Title: Deserving Good: Getting to Know Your Real Self and Live a More Fulfilling Life
Author: Leora Zairi
Genre: Self-Help
This short self-help work by Leora Zairi provides gentle guidance towards self-awareness and transforming one’s life for the good. Focused primarily on knowing one’s self—one’s desires, needs, and emotional wants and making choices based on loving oneself—the author speaks from her own experience in an insightful way without being pedantic or overly technical.
She discusses the importance of getting off “the autopilot of the subconscious” and living as one wants without being swayed by one’s past or by society’s demands.
In many ways, this reads as the voice of a friend who has struggled and found the key to connecting deeper, being content, and escaping from a life of reactionary thinking. Providing gentle self-help rather than a strict “you must do this” regime, the author starts by explaining why self awareness matters and how to go from a “place of weakness to a place of empowerment.”
The tone is conversational, pragmatic, and practical, and while all such guides are open to cynicism, she has genuinely positive things to say and understands that the transformation she’s discussing won’t occur overnight.
Accordingly, the work makes no promises of instant change and betterment. She explains, “Spirituality doesn’t guarantee happiness but promises to help us to be happy with who we are. It is an inside job aimed at accepting and appreciating ourselves as we deserve.”
The book has very mild language which reinforces the conversational feel, making it seem like she knows the struggles and is there for you without being nagging, pretentious, or condescending.
Instead of addressing the more philosophical and metaphysical questions of destiny, justice, and the moral complications of everyone doing as they’d like, the author focuses on how one can improve one’s daily life, from finances to weight challenges to relational difficulties, though the primary focus is on emotional health. Overall, it focuses on understanding oneself rather than the universe and why one is here.
It felt like the book’s content could’ve been strengthened by showing how the methods discussed could be applied to a variety of religious frameworks. The author mentions having studied many sources looking for answers but seems to dismiss these sources as less important than a general, all-purpose spirituality, which could leave readers with unanswered questions and intellectual restlessness, as not everyone can overlook all “why” questions and only focus on what they are feeling in the moment. Perhaps a follow-up book will address the challenges of integrating the book’s principles into a framework of beliefs about life, morality, and humanity’s place in the world.
The author’s inner-centric way of changing one’s life explains how to create a spiritual connection that fills the void that used to be one’s life story. By feeling, exploring, and responding to one’s “inner child” through positive affirmations and encouraging questions, she shares how to change one’s life in any area, She writes, “The answer that comes from within you comes with the capacity to fit your own unique emotional structure and therefore, to heal.”
The work is divided under subheadings that provide an easy guide for reference while one is working through things, detailing nine steps to loving oneself, the four levels of perception, and other useful steps in creating a new way of life through connecting with the Higher self (called God, one’s spirit, and the Universe) rather than being restricted to the limited self (one’s ego).
The author assumes no prior knowledge and doesn’t favor any particular religion, though it is mildly Christian in outlook (referencing the book of Genesis as illustrating how humans are made in the image of a Creator and thus made to create one’s outlook, one’s response, and one’s life). Still, the goal isn’t to proselytize but to encourage expressing oneself, caring for oneself, and steering clear of anything that would pull one down.
She writes, “To love yourself is to understand that you have great strength within you, that nobody can deliver you from the outside and that only you can deliver yourself from within.”
Simple and relatable, “Deserving Good” provides a universal guide for finding peace and knowing one’s inner self. Avoiding mysticism, particular religious affiliations, or anything too technical or controversial, the book is remarkably permissive, understanding, and practical. It provides the tools to know oneself and, by knowing, to choose how one responds to life, and it delivers these tools in a simple and succinctly powerful way.
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
Original post here.
Editorial Review written by the Book Review Directory Production Team. To receive a similarly honest, professional review for one of your own books, click here.
Cátia Isabel Silva 