This is my (long version) book review for Thomas Nelson’s Find Your Strongest Life, by Marcus Buckingham.  As part of the Book Review Bloggers Group, I am posting my review here as follows:  (short version is at Amazon.com)

Find Your Strongest Life, by Marcus Buckingham, was a tough book to push through.  Not because it was difficult to understand or lacked relevance, but because it read like a money-making scheme built on the induced fears of women. 

The entire front half is laced with false presuppositions and depression-laced statistics.   I’m sure this is an intentional marketing move to ‘create a problem and then offer a solution’, but I would like to believe that women are not so naive as to be talked into any greater complexity or chaos than their life already presents to them.   Statistics for happiness are founded on the questions  “How happy are you with the things you own?” and “How happy are you with your finances?”  It preemptively concerned me when the author’s definition for happiness was centered around money or some fiscal standard for success. 

Chapter Three is titled, Of Choice and Men: What Gets in the Way of Your Happiness?   Following his standard style, Buckingham paints a dreadful picture of the reader’s life and presumes to play out supposed conversations that your friends or your mother might be having about you, all purposed toward raising doubts about your competence to manage your own life.  I was quite offended by the line, “Men are a chronic condition.  They aren’t going away, and so you’re going to have to learn to live with them.”   He continues with the question, “What exactly do men do to make your life more anxious and stress-filled?”  I have a feeling you’re going to tell us.  Yes, for six pages he assaults his fellowkind for the ’fabled’ mid-life crisis (which he only asserts is fabled because women experience it as well, along with inevitable second marriages),  sloth-like help with housework and their presence in the workplace.  So he paints men as the enemy as unreliable and lazy on the homefront, meanwhile reliable and hardworking on the job front.  You can’t have it both ways, Mr. Buckingham.  In my experience, a great many men work very hard to provide the lifestyles their women desire and equally give of their time and resources to shore up the homefront.  I find myself taking up a bit of a reproach on their behalf, and question whether your attempt to create division in the home is, in fact, toward the happiness of women. 

He also undermines the role of motherhood when he praises the numbers of women returning to work within months of giving birth and addresses the minority as those who “are slipping onto the less prestigious mommy track.”   He supports his theory of  “unfulfilling mommyhood” with allegations of superficiality, judgmentalism and narrowmindedness among the leagues of mothers, which constrain them to limited roles making it “difficult to sustain a feeling of being a success” and within which you “lose your sense of who you really are and what you’re capable of.” 

Overall, the foundation of this book, finding “success and happiness”, is laid quite aggressively and possibly erroneously.  Both in the presumptions about the reader’s existing life and the driving notions about how that success or happiness is defined.  I was, personally, surprised that this book had such a humanistic approach having come from a Christian publishing house.  There were many direct assertions that are an affront to the humble beliefs of the Bible.

“It means drawing strength from the relationships in your life, and if there’s no strength to be drawn, knowing when to cut those relationships out of your life.”

“Luck certainly played a role in their lives, as it did, does and will in yours.”

“This moment, and the emotions you feel as you relive it in your mind, is you, in truth.”

“This strong-life practice will help you make the right choices in virtually every aspect and stage of your life.”

“Your emotions are the signals life sends you.  They will guide you to make the right choices.”

I, myself, am a strong and independent woman, and part of that has been learning not to trust every emotion that I feel.  We are indeed a hormonal, experiential and relationally-driven gender, and I can’t imagine how this author can justify using the intransiency of feelings to define personal truth, whatever that is anyway.

What did I learn from this book? 

That we each have strengths that energize us and define our purpose.  Identifying them can lead to a more intentional and meaningful life. 

That balance is not necessarily the goal, and that we can apply “strong moments” to each of our roles and allow those natural pulls to aid in our decision making and prioritizing.

That strengths are defined by things that strengthen us and weakness are things that weaken us.  Just because you have a skill doesn’t mean that it is a strength.

That there is power in giving “positive attention” to the areas of our lives that we want to capitalize on and recreate. 

All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this book.  There are others out there that communicate equally empowering truths, but in a less offensive language and with a more realistic application.   There will always be self-help speakers and presto-chango books angled to garner a financial return, but I wouldn’t have expected a book like this to come out of Thomas Nelson.  (especially with a simultaneous release to Don Miller’s Million Miles, which has quite the opposite message, if not both more meaningful and effective)

I think the last lines of the book summarize it pretty well: “Slow your judgments, accept what you feel is right for you, and trust that your “soul’s code” contains within it all the wisdom you will ever need.”

See?  You don’t need the ‘wisdom’ of this book.  Don’t buy it.

See the Thomas Nelson Product Page.

Download a sample of the book.