Write to be Read: Dr. Don Hanley (Russell Shor)

Literati!

Lest we forget!!!

Don’t we all wish we felt better about ourselves and our lives? Don’t we wish we had a fatherly or grandfatherly figure that could guide us with his wisdom?

Well, his name is Dr. Don Hanley. And he wants YOU to be able to “live with yourself and (gasp!) enjoy it”!

Russell Shor has submitted the first review for Dr. Hanley’s book (it felts so weird calling him by such a formal name when I look at him and see my grandfather! No, not biologically. Dangit.) and here we go!

How Live with Yourself and Enjoy It. Br Dr. Don Hanley

Drawing on more than 40 years of counseling experience, Dr. Don Hanley has produced a manual to  do exactly what the title says. In his years, he has found that people fall into traps of feeling worthless or devalued, letting past unhappiness interfere with current or future happiness and failure to receive or give love. In 10 well-defined chapters, he addresses the most common difficulties — acknowledging that has has been through some of these along his own way— people find themselves in and offers solutions, seasoned with examples. 

His solutions are not “easy,” of the “Five steps happiness” kind or “take two of these and you’ll feel better.” They require the reader to work hard, first to search one’s innermost feelings to find out things that need improvement, then to accept and own one’s mistakes and failings, then start building anew with self-acceptance, trust and, finally, love. In one chapel (On Being a Loving Person) he describes 4 questions Native American Shamans would ask men or women who felt depressed: When did you stop singing; when did you stop dancing?; when did you stop being enchanted by stories (he adds, especially your own) and when did you stop being comfortable with silence. 

Such questions demand one search deeply for the answers and from these answers emerge the roadmaps to become, in his words, a loving person. 

Dr. Hanley is a wise man, and he is wise enough to understand that people need to draw on their own wisdom and humanity to live happily with themselves. 

Questions like “When did you stop singing?” and “When did you stop dancing?” sound like poetic fire. Except that it’s the same fire that fuels our passion, our life force. Thank you Russell Shor for your lovely review, and stay tuned for the next!!!