Don’t Die with Your Music Still in You: A Book Review

Serena Dyer is a daughter of world renowned spiritual author and speaker, Dr. Wayne Dyer.

In reading this book, I learned that Serena was by no means a perfect child. Growing up, she experienced many of the challenges and obstacles most children and teens contend with. She shares examples of being independent minded, stubborn, contending with failures and working hard at overcoming being quick to judge others.

One of the great gifts she was provided by her parents was to follow her own destiny rather than to fit in, to conform. In this ten chapter book Serena shares how she grew up and how she grappled with recognizing what her own destiny was to be and how to pursue it.

This is her first book and it is entitled “Don’t Die with Your Music Still in You.” From the outset, I must tell you that I found this book to be an easy read, informative and entertaining.

The book is composed of ten chapters. My thoughts and takeaways from each are incorporated here.

 1.    Don’t Die with Your Music Still in You
Serena writes,“it isn’t about what you do with your life. It is about how you lead your life. Live a life of purpose. Wow! Get right to it.

In this first chapter, I loved this quote of hers: “When we hide who we really are in order to fit in or belong, we are suffocating are souls.”

This is the best description I have ever read of something I have occasionally felt on the inside from time to time in my own life when I strayed far from what I was put here to do.  The emphasis on the word suffocating in the quote is my own as the word she chose here so closely aligns with my own personal experience.

2.     Have a Mind That Is Open to Everything and Attached to Nothing
In this chapter, Serena shares with us several stories about her early childhood.  Some are humorous and served to illustrate just how independent minded and strong willed this young lady was. Serena talks about establishing alignment with her purpose.  She learned that she was and is a communicator.  She is very good at conversing with and speaking to others.

3.     You Can’t Give Away What You Don’t Have
In other words, if you don’t have love and compassion on the inside, then you don’t have those attributes to give away and share with others.

4.     Embrace Silence
In Chapter Four, Serena reflects upon how her mother served as a model of demonstrating listening and silence. Serena describes her mother as “an ocean of calm,” while she raised Serena and her seven other siblings. Serena shares how silence can be used as a powerful tool: “When we are quiet and focus on our thoughts, we’re able to realize what kind of thinking patterns we have, and change the ones that aren’t working for us anymore.”

I love silence. Working in silence, or performing my hobbies in silence. Have done so ever since I was a kid. This chapter resonated for me also.

5.     Give up Your Personal History
Serena begins Chapter Five with this quote: ‘Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.”A variation of this quote I have found is: “You cannot march forward into your future facing and walking backward.”

Serena writes,that your personal history does not have to define who you are. Letting go of the past better allows you to embrace and live in the present.

6.     You Can’t Solve a Problem with the Same Mind That Created It
Revising your self-talk. Serena asserts that, “ If you allow anything to stop you from pursuing your passion, you’re stopping your soul from expanding.” Another great quote about one’s mind set here is offered by Spanx founder, Sara Blakely who stated: “I think very early on in life we all learn what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, and we stay where it is safe.”

7.     There Are No Justified Resentments
Serena shares how she learned this from her father.  Anger does not serve you. It only keeps you in the same place that you want to get away from. Taking back control of your life. Blame yourself for your mistakes but not others. Own your own choices and the consequences that follow them.

8.     Treat Yourself As If You Already Are What You’d Like to Be
Believe it first then you will see it. Serena quotes Pablo Picasso here who said: “Everything you can imagine is real.” She devotes time in this chapter speaking about visualization and cultivating the emotional feelings that would arise from achieving higher goals and accomplishments.

9.     Treasure Your Divinity
A quote from Louise Hay begins this chapter: “You have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

Serena writes that, “Treasuring your divinity simply means accepting all parts of yourself as having come from pure, Divine love.”

In chapter nine, Serena shares her experience of choosing to be immersed in the holy water spring at Lourdes. This occurred while she accompanied her father, Wayne, on a trip that took in three of the most spiritual places in Europe. She describes the event as follows: “ I left the baths rejoicing, crying, laughing; I was ecstatic. I probably looked like a lunatic on the street, but I didn’t care. I felt great.” Become what you seek.

10.   Wisdom is Avoiding All Thoughts That Weaken You
I loved the quote that begins this chapter which is, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

In this final chapter, Serena shares the principles that are set forth in the book, Power vs. Force,  by author David Hawkins, M.D. , Ph. D.  This is one that her father shared with her when she was young. Power allows you to live and operate at your best without effort.  By contrast, Force requires movement and burns up energy. Peak athletes focus on performing at their highest capacity and using their own inner strength to excel. Power thoughts thus strengthen us while those of force weaken us.

Overall, I found this to be a great first book by a new author who offers a unique personal perspective of what she learned growing up for herself in addition to a peak inside the family of one of our greatest and most popular spiritual teachers and public speaker.

Serena Dyer has her own website, www.serenadyer.com.


Jeff Dodson
August 27th 2014

FTC Disclosure:  I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are unbiased and reflect my honest judgment of the product.

