SoulPancake: Chew on Life’s Big Questions: Speak Your Mind, Unload Your Questions, Figure Out What It Means to be Human
I am just getting back from vacation, and I picked an easy one for this week, making this week's book of the week SoulPancake: Chew on Life’s Big Questions: Speak Your Mind, Unload Your Questions, Figure Out What It Means to be Human by Rainn Wilson, Devon Gundry, Golriz Lucina, and Shabnam Mogharabi.
So those are some weighty and wordy subtitles, but they are quite accurate. This book hit my radar while reading Sean Webb’s book, Mind Hacking Happiness, so I bought it, not quite sure what to expect. And quickly realized that while you certainly CAN read this book front to back, it’s not really intended that way. This is more of a workbook/journaling book. It is visually beautiful, it has a ton of drawings and art, all attributed, you can flip to the back of the book and see who provided the graphic on any given page.
It is filled with quotes relevant to the chapter topic, quotes designed to get you to think. And it is filled with exercises, challenges, and questions for you to answer. And one could just breeze through the book, providing flippant answers to some of these questions, and think oneself quite clever for the brevity of thought.
But that’s not what is intended. Remember, it’s subtitled “Chew on Life’s Big Questions,” and part of the sub-subtitle is “Figure Out What It Means to be Human.” So, if you just breeze through it, not giving any real thought to the answers, just answering to say you’ve done so, you might not be getting the most out of this book.
The intro includes instructions to read it front to back, back to front, turn it inside out, and start over again. So, while I did start by trying to answer each question, I quickly realized to maximize the happiness hunting hormones that made me buy this book, I really needed to slow roll the process, and follow directions, i.e. CHEW on the questions. Read the chapters slowly, savor the information, and really think about the answers I want to give to the prompts.
So, this is a very short review this week, which is not necessarily a bad thing, gives me a chance to ramp up to more weighty books that are just around the corner, reading up on the Great Depression and all that. But I also decided to add ANOTHER side project for myself, namely slowly working my way through SoulPancake and taking my time really thinking about the prompts and challenges. Sean Webb advised that next to meditation, journaling is one of the best things you can do for your mental health, and I’m going to start journaling with SoulPancake.
