First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety by Sarah Wilson|
Published February 28th 2017 by Macmillan Australia |
320 Pages | Goodreads
Description: ❝Sarah Wilson – bestselling author and entrepreneur, intrepid solver of problems and investigator of how to live a better life – has helped over 1.2 million people across the world to quit sugar. She has also been an anxiety sufferer her whole life.
In her new book, she directs her intense focus and fierce investigatory skills onto this lifetime companion of hers, looking at the triggers and treatments, the fashions and fads. She reads widely and interviews fellow sufferers, mental health experts, philosophers, and even the Dalai Lama, processing all she learns through the prism her own experiences.
Sarah pulls at the thread of accepted definitions of anxiety, and unravels the notion that it is a difficult, dangerous disease that must be medicated into submission. Ultimately, she re-frames anxiety as a spiritual quest rather than a burdensome affliction, a state of yearning that will lead us closer to what really matters.
Practical and poetic, wise and funny, this is a small book with a big heart. It will encourage the myriad sufferers of the world’s most common mental illness to feel not just better about their condition, but delighted by the possibilities it offers for a richer, fuller life❞
MY RATING: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
REVIEW
“The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast, you must first make it beautiful”
This is the author’s honest and vibrant account of her struggle with anxiety and what she has done to cope or manage it throughout her life. I consider it part-memoir and part self-help book.
I found the book interesting and helpful. In it, Sarah Wilson references books and quotes from other authors such as Matt Haig, Glennon Doyle, Louise Hay , and Eckhart Tolle whose book The Power of Now I’ve read at least three times. She also mentions research and studies about the subject, this I found fascinating, give me interesting facts and figures and I’m hooked.
The author describes the positive effects that meditation, hiking, decluttering, and quitting sugar (among other changes) have had in her life. We’ve heard about these steps from other sources about a thousand times, but when Sarah describes it she does it in a sincere and candid voice which I found compelling.
Overall, I recommend this book.
I had no idea that was what this book is about. Sounds like my cup of tea! But, to be honest, my cup of tea would have lots and lots of sugar in it, so…