REVIEW: Linda Rossetti — Dancing with Disruption (BOOK)
“Let’s face it. This notion of exploring shifts in our thinking about who we are — our identity — is countercultural. As a society, we love sticky identities. We are physicians or firefighters or professional athletes or great neighbors. We often greet those who entertain such shifts cruelly; they are excluded, mocked, or treated as if there were something wrong with their constitution or character,” writes Linda Rossetti in her new book, Dancing with Disruption: A New Approach to Navigating Life’s Biggest Challenges.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: https://lindarossetti.com/
She’s not wrong. More than ever in a world that is being cataclysmically impacted not just professionally, but personally, a new kind of approach is needed when it comes to navigating one’s way through the titular Life’s Biggest Challenges. What Rossetti offers is a sort of Way of the Peaceful Warrior mentality, sans the spirituality Millman articulated so beautifully. She remains firmly terra firma, focusing instead on an altruistic view embracing the unexpected as part of the journey. Not something to spite it.
“This book explores four kinds of circumstances common at times of major change in life which may address your particular situation,” she writes. “The first situation involves the experience of unplanned events, like a job loss or a divorce. Many who experience such changes toggle back and forth between a desire to get ‘back’ to normal and a willingness to embrace new thinking. Others find themselves feeling stuck or frustrated at their inability to make progress in addressing a desired change. Individuals in this category have historically navigated major changes with some success and now wonder, Why is this one any different?”
Penultimately, she writes, there are “those who want to be proactive in addressing a realization of some kind, like a feeling that something is not right or a desire to pursue more of their potential.” Spelling things out normally would come across as high-handed or condescending in less competent hands. But Rossetti has too much style and articulation to let this happen.
As a result, the ideas themselves have a full opportunity to shine, the read actually able to concurrently entertain and enthrall on a narrative scale. Rossetti uses self-branded ‘vignettes’ to highlight her argumentations. The result is something that doesn’t feel coldly removed from the reader on an emotive as well as intellectual set of levels. It feels motivational, in fact. You get the sense this really is something that could apply to your life, without any sort of ham-fisted superfluousness often plaguing many other self-help and self-motivation reads. Rossetti cuts through the BS, but keeps the heart.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Disruption-Approach-Navigating-Biggest/dp/1538169371
There’s never a sense of filler, just something packed to the brim with genuinely effective ideas, insights, and methodologies. This is a welcome relief, and something to take heart in. Because if nothing else, books like this written properly can actually bring relief and understanding to the increasingly complex problems life brings you. That is something of a public service, one too often abused for an author’s own capitalization of trending themes…
Colin Jordan
