The title of this book may seem enigmatic, but it is the foundation of having a wonderful life. The reader may wonder, If I don't work on myself, won't I become complacent? Not at all! The reason that working on yourself doesn't work, the Kanes explain, is that it presupposes that there is something wrong with you. But, as their second principle states, you can only be exactly as you are in any given moment. As long as you imagine you are messed up and in need of repair you resist the way that your life is showing up. This leads to the first principle: anything that you resist persists and grows stronger. If you want to see a behavior stick around, resistance - the adding of oppositional energy - will do the trick.
Although working on yourself doesn't work, there is much you can discover about your mechanical ways of operating that can improve the quality of your life. Through awareness - defined by the Kanes as the non-judgmental seeing of anything - your experience of living can shift without your having to do anything else. This is encompassed by the Kanes' third principle: anything you see exactly as it is will complete itself.
Does it sound all too simple? It is, and it works. This is why I recommend this book, more than any other, to the people in my life. After years of searching for well being - attending workshops, reading numerous books, and even staying on a farm to find a better way of living - Working on Yourself Doesn't Work is the only thing that I have found that does work. Read again and again, the book makes life easy, magical, and effortless.
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