Emergence: seven steps for radical life change is a book by Derek Rydall. How did I find this book. It’s sort of a long story, but I will go through it anyway since it will provide some other self help resources along the way.
I first started embracing abundance after listening to You Are A Badass At Making Money by Jen Sincero. Then as I tried to learn more about abundance, I watched a course on mindvalley by Christie Marie Sheldon which spoke about all different kinds of abundance blocks. I highly recommend that course if you want to learn more about abundance.
After I watched that course, I thought to myself there has to be more resources out there about abundance. That’s when I found Derek Rydall’s Abundance Project book. In reading that I learned that he had written another book called emergence. That’s how I found this book.
This is why I love self-help.
You might start down one path and then learn about other things along the way. There are even books that Derek recommends in emergence that I am currently reading that I would have never read if I didn’t investigate this book (Spiritual Divorce by Debbie Ford).
Anyways, let’s get onto the review of emergence
There are many categories of self help books. Some are general self-help and some are more specific.
This is a more specific version of self-help related to abundance.
Who is this book for?
This book is for anyone on a self-help journey. I believe this book would be especially great for people starting out there self-help journey because it helps you change your whole view and not just small pieces of yourself. It doesn’t help you treat productivity or anxiety. It helps you change your entire view so that you can emerge as your greatest self.
Some things to note about the book. It is a book that has a lot of religious views with a focus on Christianity. If you aren’t religious, I’d just want to make you aware before you read this book and get upset.
The title says what this book is about – seven steps for radical life change. The books is basically split up into a definition of what emergence is and then the seven steps to emergence. Emergence is a very generic term and might be confusing to those looking at this book. To be clear, this is a book about abundance.
What is abundance?
Abundance is a category of self-help that focuses on looking at the optimistic viewpoint of life. Abundance encourages you to take the viewpoint that there infinite resources for you to accomplish your goals. Abundance in self-help often leans towards spirituality because spirituality allows to believe that there is a higher power providing you with the necessary tools to succeed. All you need to do is believe in it.
That’s really what this book is about. It’s about knowing that you have what it takes to succeed within you. You don’t need to look outside the self to succeed. That being said this book is split up into seven chapters to follow the seven steps for radical life change. Each chapter has several exercises for you to create your emerging life plan.
Emergence Book Notes
The book starts out by trying to help you understand the vision of your life. You must first have a vision for your life in order for the real you to emerge.
Then it progresses to you understanding your goals and desires. Many people base their goals on what others would give them or what they can get from the world. The book forces you to dig a little deeper and find out why you are really pursuing your goals. For example, do you want a fancy car to gain respect and approval from others? Do you want respect and approval from others because you want permission to love yourself?
This is a bad idea. Once realize you can give yourself what you’ve been craving from the outside world, you free yourself up to truly create the life you desire. This is based on the principle that you can provide everything to yourself without external validation or external sources. This is a common theme in other self help books. Constantly looking for approval from the external world will drain your energy.
Once you do this you need to make sure that your life is congruent which is the next step in the process. This means that you can’t continue to be miserable everyday and expect your life to one day magically turn into a Disney movie. Most people try to create their vision solely by writing down what they need to do to achieve it. They don’t activate their vision by trying to feel and be in their vision. This book encourages you to do that which is much more empowering in my view. You need to actually picture yourself in your vision of the future to motivate yourself to accomplish it. You also need to become who you want to be. You can’t do this without picturing it first. I feel like this exercise in itself sets this book apart. Most books just have you create a vision board of all the things you want in your life. This book has you envision who you will be in order to make your vision come true. Your vision of who you will become should not be the same vision of who you are now if you aren’t getting the results you want.
There is also several other useful things that the book suggests in the creating congruent conditions section such as taking really brief moments of the day to meditate and be grateful. The book also suggests a nightly routine to keep you grateful for what you do. There are some really great exercises in this book.
Create A Plan
After you create a congruent environment necessary for your vision to succeed you then have to…….create a plan.
It’s kind of funny that the book says you have to plan your future in order to get what you want when it says that everything you need is already in you. The author addresses though by saying you have to plan to become the whole you and not just the fake you that you have been presenting to the world. You also have to turn your big vision statement into an executable plan. The book suggests breaking your goal down into a one year timeline. It states that people overestimate what they can execute in a year but underestimate what they can execute in 5 years. This is similar to other books like Awaken the giant within that say the same thing. It’s ok if you can’t plan every step of your journey. The missing areas are most likely areas where you need to learn or grow.
Additionally, try to break your plan down into the pieces that it would take to get to your one year or 5 year goal. You do this by starting with your goal and working backwards.
Act Your Plan Into Action
Next up is stage five where you start acting you plan into action. This means that you should act how you want to be. How would you act in your goal stage. If you want a relationship, then start setting a place at the table for a person or hug the pillow next to you in bed. You don’t necessarily need to act either. Sometimes the world offers itself up is what this books says which is pretty amazing. In that case, the action would be setting the intention for your time sitting there and actually sitting there in silence. You wouldn’t mindlessly watch tv while you are sitting down hoping for something to happen. There is also a seven step action plan in this section which is really great. One is to act from your highest beliefs which hit me hard. Because it means that you should be acting based on what you believe. For example, if you believe the world is abundant, you shouldn’t be constantly complaining about small bills and wondering how you will meet them or saying that there aren’t enough opportunities.
If you act from where you want to be, you are more likely to achieve that result.
The final chapters of the book reiterate the previous chapters by highlighting that you can’t become who you want to be by doing what you’ve always done. You have to change. You also have to do the work to change. The final exercises are similar to other exercises in the book.
My Recommendation
I really like this book, and I think it will be helpful for many people. It gives a high level overview of what abundance means. It doesn’t teach you to meditate as most spiritual books would, but it provides great vision exercises to help you find your blocks and unlock your potential. You should use this book to find your vision for your future by connecting with yourself. It prevents you from creating a vision that was created by society. Most other books won’t do that. Most other books will set you on a path that everyone is already on.
Pros
Great overview of abundance
Thorough Exercises
New ideas around visions
New ideas around embracing who you are
Different perspectives on many self-help concepts (rejects law of attraction)
Cons
Speaks about spiritual practices but doesn’t really go into spiritual guidance like meditating or praying
Some exercises are repetitive
About Derek Rydall
Another important thing about self help books is learning about the author. You learn about Derek throughout the book. He was an actor until he found his path as a self-help expert. According to his website he is coached executives of fortune 500 companies, celebrities, and medial professionals. He also has a podcast.
Like many people that write self-help books, Derek admits that he was a self-help addict and turned towards spirituality. When neither of those things fulfilled him or paid his bills, he finally developed the Law of Emergence.
