Book Review: Find Your Strongest Life

Marcus Buckingham has bad news: it’s tough to be a woman.

But he also has good news: every woman can surmount her challenges and live a full life by listening to, living in, and being led by her strengths.

This is Buckingham’s latest book on the subject of strengths, and it is directly targeted towards women.  He starts out by spewing out a slew of sad statistics.  He points out how women, as a population, are sadder than men, sadder as they grow older, and sadder now than they were 40 years ago.  They are also more stressed and far more likely to suffer clinical depression than their male counterparts.

Why is this? He argues that both the complexities and responsibilities of a modern woman’s life have mushroomed, and the push to “have it all” but lead a “balanced” life have led to a massive stress overload.

What is the solution?  Buckingham offers a strengths-based life as a path out of the jungle the 21st century woman finds herself entangled in. For those unfamiliar with his previous works, he defines a person’s “strengths” as actions that give a person a feeling of satisfaction & accomplishment.  These are specific areas that are hard-wired into a person and stay fairly constant throughout life– the roles they were born to play.

The secret to a fulfilling life is to discover your areas of strengths, to nurture them, and to let them guide you.  Chapter by chapter he discusses strategies for searching for “strong moments” (specific times you feel “in the zone”) and then intentionally “imbalancing” your life towards them.  There are also specific tactics chapters for career, relationships, and kids.

I think the book suffers from some inevitable tunnel vision: while I believe living in your strengths is an important component to a fulfilling life, it is only a part.  He also makes trusting one’s feelings a major focus of the book, and (sorry, Marcus) feelings can’t always be trusted. Finally, he skitters too close to “Law of Attraction” like concepts in some of the material for my tastes.

All in all, Find Your Strongest Life is, (couldn’t resist it!), a strong book.  Reading and applying its principles will indeed help women navigate the jungle of 21st century living to find their strongest life.  I found it useful myself, both for its universal principles and also to help me understand the challenges that women face today.  Highly recommended. Available here through Amazon.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:

• Living From Your Strengths
• Speaking Truth in Love by David Powlison
• Book Review: The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment by Tim Challies
• The Principle of the Path
• An Honest Look at Life: Eccl. Chapter 9