Lifeshocks: And How to Love Them

This is reasonable enough, you might think. But what if we reframe the experience as a positive one that we can learn from? One that we can use to develop a stronger, more positive, and more authentic sense of self?

This book is for anyone who's experienced sudden, unwanted events in their life, and wants to know how to cope with them, and how they could be given a positive spin. It contains such a wealth of real-life material that it's bound to strike a chord with almost everyone. In the workplace, it could help any manager with team members who are struggling with negative and life-changing events.

If you've read much about mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy, or positive psychology, the premise of "Lifeshocks" will sound familiar. Expressing gratitude for positive experiences, and learning to reframe and manage negative emotions, are central to its message.

Books dealing with a holistic approach to psychological well-being crowd the market. But this one is written by someone who's had the toughest lifeshocks you can imagine, and thought long and hard about them.

Sophie Sabbage was diagnosed with stage four cancer in 2014. As she puts it, "There is no stage five." At the time, she was a psychologist specializing in personal development and mindset change, with more than 20 years of professional experience behind her.

Her mentor for many years was Bradford Brown, referred to throughout the book as Brad. As well as being a priest, theologian and psychologist, he developed the education program More to Life, which Sabbage helped him bring to corporate leaders through their company, Interaction.

This gave her a valuable set of skills for navigating the profound emotional and psychological lifeshocks that cancer dealt her. She wrote her first book, "The Cancer Whisperer," in response to her diagnosis, and to help others deal with the situation she herself was in. It became a bestseller.

So, keep listening to hear how we tell ourselves lies, how we can stop ourselves from doing so, and how we can make even the worst life events become a source of strength.

It's fair to say that "Lifeshocks" is not always an easy read. The author talks openly about the events in her life, and a number of these have been traumatic. But this is not merely a confessional autobiography. Sabbage recounts episodes from her life to show how she's made sense of them, and turned even the most terrible lifeshocks into valuable self-development experiences.

The book also talks openly about spirituality – it doesn't take a specific religion as a starting point, though the influence of Buddhist meditation is clear. Some people may find this kind of approach off-putting.

The content is divided into four significant parts, the first of which contains the foreword, preface and other introductory material. This is one book where it's best not to skip this initial content, however much you might want to dive into the meat of the book. These sections are important, not least because they record the author's debt to her mentor, Brad Brown, whose influence on her thinking is profound and runs throughout her writing.

After this comes Part One, which sets the scene for the theoretical and practical substance of the book. It consists of three chapters developed from reflections on the author's experience of cancer treatment – and in particular, radiosurgery, which is a type of radiation therapy.

The central message of this part of the book is the importance of stillness. One aspect of this stillness is literal: radiosurgery requires the patient to be absolutely immobile, secured in a steel frame. But for the author, there's a more important, inner stillness that forms the basis for reflection.

This section sets the confessional tone for the rest of the book, as Sabbage recounts the anxieties she suffered as a teenager. She talks of shocking personal traumas in her early life, but also of the love and self-acceptance she finds later. By establishing this intimacy with her readers, Sabbage is "walking the talk" of the book. Opening oneself up is key to learning to use lifeshocks to our advantage. In the author's words, "This is what lifeshocks do. They reveal us to ourselves."

The core of the book lies in the eight chapters of Part Two. This section is titled "Life Speaks," and with good reason. Each chapter deals with the lessons Sabbage learned from her own lifeshocks. Between them, they cover a lot of autobiographical ground. They also deal with themes introduced by single-word chapter titles – for example, Beauty, Privilege, Success, and Grace. Sabbage explores these themes as part of a journey to self-awareness and personal growth.

A few key concepts recur throughout this section. Perhaps the most important is the difference between the reactive mind and the creative mind.

The "reactive mind" is a false and misleading way of perceiving the world. It's composed of fears, unfounded beliefs, and the unreasoning demands we make on ourselves and others. It promotes the construction of a false self, which we use to protect ourselves from unwelcome thoughts and beliefs about our failures and shortcomings.

These beliefs are usually bogus, but they form a further layer of self, which the author calls the "feared self." This is made up of all the fears about ourselves that we believe are true, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

In this model of consciousness, the reactive mind is separating. It separates us from an honest, self-aware response to our experience of the world.

Importantly, when we react against lifeshocks, we're under the influence of the reactive mind. Only by accepting the lifeshock and confronting its true implications, can we gain access to a more authentic state of awareness about ourselves and others. This authentic consciousness is the creative mind.

The "creative mind" isn't just associated with what we usually think of as creativity. According to Sabbage, it's the driver of a truly happy and positive emotional life. Its creative element manifests itself in our responses to lifeshocks, taking onboard and fully understanding their significance and value.

