The Path to a Meaningful Life by Frank Sonnenberg
If you want a book that builds character—and especially if there’s a person in your life who could use some firm guidance—Sonnenberg may offer just what you need. Directed both at business and personal life, his book probes to the heart of what it means to be a person with strong ethics and solid character: someone who others can count on, and who can look in the mirror and feel good. It’s full of lessons, many in easy-to-digest list format, such as:
- 30 ways to live the Golden Rule (pp. 7-9)
- 4 reasons why earning your accolades is better than receiving them without doing the work (p. 28)
- 25 ways to demonstrate a strong work ethic (pp. 35-37)
- 13 ways to turn mistakes into learning opportunities (pp. 60-61)
- 9 reasons why selfish people are losers (pp. 87-88)
- 15 positive business choices (pp. 116-117)
- 15 negative choices that could ruin your business (pp. 119-121)
- 10 times you want to walk away from a sale (pp. 123-125)
- 11 ways to make yourself proud (pp. 154-155)
- 13 workplace policies that work better than rigid rules (pp. 162-163)
- 14 examples of leading by example (pp. 181-183)
- 25 things not to stress about and 15 negative attitudes to dump (pp. 219-225)
- 20 things to either fix now or regret not fixing them when it’s too late (237-239)
- 16 ways to give more effectively (pp. 241-242)
As well as affirmations and principles within the text including:
- “Self-discipline is not a punishment; it’s a gift.” (p. 21)
- “Winning doesn’t have to be at someone’s expense…focus on how much you can accomplish together.” (p. 63)
- “Someone’s good fortune is not your misfortune.” (p. 82)
- “What’s the cost to your well-being of harboring anger and resentment?” (p. 92)
- “If you think that doing the right thing most of the time makes you reliable, you’re kidding yourself.” (p. 109)
- [On people who always need to be right] “You never know if your ideas are sound until they are challenged.” (p. 147)
- “Watch your children grow, and they will teach you what you’ve taught them.” (p. 175)
- [Quoting actor/author Sean Patrick Flanery] “Do something today that your future self will thank you for.” (p. 187)
- “Doing your best isn’t an activity; it’s a mindset.” (p. 197)
- “Impossible means that you just didn’t do it yet.” (p. 203)
- “A wedding reveals promises made while a funeral recounts promises kept.” (p. 205, emphasis in original)
- “Forget your to-do list and create a to-be list.” (p. 215)
- “If work isn’t fun, you’re playing on the wrong team.” (p. 225)
The final list, on pages 245-247, is “30 questions only YOU can answer.” While he presents them as binary choices, I found many of them were really “both-and.” For example, #21, “Identify as a member of a group or view yourself as a unique individual?” I’d even say that my uniqueness could be the sum of my descriptors (writer, social justice/environmental activist, business owner, consultant, husband/father, visionary, music lover, voracious reader, photographer, vegetarian foodie, etc.), memberships (Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice, National Writers Union, a grassroots political action network in my town, several Internet forums, and dozens of groups I support financially), and various intangibles and personal experiences.
While I agree with about 95 percent of the content, there are places where Sonnenberg and I disagree. One is his oft-repeated urging to always finish what you start. I once wrote a piece called “Failure is ALWAYS an Option.” For me, knowing when to walk away is a key life skill. It should not be done casually and it should acknowledge the consequences. A lot of people would look at where I’ve put much of my energy for the past 20 years, see big change-the-world ambitions but less-than-stellar results, and tell me I’m a fool to keep going. But showing the business world that social change and planetary healing can be profitable is still the passion that gets me up in the morning, and I’ve had enough results that I see the worth of continuing. But when something just isn’t working—or simply no longer inspires me—I walk away, without guilt. To me, failure is an essential part of evolution—and my business, my life, and my thinking continue to evolve.
My other two quibbles:
- The blanket statement that breaking the law is always wrong (p. 159). I almost agree: breaking the law for personal financial gain or to do violence to others is always wrong. But as a nonviolent activist, I’m well aware of the 3000-year-old tradition of resisting unjust laws. The Bible is full of examples of courageous people who broke unjust laws; my favorite is of Shifra and Pu’ah, midwives to the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt. Ordered by Pharaoh to kill the newborn Hebrew males, they responded with the lame (but effective) excuse that the Hebrew women gave birth too fast. In our own recent past, we saw vast nonviolent resistance to unjust laws in such diverse situations as Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied territories around Europe; the US Civil Rights, draft resistance, and peace movements; Tiananmen Square; South Africa’s rebellion against apartheid; Arab Spring, Greta Thunberg’s school strike (among thousands of examples)
- His long rant opposing affirmative action could have argued (but didn’t) that while you should hire someone who is qualified, if you have a choice to hire another person from the majority culture or someone from a historically disenfranchised and abused culture, this can be a chance to partially right a grievous wrong.
But these are minor points in a book filled with wisdom. So much so that if I had a time machine, I would bring a copy to the teenage version of a certain disgraced recent US president who was so out of alignment with the principles of this book that he was willing to subvert democracy rather than admit defeat.
