Refuse to Choose! A revolutionary program for doing everything that you love
Barbara Sher, 2006
ISBN: 1-59486-303-2
After recently reading Margaret Lobenstine’s The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One, I was expecting Refuse to Choose! A revolutionary program for doing everything that you love to be much of the same. But in actual fact, it was quite different. I would consider these two books to be an excellent complementary set for anyone who wants to explore this part of their personality.
Barbara splits her books into two parts:
Part One, titled ‘What is a Scanner, and are you one?’ provides an overview and some specific techniques for overcoming the general problems that face all Scanners. These include fear that time is running out, fear of commitment, inability to get started on projects and inability to finish projects.
Part Two, titled ‘What kind of Scanner are you?’ showcases Barbara’s many years of experience working with people who are divided in their interests. She has managed to identify a whopping nine different types of recurring Scanner behaviour, within two broad categories, giving each an individual name and their own dedicated chapter. The Scanner types have been split up into Cyclical Scanners and Serial or Sequential Scanners.
In addition to these two main parts of the book, Barbara has added some useful appendices which help Scanners find good careers that fit their personality style. These include jobs for people who love travel, jobs for those who love to learn, jobs for those who love to share ideas, jobs for people who love to read, and even jobs for those who don’t want jobs!
The techniques described in Part One of Refuse to Choose were different from Margaret Lobenstine’s techniques, so I think it is possible to pick and choose between both books. Barbara focuses more on how to express every part of who you are right now, rather than trying to limit your energy to a smaller subset so that you can make progress. Either approach may suit different people and so its probably best to get both books and try them out on yourself.
Personally I really liked this book, because the more I read about Scanner Personality / Renaissance Soul Personality the more I realise that this is who I am. It is a real relief to find a book where the author understands how it feels to be so torn between different interests all the time.
Through this book I have identified myself as a Cyclical Scanner (as I tend to move like a bumblebee between different topics within self development, health, finance, IT and business, and sometimes return to the same topics or same interests years later) and I related most to the scanner types of Sybil and Plate Spinner. My Plate Spinner personality keeps me working in my IT job as computer programmer just because I recognise that I love solving lots of different problems very quickly in a high pressure environment. I also love to work in project management for the same reason. The Sybil in me keeps me moving all the time, always wanting to pick up something different, and unable to commit to any one project.
I would recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone who recognises that their division of interests is starting to make themselves feel like they are not accomplishing anything. Take heed, when you read this book you will realise that not only are you able, but in some careers like journalism, parenting, teaching, entrepreneurship, management, software development and others you may actually be better equipped than some of your specialist peers.
Reading both Refuse to Choose! A revolutionary program for doing everything that you love and The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One one after the other has reignited some of my passions after personally going through some difficult times, and so I recommend that you read both of them.
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