Article first published as Book Review: Living Your Exclamation Point Life! by Anne L. Prinz on Blogcritics.
April 23, 2018
Living Your Exclamation Point Life!: How to Transform Your Circumstances and Lead with Vision, Purpose, and Passion
Anne L. Prinz
Aviva Publishing (2018)
ISBN: 978-1-947937-06-2
New Book Teaches How to Pursue Your Best Life Possible
In Living Your Exclamation Point Life!, Anne Prinz reveals how we can transform our lives to have daily fulfillment and long-term purpose. As a graduate of the Mary Morrissey Life Mastery Institute, Prinz has the skills and tools necessary to help others turn around their situations, embrace their passions, and find fulfillment. Perhaps even more important, she has a personal track record of overcoming difficult situations and applying these tools to improve her own life, so not only does she have experience, but she knows how to practice what she preaches.
Living Your Exclamation Point Life! is filled with powerful stories, helpful lessons, and practical applications to help the reader overcome whatever obstacles he or she faces. Don’t believe me? Then just read the story of how Prinz overcame her own obstacles. Her biggest obstacle was when, early in her architectural career, she was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. For years she struggled; she had to give up her day job, could only function normally for a few hours a day, and needed constant rest. She tried to make the best of it, doing what she could and learning how to manage her illness. Then came the day when a doctor told her she would never recover. Her response, “He doesn’t know me very well.”
In the book, Prinz goes on to explain how this response transformed her situation:
“This was a decisive moment for me in harnessing my thinking power to create a new result. In that moment, I went from asking myself, ‘What can I do to manage my illness better?’ to asking an empowered question of ‘What can I do to get well so I can work again?’ My internal response to the doctor shifted my thinking from circumstance thinking into empowered thinking—creating a life I would love, simply by changing the daily question I was asking myself.”
Learning how to change your daily question is just one of the many helpful tools Prinz provides readers so they can create their own exclamation point lives. Sometimes a simple change in mindset can also work wonders. Prinz tells a story of how she did just that when she saw two pit bull terriers coming toward her, on the attack. By changing her mindset from fear to indifference, she left the dogs confused as she walked by them bravely and unharmed.
Too often in life, we find ourselves focused on why we don’t have what we want and believing we will never get it. Prinz gives us a breath of fresh air when she tells us, “What we want, wants us.” She illustrates this point by showing us how love and everything else is possible when we are open to it. Quoting from A Course in Miracles, she says, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
In other words, we can have whatever we want if we stop getting in our own way. Prinz is a believer in the Law of Attraction, but with a cool twist. Rather than just focusing on what we want and telling the Universe, “I want this,” she encourages us to add four very important words to that sentence, “This or something better.” That way we may not get exactly what we want because the Universe knows what we need better than we do and can send us an improved version of it.
Prinz also provides good examples of how we cause ourselves to miss out on a lot of the good in life when we deny ourselves what we want. For example, she once attended a concert where someone played the zither. She had the opportunity to take zither lessons, but told herself she was too busy, even though she was fascinated by the instrument. Then she asked herself why she should deny herself what she really wanted. The result: Today, Prinz is an accomplished zitherist and she is actively involved in hosting zither concerts and interacting with zitherists around the world. She has even received international recognition for her efforts in supporting the zither community—and she’s had a fabulous time doing it.
I could say a lot more about this book, but the bottom line is that your dreams can also come true when you get out of your own way. Prinz can show you how in these pages. More than just a reading experience, each chapter of Living Your Exclamation Point Life! includes life-changing questions to ask yourself and transformative exercises to get you on the path to becoming the best version of yourself. Why shouldn’t you live an exclamation point life? You probably have an answer for why you can’t, but Prinz will show you how you can, and you’ll have a lot more fun when you do. Get ready for the adventure of a lifetime.
For more information about Anne Prinz and Living Your Exclamation Point Life!, visit www.AnneLPrinz.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place
