Uncertainty as a Trigger for Positive Life Changes

This book by Timothy Butler is a guide to using crises of confidence as a starting point for making fundamental improvements to one’s life or career. He argues that feeling stuck and doubting oneself is an important opportunity to put life on a new track.

Getting Unstuck identifies three stages that takes the reader from the initial doubt to having a new direction based on his real interests and enthusiasms.

Impasse – Doubt and Feeling Stuck

Most people go through a feeling of being trapped or have a general sense of dissatisfaction at some time in their lives. Getting Unstuck calls this impasse and uses it as a precursor to redefining life’s objectives and direction.

Vision – Using Personal or Private Passions as a Guide

Vision is about proper understanding of a reader’s passions and enthusiasms as tool to guide the choices that need to be made find a new path that will inspire and satisfy. At this stage it is not the end result but the process that is important.

Getting Unstuck – New Direction in Life and Career

Biuilding on Vision the final section sets out to help the reader define what is important and to build a new strategy for their life. It helps the reader discover what is important to them and to shape a new beginning

Continuing the Journey

Finally there is a chapter that provides further reading to allow the reader to continue the journey to fulfilling his potential.

The approach is backed up by Butler’s extensive experience as a career consultant and counsellor much of it at Harvard. The Getting Unstuck approach is hard work and many readers will benefit from the support of a counsellor or at least a skilled and sympathetic friend.

An encouraging and readable book that has a greater sense of authority than many personal development books that promise great results through easy nostrums.

Getting Unstuck: How Dead Ends Become New Paths (ISBN: 978-1-4221-0225-1) by Timothy Butler is published in hard back by Harvard Business School Press at $24.95