OOPS—it turns out I have inadvertently chosen a book you
can’t find (yet) on Amazon or in your local bookstore. I didn’t intend it to be that way, because I’d
bought the book easily. If you decide
after reading this review that you want to own the book, it is available at Dr Stephanie Burns website Australian
dollars Why would you want to work so
hard to own this book? Depends on what
it is you’ve set yourself to learn, and how adept you are when the learning
curve swerves from joyful to fearful or jubilant to hesitant!
There are two books that have marked me profoundly as a
learner over the past seven years. The
first was George Leonard’s Mastery,
which I was assigned at the beginning of a two-year management and leadership
course in 2000. The second is Stephanie Burns’s Move Closer Stay Longer, which I read six years later when it showed up in my horsemanship course. The kind of learning both books address isn’t
in the realm of mere acquisition of knowledge. These are the books I turn to
when I’m learning to do something I’ve never done, learning to do something I
already do but better, or learning to be something I’m not yet. If like me you relish the Start of things
Leonard’s book should become your bible for getting through the Middles which
must be waded through on the road to mastery. But what happens if because of your fears you never start; or never practice
enough to develop the habits and skills to get better?
We all have experience fears. Fear of physical harm, fear of rejection,
fear of getting what we want, fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of
being embarrassed, fear of intimacy, fear of finding our limits, fear of
success. Fear of public speaking, fear
of asking for a raise, fear of swimming in open water, fear of new
technology. What’s so cool is discovering
a simple strategy so that fear won’t keep you getting what you want, doing what
you want, and going where you want, as the subtitle of this book promises.
The background to the book is funny. Dr. Stephanie Burns is
a master in the field of adult learning, and herself a fanatic about
learning. A former student of hers in
Australia
named
Linda married an American natural horsemanship wonder named Pat Parelli and
began applying what she’d learned about learning to help her husband. She developed materials to teach people how
to have a relationship with their horses based upon “love language and
leadership in equal doses.” Students of
Parelli Natural Horsemanship were having amazing success with their horses…except
when they weren’t. Linda worried that
too many of their students seemed to be getting stuck in the beginning stages,
and she approached her mentor Dr. Burns for help.
After reviewing the Parelli home study materials in order to
suggest improvements, Dr. Burns concluded that in order to understand what was
happening with students, she needed to become a student of the program herself.
Okay, but… “Before I could start there
were a few problems to overcome. Simple
things like I didn’t have a horse. Actually I had never touched a horse.”
In her fascination with the potential for learning, Dr.
Stephanie Burns turns her life upside down and buys five acres and a gentle
gelding named Nugget. Then Dr Burns
discovers yet another hurdle: she has
acquired a whopping big fear of horses—mixed with a big dose of fear about what
she doesn’t know about horses She knows
this fear is meant to keep her safe and doesn’t want to lose that element
because horses are large unpredictable animals that can in fact be physical
dangerous. But she doesn’t want to have
it prevent her from learning…and she also has made a commitment to finding a
way to help other students, and it’s now become clear to her that one of the
hurdles other students are facing is their fears!
Instead of studying the process of acquiring the skills of
natural horsemanship, she finds herself studying more generally how fear can cause us to replace useful actions
that relate to our goals with useless actions or none at all. And as she says, in that case there is:
No learning
No change
No achievement
No fun.
The book is short, only a little over 100 pages from Forward
to Acknowledgements. It is funny and
real, as Dr Burns is unflinchingly honest about her own fears and their
consequences. Using her own journey for
illustration, she takes the reader quickly and definitively through the anatomy
of fear; the fundamental strategy for coping with it (i.e. Move Closer Stay
Longer); and a repertoire of actions that might be useful at different times
when we feel fearful. I've found the
strategies also are useful for coping with procrastination, boredom, and a
range of other situations in which I find myself taking useless actions or
none at all. In short, when it comes to reaching our goals FEAR is not the problem;
NOT TAKING ACTION is the problem!
PS—if you check out Stephanie Burns’s website, be sure to
look at HER list of favorite books!
Nice review. Great story. I too would have a problem as I don't have a horse, or space for a horse. Although at least, on one or two vacations, I have had the opportunity to ride a horse.
Action surely is good medicine for fear. If you are busy doing something, you don't have time to worry about it.
Thanks for sharing!
Posted by:Steve Sherlock | March 13, 2007 at 07:26 AM
"when it comes to reaching our goals, fear is not the problem; not taking action is the problem"... how true is that? There will always be fear, it's getting over it and doing it anyway that is key, isn't it?
No wonder you like this book, Beth.
Just a question - is the book in the side bar the wrong one?
We have the horse, but I don't ride. I wonder whether a book like this would make me want to get on him?
Posted by:Karen Wallace | March 13, 2007 at 11:13 PM
Karen, the book in the side bar is another of Dr. Burns's books, also valuable reading and somehow that's the only one Amazon recognizes.
As for having the horse and not riding, I am not sure reading the book will make you wnat to get on him, but together with the Parelli instructional materials it will sure help you accomplish that if you have a secret desire to ride!
Same for not having the horse, Steve. IMHO this book does make you want to take on SOME secret desire that perhaps has seemed too overwhelming to declare as a goal, and move towards it anyway.
Posted by:Beth Robinson | March 14, 2007 at 05:54 AM
You say it's about conquering fear hey?
Hmm! Maybe this is another one for my list even though, unlike Karen, there's NO WAY I'm getting on a horse!
Posted by:Chris Owen | March 18, 2007 at 02:35 PM