Know Yourself, Forget Yourself: Five Truths to Transform Your Work, Relationships, and Everyday Life

by Marc Lesser

We all yearn for clear-cut answers to life’s problems, yet we rarely get them. Formulas fail and contradictions mount. In Know Yourself, Forget Yourself , executive coach and mindfulness teacher Marc Lesser shows that understanding and embracing the points where life feels most confusing, most contradictory can lead us to more satisfaction and joy.

Lesser provides clear guidance and simple practices for embracing five central paradoxes in life and navigating them to increase our effectiveness and happiness. Influenced by the revolutionary mindfulness and emotional intelligence trainings he helped develop at Google, Know Yourself, Forget Yourself is a profound book about cultivating the emotional skills to understand the right path through difficulties and challenges.

Genres: Self Help, Personal Development, Psychology

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 4, 2013

About the author

Marc Lesser is a speaker, facilitator, workshop leader, and executive coach. He is known for his engaging, experiential presentations that integrate mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices and training. He is the CEO of ZBA Associates, an executive development and leadership consulting company.

Marc has led mindfulness and emotional intelligence programs at many of the world’s leading businesses and organizations including Google, SAP, Genentech, and Kaiser Permanente, and has coached executives and led trainings in Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, health care, and government.

He helped develop the world-renowned Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program within Google - a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence training for leaders which teaches the art of integrating mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and business savvy for creating great corporate cultures and a better world. Deeply rooted in science, the program has been taught to thousands of executives worldwide. He was the founder and CEO of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI).


Marc’s books include Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen, Know Yourself, Forget Yourself, Less: Accomplishing More By Doing Less, and Z.B.A. Zen of Business Administration They have been published in 11 languages.

Marc founded and was CEO of 3 companies and has an MBA degree from New York University. Prior to his business and coaching career, he was a resident of the San Francisco Zen Center for 10 years, and director of Tassajara, Zen Mountain Center, the first Zen monastery in the Western world.

He has keynoted at Mindful Leadership Summits in Washington DC, Toronto, and Sydney and has led “Search Inside Yourself” and “Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader” trainings in San Francisco, Japan, Hong Kong, and Toronto. Learn more at www.marclesser.net.

Reviews

[Jmp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zen teacher using paradoxes as lessons interested in "branding" as a technique

[Georgina Brooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Excellent for sending you to sleep

[Katrina Sark · Rating 4 out of 5]

p.19 – Meanwhile, paradox can point to a radical clarity. My hope is that this book will help you see that with paradox comes a kind of clarity that is more accurate, more true, more clear than clear, than what we usually accept at face value.

p.209 – Everything is beautiful and, simultaneously, everything is already broken. This is the truth of impermanence. We don’t like to look at the world in this way. We want to hold on to and protect everything we love, and to discard or turn away from everything that is broken. When something breaks, or a person leaves us or someone dies, we are completely upset, and we want to move away from the experience of loss as quickly as possible. Loss reminds us that the world isn’t a safe place, so we try to protect the things we still possess more diligently; we hold on to relationships more tightly. We become stressed, paranoid, out of balance.

p.250 - In the book The Social Animal, New York Times writer David Brooks cites a research statistic that “being part of a small group that meets monthly brings more personal happiness than having your salary doubled.”

[Bassaidai88 · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this book will probably be beneficial for the majority of readers who are interested in this subject matter, it was only OK with me. The part I didn't like was where the author discusses the "imposter syndrome" which is a fear people have who do think that they do not deserve their success. After reading the entire book, it appears to me that this may be the case with this author. I say this because even though the author has studied Zen and lived in a Zen community for many years, I do not believe the author to be enlightened/awakened. This is evident is his interpretation of a number of Zen master teachings which are rationale interpretations but miss the boat on the real underlying meaning. It was then apparent that the author does not have an awakened mind. How can one profess to enlighten others if they are not themselves enlightened? At best the author is life coach teaching others how to de-stress and appears to be far from a Zen spiritual master. If you read it in that context then the book is OK and no better or worse than the other motivational gurus such as Stephen Covey. But if you want insights into Zen go elsewhere.

[Barbara Newhall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots to ponder in this well-written book by a Zen teacher and executive consultant with many years' experience as a Buddhist monk turned entrepreneur.

Lesser explains many classic Buddhist concepts in a fresh way -- impermanence, grasping, etc. Even more interestingly, he applies Buddhist principles to life in the workplace. Very useful for cubicle dwellers, but especially useful for managers and executives.

Since I'm not in a workplace right now -- I'm writing my book in the solitude of my own home -- much of this book doesn't apply to me. Otherwise, I probably would have slapped another star onto my rating.

Here's a link to a story that Lesser's book inspired: http://barbarafalconernewhall.com/201...

[ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had I not already read a bunch of books about mindfulness and meditation I might find this book more interesting than I did. There were some helpful tidbits about how to relate practice to work and life, but overall this book was just ok.

[Nagapriya · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can read my review here:

http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/book-re...

[Pamela Blunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book from Mark Lesser. I love the paradoxical nature of which he writes. Again, succinct, warm and packed with wisdom in a small space.

[Debbie Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Very insightful. This is a do the work book and reap the benefits.