“Know you are not responsible for the failures or misery of your parents or of others.” Betty Franklin in Guts: Get Uncomfortable to Succeed believes individuals can get out of a difficult situation by pulling oneself up by one`s bootstraps, and with a little help from her book.
Our troubles often reveal weak areas in our life that we need to improve. Franklin tries to reach people with all sorts of problems so this is not the type of book which can be read from cover to cover. A self-assessment questionnaire in the second chapter will pinpoint which chapters you need to focus on. When reading chapters you are weak in, Franklin shares enlightening ideas to help explore your weakness along with tips and “motivational speak”. On the opposite end, by reading chapters in your strength areas, you will find the content full of obvious common sense and quite tedious.
Franklin researched writings separated into seven areas of Faith, Family, Fitness, Friends, Finance, Fun, and Final Goodbye which Franklin called “Death and Taxes”. Guts culminates into a portal for other self-help books that the author integrates and attributes well.
The author is obsessed with acronyms. I found it annoying overall and can truthfully say that not one acronym stuck. But outside of that, four of Franklin’s ideas that I can easily recount are to answer the phone with a smile; we do not have control over what pops into our heads, but we do have control over what stays there; the hardest things with adult children is to stand back and wait; and the state of worry is not about caring, it’s that you don’t trust the process.
The main disagreement I have with this book is in the parenting section. Franklin says, “To be effective in our role, we need to seek help from parenting courses or books on parenting.” Most of the people who write these parenting self-help books or parenting courses have their past experiences at parenting as the qualifying criteria. Parenting blogs and social media advice benefit from the same qualifying criteria. The best advice is to turn to the original source. Talk to any parents with grown kids, grandparents or extended family. First-time parents often bemoan the unwanted opinions, pouring in from everywhere, including strangers. If you like how a young teenager is turning out, or a person of any age, then go talk to his or her parents about what they did to raise a person like that. Some intergenerational discussion might be helpful. But even those parents who feel they have made very regrettable mistakes in childrearing will be able to say where they went wrong. Hindsight is often the best teacher.
The overriding principle in raising children is to always take the long-term view in what would be best for the child in the long-run. Every parent’s job is to work towards raising children who once they are adults will be in the best position possible to make good decisions and to be independent. That kind of thinking requires self-discipline and sacrifice on the part of the parents. Unfortunately, it is so much easier to take the short-term view in parenting and do what makes the parent’s life easier.
Integrating technology into good parenting appears to be more of a challenge for today’s parents, something not addressed in this book. It saddens me to see little ones sitting at a fast food restaurant with their parent(s) who are absorbed in their phones and ignoring their little ones. A perfect moment for family bonding, conversation and teaching but lost to the self-absorbed parents, a prime example of the dearth of long-term thinking in favour of personal short-term gains.
Guts is about challenging oneself to be a better person, learning how to forgive ourselves. That a person who consistently has a positive attitude always outperforms a negative thinker. Filled with loads of statements that a person could write on stickies and post all over the house. If you have kids at the cusp of adulthood, then they will find value in the last two chapters of this book. “Fun”, which should be called Attitude, and “Life is a Do-It-Yourself Project” are must reads. With that, I will insert a few stickies and hand the book off to a friend in need.
