Book Description
This new edition of the classic bestseller has been revised and expanded to help readers of all ages—from new college graduates to recent retirees—develop a practical strategy for achieving their own vision of the good life, elegantly defined by the authors as "living in the place I belong, with the people I love, doing the right work, on purpose." Leider and Shapiro use stories, personal examples, and innovative exercises to help readers evaluate the burdens they carry and decide which help them live well and which merely weigh them down. This new edition draws upon a decade of additional research to provide new strategies for coordinating work, relationships, place, and purpose and includes several versions of the self-assessment inventories that are directed toward "repackers" at different stages of life.


Book Info
Revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking bestseller helps people develop their own unique vision of the good life and take practical steps at home and at work to make that vision a reality. As a result of repacking, readers will be able to reach for and achieve their vision of the good life. Softcover.


From the Publisher
"Full of the right questions rather than the wrong answers, Repacking Your Bags will help you figure out where you want to go in your life and what you really need for the journey."—Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline "Leider and Shapiro help us to see how many extra burdens we’ve been carrying around and how to lighten our load."—Gloria Steinem


About the Author
Richard J. Leider is a founding partner of The Inventure Group, a coaching and consulting firm in Minneapolis. He is the author of The Power of Purpose, Life-Skills: Taking Charge of Your Personal and Professional Growth, and The Inventurers: Excursions in Life and Career Renewal. David A. Shapiro is Education Director of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children and author of Choosing the Right Thing to Do. Leider and Shapiro are the coauthors of Whistle While You Work.

FROM OUR EDITORS

This is a step-by-step manual designed to help you set down the burdens you are carrying, examine them to see if they are really making you happy, and discover new ways to lighten your load. Do you ever find yourself making these kinds of statements? "I've got to get my life under control." "I don't know who I want to be for the rest of my life." "I'm not fully living my life." Repacking Your Bags uses the metaphor of baggage to help remind you that life is a journey, and that your experience along the way is intimately bound up in the baggage--emotional, intellectual, and physical--that you are carrying. What we carry around defines so many aspects of our life. Learning to release what no longer serves us and developing a balance of the demands of work and love can lead us to a life made up of our own vision of success and a true path to happiness.

ANNOTATION

People everywhere feel overwhelmed today--weighed down by countless responsibilities and buffeted by changes in their personal and professional lives. Repacking Your Bags shows readers how to climb out from under these burdens and find fulfillment in their lives--now and in the years ahead.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Using the metaphor of baggage one carries on life's journey, the authors analyze your goals and goal-setting, and help you learn how to live with a new sense of purpose. Find where you belong; enrich your relationships; become who you want to be.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Career development counselor Leider (Life Skills) and freelance writer Shapiro here contend that many ``mid-life inventurers'' (those undergoing a mid-life crisis) lose their sense of what they want from their personal and professional lives. This simplistic guide is intended to help readers redefine their own version of the ``good life'' and offers a formula to achieve it. The authors advise readers to discard excess ``baggage'' such as possessions, responsibilities and relationships in order to reintegrate ``work, love, place, and purpose.'' Citing thinkers from Alfred Adler to Dante and Norman Cousins, they couch their suggestions in metaphorical, slogan-like terms and use sometimes arbitrary-sounding ``Postcard exercises'' to be exchanged with a ``Dialogue Partner.'' Having ``fully unpacked your relationship bags'' and chosen only things ``you can't live without,'' you are presumably ready to select a new purpose, way of life and environment. 30,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo; author tour. (Jan.)

Library Journal

The authors describe "repacking"' as the ongoing process of reevaluating and reinventing our lives. Throughout the book's five sections, training consultant Leider (The Power of Purpose, Fawcett, 1985) and coauthor Shapiro argue that there are four elements (work, love, place, and purpose) critical to a successful life and that we must live "passionately for today and purposefully for tomorrow." All of this has been said before, but some authors are able to take familiar concepts and give them new meaning or appeal. Unfortunately, that is not the case here. A major marketing campaign and interest from attendees of Leider's workshops will bring requests from some patrons. Otherwise, only the largest public libraries needing to fill their self-help shelves should consider this derivative work.-January Adams, ODSI Research Lib., Raritan, N. J.

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

In a new, expanded and revised edition, this classic bestseller aims to help readers achieve their own vision of the good life. The authors want to help people live where they belong, with the people they love, "doing the right work, on purpose." Repacking Your Bags guides readers through getting their lives under control, deciding what really matters now, and discovering a clearer sense of purpose in life through stories, personal examples and innovative exercises. Copyright (c) 2002 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

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