Book Review: Dream Big

I feel like I am on a non-fiction kick this summer, right? I've read so many and luckily they have all been really good. I have to tell you that I didn't know about Bob Goff, or rather, I thought I didn't know about him until I realized he wrote Love Does which I read when it first came out. Plus, the subtitle of this was "Know What You Want, Why You Want It, and What You're Going to Do About It" and I just felt like every part of that was calling to me. So here we are. 

Dream Big - Bob Goff

Bob Goff, the New York Times bestselling author of Love Does and Everybody, Always, is on a mission to help people recapture the version of their lives they dreamed about before fear started calling the shots. He wants them to dream big.

In his revelatory yet utterly practical new book, Bob takes you on a life-proven journey to rediscover your dreams and turn them into reality. Based on his enormously popular Dream Big workshop, Bob draws on a lifetime of living and dreaming large to help you reach your larger-than-life dreams. In Dream Big he shows how to

learn to define clearly your dreams for yourself,

identify the obstacles holding you back,

come up with a specific plan for reaching goals, and

develop the tools that will help you act on the plan.

Dream Big is the only book you need to uncover the wild and exciting dream for your life you’ve hidden from yourself--and help you take the steps necessary to achieve it.

If ever there was a time that I wondered what the heck is happening in my life... this would be it. The last four years, actually. I felt like we had be doing fairly well after the birth of Penelope, finances weren't great but manageable. Our marriage was doing really well, we were parenting three kids pretty well together, and overall it was just a nice, cohesive unit. 

Then Lucy was born and it all kind of went down the tubes. Not only was I struggling to stay alive, I was battling the worst (or what I thought was the worst) depression of my life, I was trying to parent four kids, Matt and I were struggling, we were in spiraling into financial ruin (for the second time in our marriage), and it just felt like we can't be up for too long. We can't have a good run for too long because surely life has to even it out. It's like a ferris wheel, the top is so great but you can't be there forever. You have to come down so somebody else has a turn at the top. I felt like that was what was happening to us. 

One of my dreams has always been to write a book. I've always wanted to be a published author. I want to sign books, find my book in a bookstore, I want to get up at early hours to be on the Today Show or something, maybe meet Oprah. My only obstacle has always really been, what do I write about? Did I have anything anyone really cared about? 

The blessing in our trip to the bottom has been having a story handed to me, practically on a platter. When I saw this book I felt like maybe it would help me clear up some of the fuzzy edges, so to speak. I was really struggling with different parts of it and this was SUCH a motivational book .

If you don't know my personal story the summary is I had an Amniotic Fluid Embolism, I died giving birth, I was revived, I have a litany of medical issues resulting, including but not limited to, cognitive impairment and memory loss. Memory loss is one of the worst things a person can experience and Bob talks of that in chapter 4 titled Who Are You? A friend of his had a stroke and lost memories and had a hard time remembering her identity. Of course he explains that you don't have to have had a traumatic event and lose memories, but you can lose your identity through responsibilities you take on that no longer suit you. 

So much of the book references religion and God, but even as someone who is no longer feels firm in the beliefs I've held, you can still gain so much from this book. It lays out the game plan, at least the concrete steps, you have to fill them in. 

I've seen this quote floated a few times in reviews for this book, which is funny because I wrote it down as soon as I read it because I felt like it spoke to me directly: 

"What we do isn't who we are. Writing a book doesn't make me an author. It doesn't even mean I'm a guy who can spell. It simply means I'm a guy who tried."

No joke, I have it on a sticky note on my desk because it reminds me to just keep trying. I don't have to accomplish all of those lofty goals, I just have to try. 

A huge thank you to TLC Book Tours for having me on this tour, Thomas Nelson Publishing and Bob Goff for sending me a copy for review. I can't tell you how many times I've gone through this book, thinking through different things time and again, not to mention how many friends I've talked about this book with. Even if you aren't a big reader, get the audiobook and listen while you fold laundry or something. 

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