May 8, 2023
Create Your Personal Significance:
Leading Yourself in Who You Are, What You Do, and What You Leave Behind
Dr. Eric Lake
Aviva Publishing (2022)
ISBN: 978-1-63618-180-6
New Book Helps Readers Claim Their Significance
In Create Your Personal Significance: Leading Yourself in Who You Are, What You Do, and What You Leave Behind, Dr. Eric Lake reminds us that we all can be significant, but sometimes we forget that when life becomes difficult. He has written this book to help us reclaim or recover who we are and figure out how to use our significance to improve our lives and the lives of the people around us.
Eric defines significance as “a state of being worthy.” In other words, we can have worth even though we often may feel we are not good enough or we are lacking in some way. Using a tree metaphor throughout, he declares that we can take the scars in our lives and turn them into shade for others. In the book, he shows us how to create our significance if we never knew what it was, or how to unbury it from life’s demands and other people’s expectations.
Eric is the perfect expert to teach us how to plant and water our significance so it will grow. And not because he has a fancy degree or some superhuman wisdom, but because he has known what it is to fail and to lose sight of what is really important. Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom before we can start seeing things from a new perspective, and Eric has been there. He went through a divorce that he admits he caused. He went deeply into debt, was threatened with foreclosure on his home, almost filed for bankruptcy, and was demoted at work. Every day became painful for him, and as he states, “The worst part was I knew my own bad choices had caused me to be in those circumstances.” But by using the principles he reveals in this book, he managed to turn it all around for himself, and now he wants to help others do the same.
Create Your Personal Significance is divided into three parts. In Part I, we learn that creating significance is about learning who you are, that who you are is what you do, and what you do is what you leave behind—your legacy. Part II is about turning the scars from your past or even your present into shade that serves others. The shift then becomes living for the future. Finally, in Part III, still using the tree metaphor, Eric talks about the different seasons we go through that create our significance. These seasons include learning how to overcome toxic thinking and fear, learning to wait and appreciate silence, finding good soil to replant ourselves in, and ultimately, learning what we can produce to serve others and leave behind our legacy. The information applies to improving both our personal and professional lives.
Eric knows that this process is not easy. It requires hard work. It requires cultivating and watering so we grow, but most of all, it requires choosing to change. Eric states: “if your life is not blossoming and feels like it is withering, you have a choice. If your environment is stormy and toxic, you can choose to change…. You do not have control of everything. But you can control many things. If life is stormy, unhealthy and toxic, what will you choose?”
He then discusses how, like a tree, we can weather life’s storms by letting our roots grow deep. Those roots represent our values, and when we are firmly rooted in knowing what our values are, we can grow higher and stronger. Ultimately, creating your personal significance begins with understanding who you are and what your values are, and then living those values.
The path to creating your personal significance includes analyzing and choosing many things. Eric covers a variety of topics that may be relative to the reader, including learning to stay out of debt, not accumulating things just to create a false sense of security, and choosing the right people to be in our circles of influence.
One of my favorite sections is when Eric draws upon the biblical story of Lazarus in the tomb to make the point that we all have to get out of our tombs. He states, “If you are alive, even barely, you can do something. If you are dead, you can do nothing.” He also tells us to stop playing the victim, warning that some people wear “their figurative grave clothes as a badge. They want everyone to see what they have been through. Constantly wearing grave clothes and bindings brings attention and constant pity…. They like the attention. But who wants to stay around people who stink?” We can quit acting like a dead person and make choices to help ourselves, including being willing to ask for help from others. After all, Lazarus couldn’t come out of his tomb alone. He needed others to roll away the stone to help him get out. And once we have our stone rolled away, we can help others roll theirs away.
I also appreciated the discussion about busyness and how it is not a badge of honor. In our fast-paced society, too many equate being busy with being important, with feeling like if they are busy, it’s a sign to others that they are sought after and have prestige. Truthfully, our busyness is often a way to compensate for our low self-esteem. If we are busy pleasing other people, we think they will value us. As a recovering workaholic, I can definitely relate to the truth of that statement and affirm that being busy brings no real rewards.
Other topics discussed include replacing our toxic thinking with healthy thinking and how to change our attitude to change our thinking. Eric discusses how to serve others but also how to say no to whatever or whoever detracts from our growth, which is a way to honor our significance. Finally, throughout he shares the importance of faith and trusting in God as the foundation to create our significance.
Altogether, Create Your Personal Significance is a thoughtful, eye-opening, and enjoyable journey toward self-improvement that everyone will benefit from in some way. Anyone who wants to reclaim who they are or discover who they can be need only read this book and then water the seeds they gather from it. Then they will have embarked on their own growth journey to creating their significance.
For more information about Dr. Eric Lake and Create Your Personal Significance, visit www.CreateYourSignificance.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place
