"Get Your Life Back" Book Review Show 44

I make it a point to read every day. Someone once said, “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” Reading is important for a myriad of reasons.

Sometimes something really cool happens: I run across a book and it teaches me ideas that are life changing. I want to share a book like that with you and offer to send you complimentary copy. 

A friend and I were having coffee in January and he recommended that I read a recently published book called Get Your Life Back by John Eldredge. I had read one of the author’s prior books and enjoyed it. I figured this would be a good read too.

We are inundated with information. Our smart phones keep us connected to the entire world, and research is starting to show that our technological attachment is reshaping how are brains work in ways that we don’t yet fully understand. One result of prevalent technology use is our growing inability to focus. 

Eldredge states in the introduction, “There’s a madness to our moment, and we need to name it for the lunacy it is. Because it’s taking our lives hostage.”  Later he writes, “We’ve been sucked into a pace of life nobody is enjoying.” We can’t even fully learn about one current event before the next ones is splashing across news headlines.

The book discusses the concept of “benevolent detachment.” We have all kinds of mind-bending events notifying us in real time on our phones or newsfeeds. All of these things require us to have some level of vested interest to understand them or even consume the content.

Benevolent detachment in practice is choosing to care about these things, but not using all of your emotional energy to invest in problems that we have little to no control in helping. It’s detaching, so that our minds have room to focus on our souls. Distraction can be an enemy.

It also discusses, how we often don’t have proper transitions from one thing to the next. We go from one task to the other without a mental break. This creates a bleed over into other areas of our lives. 

Eldredge is a Christian and the point of him illuminating these issues is to make the point that when our lives are cluttered with social media or the 24/7 news cycle, or whatever it may be for you, it leaves little time to know Jesus and listen to his leading. Jesus doesn’t come to you with flashing red notifications like Facebook to tell you something, but he comes gently and softly. Our spiritual develop may be hindered by constantly hopping from one thing to the next.

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