Remember Who You Are: Life Stories That Inspire the Heart and Mind

I have had the opportunity over the past few years to participate in an executive and professional non-denominational fellowship facilitated by the former (1980's and 1990's) Chaplain of the San Francisco 49ers. The focus of our meetings is leadership and "doing the right thing." We have used books by Maxwell, Lencioni, and others to draw on for discussion. Daisy Wademan's book will fit right into our program. She has, through her professors, provided us with much to think about and to discuss. For those want to improve their lives as leaders, form a small group of 6-8 people with peers (but not from the same organization), meet once a week for one hour, and use books like this to center your discussion. This one works well as it is well organized (one professor per session) and very well written. Hopefully, Ms. Wademan will follow in the footsteps of Maxwell, and Lencioni providing us with a stream of books to work with. She is off to a grand start!

I picked up this book to give as a gift but started to read it myself and could not put it down. I ended up buying a second copy to give as the gift. Many of the stories were truly inspiring and gave wonderful reminders about making decisions to live a better life. I am not a business person, yet I found something personally touching in most to the essays. I would recommend this book to anyone. It is a great quick up-lifting read.

I think a book is great if it gives me at least one kernel of truth - one piece of advice that I can carry with me, perhaps for decades to come. Few books actually do that. But this one does. It, in fact, gives a couple of them. And here is the thing: you are almost guranteed to find at least a couple of kernels yourself. The stories in this book cover a range of issues, some of them will speak directly to you.An excellent book!

Is this book destined for the best seller's list? Probably not...but anyone who reads it will read it again. This is a solid piece of work, an amazing collection of stories wherein the reader can reflect on their own life and career and be inspired. Beyond inspiration, the stories are also a very telling of the professors who have spent decades training the world's current and next generation of leaders at Harvard Business School. You can just imagine Wademan talking with these professors, soaking in their every word as they talk about what is important to them, what they make sure every student hears of them. And a relief: when exposed to these professors, the money-greedy stereotype of the the MBA goes out the window. A perfect book for anyone thinking about their career, in school or in transition, or those looking to be better leaders in whatever they do.

The stories are beautifully written, artfully presented, and painstakingly edited and polished. Some of them could win Best Personal Essay contests were they to be presented as such. They are eminently readable; in fact it was a delight to read them.Let me put it this way: If you have a young person interested in a business career or a thirty-something loved one climbing up the corporate ladder, slip this little gem of a book into their unread copy of the Wall Street Journal and they'll have it read before morning and wake up with amazement in their eyes. Reading this book is a little like going to the Harvard School of Business. Daisy Wademan has selected fifteen life-changing stories told by business professors at Harvard. She has guided these stories into a form very much like that of the 15-minute personal-experience lecture that typically signals the close of a class before the final exam and before the applause. They are story/lectures from the heart and from the mind, told by people who know what they are talking about. They have excellent ideas and the commitment of true teachers who want to help and to guide.The first story, "A Fall Before Rising" by Jai Jaikumar is about mountain climbing and the day his foot went through the snow in the Himalayas at close to 24,000 feet, and of the consequent 60-mile-per-hour ride down part of the side of the mountain, and then a 24-hour trek through snow and ice apparently on a broken hip until he fell into the arms of a peasant woman who fed him and then carried him--literally carried him--for three days to a doctor.The second story by Jeffrey F. Rayport is about a stuffed bird only partially displayed that served as an unusual final exam for a zoology course that taught him to be prepared to expect strange challenges; indeed the bird symbolized the nature of what we can only partially see, making us realize that what we need to know to succeed in business may be characterized by "extreme uncertainty and accelerating change."The third story is unusually striking in its advice: "be like yourself," with the emphasis on the word "like." Professor Richard S. Tedlow advises his students to assume a public personality that is neither too remote from who they are nor too familiar. He relates how we might seek "a balanced identity." Just as we balance time between our personal and profession lives, so too might we balance who we are at home and at work while keeping a "porous boundary" between the two personae.The fourth story is about understanding who you are, "your background...and your prejudices, and [that] you must understand how each element from your past shaped your thinking..." Thomas K. McCraw recalls Kierkegaard, who said that "we understand ourselves only in retrospect." How truth that is, and yet (McCraw adds) "we must live...[our lives] going forward"--always going forward in a partial ignorance that is only dispelled after the fact, sometimes long after the fact.Notice how the pow