Book Reviews - No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You!

Amazon

Timely, vulnerable and great food for thought! August 29, 2007

By Patrick D. Goonan "www.meaningful-life.us" (Pleasanton, CA)

*Amazon Top 500 Reviewer –

4-Star Review

The editorial reviews do a good job of describing the concept of this book. In short, Louise Lewis the author is laid off and suffers an existential crisis. It basically comes down to trusting the Spirit or what arises in the moment vs. being fear driven and trying to manage life from the head. Philosophically, it is easy to make the choice to live in the moment while you are doing well, but to find trust in uncertainty, this is where the juice was for Louise. As part of her process, she asked people to answer the question what is the meaning of life. Her book is the compilation of various people's answers and is peppered with her own insights.

What is most striking about this book is the informality and vulnerability with which the author writes. After reading it, you will feel like you've gotten to know someone at a deep level and I'm sure you will find many themes that resonate with you as a modern person living in a fast-paced society. You will also find many things to identify with in the answers that people shared to the question above. It's a very clever idea for a book!

Personally, I think there is a crisis of meaning in our society and people are starved for interiority. As we move more quickly, we tend to become atomized although we live among many others. Social bonding is important, yet in some areas people don't even know their closest neighbors. Also, intimate relationships have become increasingly complicated. This book looks at things like this and more. It also explores what it is to have a career vs. a job... by the latter term I mean something to "pay the bills" vs. a deep meaningful engagement with a calling or service to others.

Another good book along similar lines is What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question. This book is written in a different style and approaches the topic somewhat differently. I see the two as complimentary. If you are looking for a meaningful career, I also recommend The Beginner's Guide to Finding Your Perfect Job: How to Discover Your Real Life's Work. This audio provides a very right hemisphere, creative approach to finding your life's purpose and utilizes guided visualizations. I suspect many people reading this type of book would find these resources useful. I also like Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design (Arkana). I offer these as good resources based on my own experiences of career coaching and public speaking. I live in the SF Bay Area and I have seen many of the people laid off from the software industry in my practice. These are people like Louise Lewis the author of this fine book.

It is great to see people writing about the internal experiences of other. It seems that our society has moved to a point of "flatland" where we keep engaging deeper and deeper with surfaces. This book turns that perspective on its head. It's refreshing like having a heart-to-heart conversation with a good friend.

If you are looking for a more philosophical read to compliment this, then Ken Wilber's A Brief History of Everything would certainly provide good food for thought and a framework to hang new ideas on. I'm guessing most people reading this are going through a transition of some type and this book might be a useful part of a deep inquiry into the meaning of life.

A Thought Provoking Book, September 5, 2007

By Norman Goldman "Editor of Bookpleasures.com" (Montreal)

*Amazon Top 1000 Reviewer

4-Star Review

There is, for many of us, a terrifying time in our lives where we find ourselves in a situation that we believe is hopeless. Fortunately, in certain instances something magic happens where we seem to be connected to a spiritual power that guides us in such a way that our movements are natural, yet charged. Our relationships with our fellow humans become intense and invariably lead to a lasting and profound effect on our future. Louise Lewis, author of No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You, experienced this magical moment.

After eleven years employed in marketing and sales, Lewis's was laid off, or as she prefers to term it, "set free." No doubt this would be quite terrifying for anyone, particularly if you have obligations to fulfill as the payment of your mortgage and you don't have the foggiest idea as to when and where you will secure your next employment. However, Lewis faced up to the challenge by considering it to be an opportunity to start a new chapter in her life.

While sitting in an airport, after being fired, Lewis suddenly had a vision, which she describes as "two cupped hands rising up to meet me (much like the picture of the hands in the old Allstate commercial: you're in good hands with Allstate.") In the next instant, Lewis heard the "Spirit's words" that assured her that she was going to be OK as the "spirit" would take care of her. At this moment, Lewis describes her feelings as feeling light, relief and joy, all at the same time.

It was this inspiration of being set free that Lewis decided to embark on an interesting journey where she would ask anyone whom she met, the meaning of life. The result was the writing and publishing of No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You that comprises many thought provoking replies.

Now you have to admit that Lewis has a great deal of "chutzpah" to strike up a conversation with total strangers, even celebrities, anywhere and everywhere, such as in restaurants, bars, and while traveling, and ask them the big question, what life means to them. And what is even more intriguing is that the participants were not permitted to give verbal replies but rather they were obliged to write it down on a pad. By now, you are probably shaking your heads and asking how did she pull this off? One clue Lewis mentions is she is not one to favor small talk, as she can only chitchat with someone for about five minutes, and then she must take the conversation to deeper levels. No doubt, her selling and marketing experience must have come in quite handy as she convinced them to share with her their philosophies on life.

Reading some of the replies, I tried to decipher if there were recurring common themes. A number focus on living your life productively and using your powers of love and reason to your fullest capacity. Others have a more conservative Christian religious connotation where individuals would tie in his or her reply to opening and surrendering to Jesus Christ. Quite prevalent was the relation to doing good in the eyes of God or that we have a meaningful life when we live in God's presence. Family and friends were stressed, such as the reply of one responder where he asserted: "Life is to be lived and enjoyed for friends and family-family being a very big portion of life-having family and creating your own family." There were even some poetic responses such as JoEllen's "Simply stated: life is a journey through the universe. The contacts and contributions throughout it define our existence."