The creative mind is connecting, in contrast to the separating activity of the reactive mind. It connects us to our authentic self, and allows us to experience genuine self-awareness.

One of the most important goals of the book is to help readers gain access to their creative mind, and spend less time under the control of the reactive mind. This is where the practical elements of the book come in. You'll hear more about those later.

"Mindtalk" is another hugely important factor in Sabbage's world view. Mindtalk is the internal conversation each of us has with ourselves. You'll sometimes see it described elsewhere as self talk, or interior monolog. It reinforces the negative feelings and beliefs we have about ourselves. It makes demands on us to be more successful, more attractive, or thinner, for example. It tells us we aren't good enough, or accuses us of failure.

Mindtalk occupies the space between the moment when the lifeshock strikes, and the moment we react to it. The reaction is what we feel about the shock, and what we do in response. Under the influence of the reactive mind, we usually resort to beliefs based on our fears.

For example, you might give a presentation that doesn't go down well with your audience. Straight away you may think, "I'm really bad at this" or "They hated my presentation, so they must hate me." These negative thoughts, expressed in mindtalk, cause negative feelings. These can be feelings of inadequacy, fear or shame. And the way we feel can dictate the way we respond. Usually this is defensively, seeking to push the lifeshock away and resist it.

Not all lifeshocks affect us in the same way. Sabbage sorts them into three broad types, or manifestations, which she explores in Part Two of the book. The three types are: exposing lifeshocks, limiting lifeshocks, and evoking lifeshocks.

"Exposing lifeshocks" are most likely to challenge us when we're being inauthentic. You've already heard about the power of the reactive mind, and how it can build a false sense of self. We notice exposing lifeshocks when we're trying to maintain that false self. They expose the self as false and make us fear that the false self conceals something even worse – that we might be unlovable, or a failure, for example.

By exposing these beliefs, lifeshocks allow us to address and challenge them, and come to a greater awareness of how we actually are – our authentic selves.

"Limiting lifeshocks" have a different focus and value. They come into play when our false self makes us feel or behave as if we're superior to others, and we become arrogant or aggressive. A manager who bullies his staff while striving to make the numbers might be unaware of how wrong his behavior is until he's shocked into a response. Typically, the response is to deny the behavior or seek to justify it. A better response is to address what's behind it and try to change it.

Above all, limiting lifeshocks bring home the importance of our connectedness to others. This may be easy to overlook in a book focused on developing an authentic self. But connectedness is a key aspect of the creative mind, and spreads beyond the individual into all their relationships.

"Evoking lifeshocks" are noticeably different to the other two categories. These are the shocks we find easiest to accept, because their impact is immediately positive. Our false self doesn't have to raise defenses against them.

An evoking lifeshock can be as simple as suddenly understanding something you've previously struggled with, mastering a new skill, or seeing a child take its first steps. It brings a sense of wonder, and of connection to how we really feel about the world. In other words, it bypasses the false response brought about by mindtalk and our emotional response to it.

Lifeshocks isn't just a reflective memoir, though much of its strength lies in its candor. It's a practical self-help book, too. Each chapter in Part Two ends with an exercise to help readers develop their creative minds, and find valuable responses to lifeshocks. These exercises follow a clear structure, beginning with the importance of noticing lifeshocks and the feelings associated with them. Being fully aware like this is a key part of mindfulness practice, and readers with experience of mindfulness will be at home here.

The exercises at the end of each subsequent chapter build on the insights the reader has just absorbed. From noticing, we move to truth-telling, the process of correcting negative mindtalk. From there, we progress to choosing, the ability to make positive choices rather than being continually manipulated by negative mindtalk. As the process continues throughout Part Two, readers develop a toolkit of new skills to help them build a strong sense of self-awareness.

As you've already heard, "Lifeshocks" is not an easy read. The author's journey of self-discovery has been a tough and occasionally brutal one. She's admirably frank about it, and her openness can be disconcerting. Plus, the enthusiasm and passion of her delivery sometimes makes her arguments harder to follow than they might have been.

The absence of a reference list is also a concern. Sabbage draws heavily on the work of Bradford Brown, but it's often unclear whether the ideas she puts forward are also supported by more mainstream academic research. Readers who prefer rigorous, evidence-driven arguments may feel the book lacks substance.

Nevertheless, "Lifeshocks" is an achievement of remarkable narrative skill, blending personal experience, psychological insight, and practical suggestions into a compelling and compassionate whole.

Whether you buy into the full scope of the book will be a matter of personal taste. Its emphasis on the importance of spirituality, and its relationship to the creative self, may be hard for some readers to swallow. But there's no denying the passion, experience and depth of engagement the author brings to the work.

"Lifeshocks: And How to Love Them," by Sophie Sabbage, is published by Coronet Books.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.