Book Review: Awakened Wisdom

This is a quick review of a new book by my friend and mentor Patrick Ryan: 'Awakened Wisdom'.

Bottom-line, I don't think this book is for everyone right now, but, if you're ready or hungry to make more sense of who you are and to create mindful choices around how you live your life, then don't miss it!

Patrick is an ex-Buddhist monk, a lifelong entrepreneur and a senior leader in the coaching world. And perhaps more importantly for this book, he is someone who I know from personal experience daily lives by his own code. What he preaches, he practises.

I really enjoyed many parts of this book, especially the 'Notes from the Future' sections, a kind of enlightened vision showing how inspiring things will be when our wisdom is fully awake.

Other real highlights for me include the story of how when Patrick first became a monk he experienced a deep separation anxiety when he thought he had lost his one remaining possession - a begging bowl. Being separated from his bowl overnight and then not knowing which was his from a stack of hundreds brought home in a crashing way for Patrick the absurdity of identifying ourselves with possessions. As someone who can experience a great deal of fear and anxiety about the condition of the 'stuff' in my life, I found this tremendously useful.
As he says:

"It is okay to own stuff as long as the stuff doesn't own you"