The reply that I could comfortably connect to was succinctly summed up by someone called John, "A good partner. Love. Understanding. And lots of good health."

Although, the one I always liked is the Yiddish adage my parents often uttered, life is about being a "mensch," or as translated, a person of character- an individual of recognized worth because of noble values or actions.

The ideas raised within its pages will certainly provide food for thought. It can be compared to drinking a succulent aperitif, such as wonderful dry champagne, where after whetting one's appetite for another glass, Lewis raises more questions than answers, prodding readers to discover for themselves what is the meaning of life.

Refreshing and a must read!!!!! June 26, 2007

By Faye Hardee (Lynn Haven, Florida United States)

Louise has done what I did not think was humanly possible. She has gone to people from one gamut to the other and asked the question "What is the meaning of life?" In this world of negativity and seemingly at times only the bad things. She has made me realize that people have a true sense of what life is for them. What was so amazing was that so many had the words God and love in their answers. This really sums it all up. Years ago I read Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life and it changed my life. It made me realize what and who I was for. Louise has done the same thing for me. She has made a difference in my thinking on life, and so glad I am part of God's plan. Thanks Louise for your leap of faith. Go Girl!!

Blogcritics – September 7, 2007

Written by Lynda Lippin

What does a 40-something-single woman with a mortgage to pay do when she gets laid off after 11 years selling advertising space for high tech publications? We hear these stories on television all the time. Such women can end up marrying the wrong men simply for security, going back to old relationships simply in the interest of stability, taking different unsatisfying jobs, going back to school, and sometimes tragically killing other people or themselves. But in the end the question they all ask is, "what is the meaning of life?" How can life have meaning without this job, this income, this lifestyle?
Look at Louise Lewis. When she was "set free" from the corporate machine and was faced with the "meaning of life" question, she decided to sit and wait and feel what might be the correct direction to take. Raised as a Christian with a close personal relationship to God (or "Spirit"), Lewis decided to listen for a message. And she found many - that this was a positive thing to not have this sales job, that she should take advantage of having time off, that she should keep looking and listening to see what the universe had in store for her, and that whatever was to come it would be great.

As Spirit says to her when she's crying in the airport, "You're going to be OK, Louise. I'll take care of you."

About a month after the shocking news, while watching Oprah join forces with CNN reporters around the world asking people on the street what they thought of America, Lewis realizes her path. Ask everyone the burning question, "What is the meaning of life?" and write a book about the answers.

No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You! is a book about the power of positive thinking, the Secret, the Law of Attraction, and the importance of being true to yourself. Lewis starts traveling and talking to everyone, from strangers at diners to Richard Dreyfuss at the ATM machine and from her own family to the survivors of hurricane Katrina and the 9/11 WTC attack.

And the answers she gets are incredible. From Richard Dreyfuss, "...You choose to give life meaning or not. If you choose to say life has no meaning, it doesn't. You'd be an idiot, but there you go...." From Katrina victim Dorothy Hampton, "The meaning of life is to move on. Deal the hand that's been dealt you." From NYC police officer Bobby Summers, "The meaning of life is to live to its fullest. Enjoy every day, even when things go wrong."

Deeply moving, interesting, and easy to read, No Experts Needed reinforces the basic goodness that is inherent in all human beings.

My Writing Mentor.com – July 13, 2007

By Shannon Evans

No Experts Needed is a refreshing collection of true stories of inspiration and introspection. Author Louise Lewis, faced with being "set free" from corporate America and yet still having bills to pay, set forth on a magnificent personal journey of self-reflection. Searching for herself, a spiritual unfolding occurred as she searched for that ever elusive, "what is the meaning of life?" Following a particularly poignant epiphany in the San Jose airport, Lewis decided to follow her "Spirit’s" advice and get done with the pity party, dust herself off, and pick up a pen. What follows is her discovery of everyday people whose experiences and insights to life’s meaning pull her to a new chapter in her own life.

Inspired by an episode of Oprah, this debut novel is organized around a series of vignettes and personal anecdotes of Lewis’ family, friends, and others she meets as she seeks healing and an affirmation of her own spirit. To each person encountered, Lewis poses the same simple question, "What is the meaning of life?" and is rewarded with beautiful prose delivered straight from their soul. While sometimes folksy in delivery, the message is never repetitive or boring. No Experts Needed warmly develops the story of each person as a lead-in to their uniquely individual interpretation of the meaning of life. It is apparent throughout the book that Lewis is inspired by the normal everyday people she interviews; however, all evidence of bias is removed by her provocative but spontaneous writing style. Never preachy or sermonizing, the book fosters the reader in their own exploration of Spirit as they seek their individual interpretation of life. Lewis presents an original yet inspirational text that explores her journey to overcome fear and self-doubt. Encouraging, graceful, and inspirational in its message, No Experts Needed provides simple insights that allow the reader to make their own judgments and generalizations as they examine their unique perspective of life’s meaning.