Life: A Guide is about making sense of the different stages of our lives - and understanding the ups and downs of each. It is about the challenges we face at each point, the potentials we may have, and the opportunities that exist to help us live a good life and create the resilience we will require. Andrew Fuller considers life in 7-year slices and presents ideas about what is needed at each stage to have great outcomes.
Andrew Fuller writes: 'I have been developing my ideas for many years for a book on how to live a resilient life. In that time, I have spoken to thousands of people about their views on what is required at each stage of growth - what are the challenges, how we might get through them. I've asked them the question: "What does it take at each stage to live a good life?"'
'I'm intrigued by how we grow and mature. I think this began with my fascination with that old 'scientific' claim that every cell in our body replaces itself every seven years. That concept, as interesting to me as it was, turned out not to be biologically true. However, the more I looked at the great spiritual and religious traditions, and the more I talked to people about their lives, there did seem to be such a pattern to our personal development, our ageing and our cycles of growth. It's almost as if every seven years or so we get a chance to sit back and reorient, reconsider, reprioritise our lives.
'In Life: A Guide, I ask people to consider some of the different stages of life. For example, one 7-year period that's full of challenge for many is from 42 to 49. I call it "Holding the tiger by the tail". It's often a time that brings great growth and enterprise. Women can surge during this period, but it can also be a time of great exhaustion. It's almost as if you're holding a tiger and you've got it by the tail, and you've got it tamed ... but only just! You can either erode your own spirit by being absolutely exhausted or you can find ways to nourish yourself.
'While people may read this book and identify bits where they'll say, "No, that's not true for me", that doesn't worry me so much, because they might consider, "Okay, where do I sit in relation to that? If I disagree with that, what's my life like?".
