Product reviews for GROW

In GROW, Jackie Beere demonstrates how we can all change our mindsets, learn to learn and choose to think on purpose. Our thoughts and beliefs lead us to develop habits that can predict our success or failure. We can all choose to grow - and coach our loved ones to do the same - by fostering and sustaining a mindset that will keep us healthy and happy in future years. Jackie Beere believes the key to this is thinking on purpose and metacognition. 

This book seems to be part of a wider trend that we have noticed across a series of books we have recently reviewed, a feeling that many people are looking for something more than their current working environment. Of course there is always the feeling of the grass being greener elsewhere, however there is also a growing sense that the grass might actually be greener over there. The challenge is therefore how to navigate from where you currently are, to where you'd like to be.

Beere's book is very much aiming to help you tap into this idea of questioning why you think the way you currently do. We've all heard -˜be the change you want to see', this book is very much down in the trenches of encouraging you to work out who you really are, and to use that as a stepping stone to then working out who you'd like to be, and where you'd like to do it.

The challenge is probably if you are able to act on these thoughts to re-wire your thinking process and do the things that you'd actually like to do, rather than listing off reasons why it's not possible to achieve your dreams. Beere has some good passages where she lists the usual limiting excuses for why something may not be possible. On page 158 for example is a table called -˜reframing thoughts' which is very much aimed at dealing with those inner dialogues that we have when we question the wisdom of our actions and intentions.

The fact that there are many books in this area at the moment suggests that there is a strong interest in looking at what we are doing, and questioning if it is the best use of our time and talents. As careers plummet from lifetimes to decades to even only a few years, we do have more opportunities to change and re-shape who we are and how we chose to spend our time. All the more so as you come to the awareness that once you change jobs the reality is often that very quickly you rarely hear again from most of those who were your former work colleagues.



In this context, if you are willing to take the red pill and engage with Beere's ideas, you might just find the life you were looking for.