself and find answers to questions you can't seem to shake off.
Peace From Broken Pieces: How To Get Through What You Are Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant is available as a hard cover, paperback, audiobook and pdf. All you have to do is type “Peace From Broken Pieces” on google and you will find it! I hope you will enjoy reading this book as much as you had fun reading this article. And if you ever read it or have read it, please feel free to share your thoughts.
See you next time and until then, “stay in peace, not in pieces”
xo
