How to Become The Best You

­Yesterday I told you about the 4 amazing books that I’ve been itching to share with you! The books that started me on my Journey to Joy this year, propelled me forward away from negativity and continue to teach me amazing lessons.

(P.S. there’s a FAB giveaway at the end of this post too!)

Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing each book in more detail with you but today I want to talk about the book that I didn’t think I needed…

BECOME THE BEST YOU by Renee Davis

Renee Davis blogs at the fab Mummy Tries. In this, her first book, she shares her powerful story. A story of a past conquered, of positivity winning the day and making peace with your own history.

This is such a brave, brave book to have written. So many self-help books are written by people who aren’t writing from personal experience but from ‘learnt’ experience. This is not the case with Renee. Become the Best You is written from the heart, from someone who has lived through the tough times and come out the other side to tell the tale. That tale is woven through this book with the lessons Renee has learned along the way. 

Importantly though, there are lessons here for all of us, not just those who have suffered in the way that Renee herself has in the past. 

At first glance I didn’t think I needed this book. I didn’t share Renee’s tragic, and in her words, dysfunctional childhood. I was lucky, am lucky, to have a wonderful, stable, loving family around me that supports and encourages me. But Renee talks about taking about getting stuck in a rut of behaviour and how to break out of it and that’s when I had my ‘aha’ moment – I realised that I have taken on a pattern of behaviour – the habits of negativity and perfectionism.

Habits because I have no real reasons to be negative. NONE. I am blessed with an amazing husband and two wonderful children!

But when I read this:

If you have a cycle to break yet do nothing to actively break it, you will almost certainly pass your disfunctions on to your children one day.

…I realised I had to take action. Sometimes I think I can already see the tiny seeds of negativity and perfectionism in my daughter and I don’t want them to grow. Don’t get me wrong, these traits have served me well at times – the first has shielded me from disappointment, the second has led me to achieve more than I dreamed possible.

But they are also walls along my Journey to Joy that I need to break down.

Renee explains the three steps to breaking out of these behaviour cycles are awareness, determination and courage. She offers suggestions for actions to take in each of these steps which are practical and simple but challenging.

As for me, I have the awareness. I’ve written before about my search for positivity here and here. I know that I need to slow down (and thank you for your comments on this post which showed me that I’m not alone), I accept that I need to change. But now I know the gift of change is mine and mine alone. As Renee powerfully writes…

No matter how bad your earlier life or how messed up you think you are, it is down to you and you alone to secure your future happiness.

If you’re looking for a common sense approach to battling your demons, the spiral of negativity that can capture us all at one time or another, or to just become a better you I’d definitely recommend this book.

Next week I’ll share the book that started my whole Journey to Joy but in the meantime I’m delighted to have a copy of Become the Best You to give away to one lucky reader. To enter simply use the Rafflecopter widget below – good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Linking up with ThePrizeFinder.com and Loquax.