A Review: Reclaim Your Dreams

Jonathan Mead is the author of one of the best critiques of the modern love affair with productivity I've read recently. I say "best," because after he explains what he thinks is wrong with our productivity obsession, he includes his own specific and working solution. This is his great strength, and where and when he engages in this kind of approach in his eBook, Reclaim Your Dreams, he is refreshingly successful in breaking through the ordinary world of self-help literature.

In my view, this is mostly evident in Part 2 of the book. In Part 1, you have to confront Mead’s repeated assertion that "the point of life is to enjoy life." If you agree with that, you may be fine with the rest of his argument. However, you may think the point of life is to serve one another justly, or, perhaps, to serve God, or something else entirely. Too, if you did not have a relatively privileged, trouble-free childhood, you might have a hard time identifying with Mead’s too easy explanation of the development of adult self-doubts and judgments from run-of-the-mill childhood experiences.

Fortunately, you can benefit from the useful approaches introduced in Part 2 without assenting to the belief structures of Part 1. And here, as I mentioned, is where Jonathan Mead is really at his best. He is a man who has put his ideas into action in his own life, and he is willing to report both the process and the results, which is unusual and informative. For those of us interested in the topics of career transitions, dreaming of the future, or even retirement planning, I think the book gets very useful when Mead gives us the 3 Keys to Making Your Dreams Happen. Here, he essentially recaps his key ideas in  practical form, by spelling out what you have to do to try out a new idea. He starts by confronting fears and making suggestions about how to "overcome uncertainty." He also walks through what it might be like to talk about any transition with those closest to you.

Next, he presses on the idea of making time for the new idea and explores all that might mean. Finally, Mead takes on the topic of money. Our financial planner made many of these same arguments to Iris and me when she was trying to get us onto a smarter path of retirement savings. Mead takes it a little farther, because he also includes the post-transition steps, that is, how to start that new business by volunteering or "hang(ing) up your shingle." Interestingly, by reminding you to "focus on providing value to others," the 7th Chapter actually ties directly to the productivity essay I mentioned earlier.

Let me also take a minute to touch on the exercises that are available along with the book, for an additional fee. Most of these are fairly intuitive and follow along with the texts for each chapter. They would be useful for someone who really likes to have a structure within which to work. There is one extraordinary diagram included, and it pertains to discerning how to create an income from what you love. Mead credits Bud Caddell's whatconsumesme.com

One last thought: in his introduction, “Taking the Plunge,” Mead notes that “We have to make things up as we along, and we have to stop caring about not knowing where our thirst for freedom might lead us.” That struck me as a good rallying cry for any liberation movement, and I wondered if Mead’s readers notice they have common cause with every person who wants to be free to be fully him- or herself.

Again, the eBook is: Reclaim Your Dreams