Bed and breakfast owner turned career coach Maragaret Lobenstine developed the term Renaissance Soul to describe people that have too many passions to pick just one. These people are often called "flighty" because they don’t stick to one interest. They are constantly finding new activities and topics to throw themselves into. After immersing themselves in a subject area and satisfying their curiosity, they move on to the next. Lobenstine uses "case studies" and exercises to introduces life planning techniques and strategies to help Renaissance Souls embrace their multitude of passions and design a fulfilling life.

Do you get frustrated by the fact that you can't stick with most things long enough to get good at them? Do you find a new project or hobby, do it for a little while, and then get bored very quickly? Then this might be the book for you.

If you can dodge all the stories of the author's past customers/clients, there are some helpful exercises and eye-opening suggestions. I'm particularly eager to try her "sampler" method of narrowing down my interests.

As a bed and breakfast owner, the author spent a good deal of talking to her customers, which led to her Renaissance Soul ideology. She then decided to become a life coach to share her new views. Many of her B&B customers became her life coaching clients. She uses their stories, or case studies as she calls them, as examples throughout the book. By throughout I mean constantly. Some of them sound so outlandish I have to ask myself if there's any merit to them at all. Seriously, half of the book is telling the reader how such-and-such used to struggle with whatever, but nows lives life to the fullest thanks to her help. Insert eyeroll here.

After reading this book, I went digging for more information and perhaps better suggestions for being a Renaissance Soul. There's not much available, but I have found another book titled Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher that is highly recommended.

I love the concept of a Renaissance Soul personality. I have a difficult time even deciding what I enjoy doing because I like most things equally. Learning there are others like me is empowering. I'm not broken!

Overall, I think this book useful. It does a pretty good job of trying to get you moving toward change.

If you have found your one true passion in life then this book is probably not for you.

In summary, about half of the book was excellent, full of extremely helpful exercises while the other half included impractical/patronizing/redundant stories of people that have changed their life because the author was a genius.

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Created Jun 06, 2021 at 12:38pm • Submit your own review...