One Of A Kind

Our religious leaders and philosophers are noted for their attempts to impress upon each of us just how unique each one us really is.  We are told that from the beginning of time up until the very end of time (if such a thing is possible), there will only ever be just one being that we know as our self.

That means just one you, one me, one Uncle Jonas.

So for the curious at heart, just what kind of mathematical odds against the possibility that each of us were ever born to begin with? What does the science of statistical probability tells us about just how unique we individually are?

An intriguing article on this topic by writer Tara MacIsaac was featured in the July 17th-23
2014 issue of the newspaper, Epoch Times. (www.theepochtimes.com)

Tara cites self help author/blogger Mel Robbins’ remarks at a 2011 Ted Talk (Technology, Entertainment & Design) conference in which she declared that the likelihood of you being born as you has been calculated out to about 1 in 400 trillion.

To quote the writer Tara, “This is the probability of you being born at the time you were born to your particular parents, with your particular genetic makeup.”

Tara reported that Dr. Ali Binazir, author and personal change specialist, was also in attendance at Mel Robbins Ted Talk. Dr. Binazir did his own computations and came up with the odds of 1 in 700 trillion.

Dr. Binazir’s conclusion was: “the odds that you exist at all are basically zero.”

By way of illustration, Dr. Binazir shared this scenario: “It is the probability of 2 million people getting together each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice and they all come up with the exact same number — for example, 550,343,279,001.”

Then there are those characterizing attributes that make up the individuality of each of us that perhaps serve to reinforce the uniqueness factor.

Internet writer/blogger, Mary Jaksch, offers a website, Goodlife.Zen (www.goodlifezen.com), that speaks to individuality. In an essay entitled, 35 Things That Make You Special, she lists the following:  personality, signature style, beliefs, spirituality, aspirations, dominate sense, thoughts, goals, creativity, happiness, attitude, attraction (whom/what are we drawn to?), genes, body, face, ethnicity, culture, voice, diction, gender, health, hormones, age, intelligence, life experience, childhood, trauma, opportunities, relationships, learning, habits, work, quirks and foibles, communication style, and, last, your life journey.

Whew! This list of 35 attributes or qualifiers, by her reckoning, would seem to lend support to the mathematical odds discussed beforehand.

In attempting to comprehend what these kinds of hyper-sized numbers represent, and, in review of the spice cabinet variables writer Jaksch has listed, one can’t help but feel a sense of awe and wonder at the apparent hand of Divinity that is at work here.

Way too many of us for too damn long have ignored just how individual and unique we all are and were meant to be.

So stop and pause the next time you come upon a mirror, give yourself a long gaze and then smile. You’re looking at a one-of-a-kind original.


Jeff Dodson
August 18th 2014

Gratitude

image courtesy of: joettles.com

Gratitude

This topic of discussion arose between my wife and I recently. How many people nowadays express their gratitude for something to another? Much less than there should to be.  Too many folks just take what they receive for granted or sadly, with an attitude of entitlement.

For many, gratitude means to be thankful or to give thanks for something we value.  An emotional feeling of appreciation for a kind of     act directed towards you.      

From the online reference source, Wikipedia, we are provided with this:
“Gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness, or appreciation is a feeling or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. “

Browsing the web,  I discovered the following quotes about gratitude:
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”
— William Arthur Ward (writer)

“Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.”
— Henri Frederic Amiel

“When a person does’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.” — Elie Wiesel

“Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.” — Jacques Maritain

What lessons did I learn from my parents and grandparents about gratitude?

As a small child, it was always thank those who provided you with a gift at your birthday party. You did that either face to face or afterwards on the old fashioned house telephone.

As a teen and later young adult, I was taught to send a small note or a card of thanks to someone who taught you a new skill, provided assistance in a job lead, a tip that paid off for you or maybe just a note of admiration and thanks to a person you just damn well felt good about.

The responsibilities of caregiving drove home the necessity of expressing gratitude to all of my parents’ medical providers, nurses, can’s, whenever we had an appointment or need for their services. My late father’s banker, for example, is now the banker for my wife and I primarily due to the conscientious and loving attention she provided to dad.

Sociologist Georg Simmel calls gratitude, “ the moral memory of mankind.”

Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis campus, and a leading scientific expert on gratitude, has discovered through his research that practicing gratitude has proven to be one of the most reliable methods for increasing happiness and life satisfaction. Gratitude appears to strengthen the immune system and lower blood pressure. Gratitude has also been found to strengthen and enhance relationships.

Gratitude is viewed as a prized human propensity in the Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu traditions.

Gratitude is something we need to show and spread around a lot more in our society today in place of smugness, entitlement and the notion that, ‘the world, or, somebody owes me something.’

It is an easy trap to fall into. That is, taking for granted all of what we have today that, at one time, was all merely dreams or a bucket list of achievements yet to be fulfilled.

A simple statement and a quote to end this blog comes from the late President John F. Kennedy.
“We must find the time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”


Jeff Dodson
August 9th 2014