Essential Living: A Guide to Having Happiness and Peace by Reclaiming Your Essential Self

Reading Essential Living felt like sitting down with an expert in the field of how the mind works. The ability of the author to break down complex topics and relay the information in understandable concepts was brilliant. I felt like I was actually sitting in the room with Shelly as she informed me on how my brain works. Tremendous book and resource for information on how the brain works and why I think the way I do.

One of the greatest books I have ever read.

This is a truly great book!

Discovering your true self, who you really are, and living in the here and now is the essence of this book. The author takes you on a path helping you get in touch with the real you. As she says, “Transcendence occurs when we go beyond personal goals and desires, and into something greater than ourselves as we know it.”In order to accomplish this, she needs to help us peel away the layers of our “false self” built over years of responding to the threats and fears around us through the “fight, flight, or freeze” automatic responses built into our brains. As she points out, “While all parts of our brain are vital to our overall health and well-being, in terms of reclaiming our Essential Self, the prefrontal cortex is the brain area we most need.” Unfortunately, this area shuts down when we go into auto-mode and allow our “fight, flight, or freeze responses to take over.Highlighting this Uram points out, “The doors of perception to our Essential Self do not open through the intellect or our thinking. They open when our brain feels safe and becomes quiet enough.” In order to quieten the brain and make it feels safe, the author takes the reader on a journey through numerous steps to help bring us back to where we started. As she notes, at birth our Essential Self is alive and well. It still is. It just has been covered over by life events. If we are really going to live we need to get back there. For many this occurs as they face death, but why wait when we can get there now and have a much more enjoyable existence in the here and now.Actually, the “here and now” is where the author would like for us all to live. Unfortunately, our auto responses make it too easy for us to live in the “then and there”, responding to the present just like we did the past. As she points out, “The process of seeking our true identity, and then aligning out life with it, takes courage. It is not for the meek. The process of identifying what is true and not true for us may challenge some of our deepest conditioning or programming.” She goes on to say, “the biggest enemy to most people on their path to reconnecting with their Essential Self is their identifying with their negative thought or limiting thought.” As we choose this alternative path, “We become aware that there is a very real connectedness among all of us. This ultimately leads us to much greater levels of compassion and love.”So, what’s it going to be. Are you going to meekly succumb to your fears and “false self” or are you going to boldly go where few are willing to go? Choose boldness, choose life, choose compassion and love. That is the author’s challenge to each one of us.

This is an important book. It helps us understand the science of the brain and marries that knowledge with the path to take to recover our true nature or essential self, the path to self-actualization and transcendence. Unlike other books of this genre which promote one technique to achieve this goal, such as yoga or meditation, Dr. Uram has researched and describes in several chapters "the way home," a number of techniques and practices, many with which she is personally familiar, to help us achieve this goal. She adds contact information to help the reader locate additional information or find a trained practitioner. I know this book will be a helpful guide to those who are seeking life's true purpose.

It's a great book. I think many people could improve their lives by reading and following some of the things outlined in this book.

I am a medical oncologist who was impressed by the last paragraph of the prologue and overwhelmingly won over by the last page. I am recommending it to some of my patients as a must read

I enjoyed reading this and could easily identify with what was written. I only wished there was more journaling prompts to assist with self discovery