Your life sucks if…• You routinely make someone or something more important than you
• The life you are living on the outside doesn’t match who you are on the inside
• You say yes when you mean no
• You try to fix other people
• You’ve forgotten to enjoy the ride
This is a most unusual book on leadership. The premise here is not about leadership approaches, methodologies for managing employees in the workplace, or other business strategy, but is instead a close and powerful look at how we view others and how that view impacts our ability to lead them.
(My dad lent me this book, and while it's intended as a novel style book for leadership in business, it has everything to do with how we treat each other and how we find happiness and fulfillment in living truly and with integrity. A very quick and fun read.)
Therapist Downs's book describes the paradigmatic ways in which early childhood molds the future lives of gay men: scorned on the playground, disrespected by Dad, loved only by Mom until their first sex with men. Through this mechanism of rejection, gay men feel unlovable, correspondingly angry and, he says, driven to heights of creativity and "fabulousness"—in addition to shopping addiction and obsessions with fat, muscle and penis size—in a bid to distract themselves from their inner shame.
(Should be required for every gay man, and PFLAG's... I reference it all the time. When I recommended it to the boif, he asked if it would conflict with any of his religious beliefs. Ugh... The irony, of course, is that THAT's exactly why he should read it.)
