You have felt it in the gap between the life you are living and the life you know you could live. This book is about that gap. More precisely, it is about what fills it.

But this book does not simply report what others have found. It offers a complete methodology, a set of tools, exercises, and frameworks you can use, starting today, to do the work that used to require a seminar hall, a facilitator, and a weekend.

You know or felt that something is running your life, and it is not you. This might sound dramatic, might even sound insulting, but if you are honest with yourself, really, ruthlessly honest, you already suspect it is true. You have felt it in those moments when you said yes and meant no, when you walked away from something you wanted, when you picked the safe path even though your whole body was screaming for the other one.

This book draws on the research in psychology, cognitive science, and human development. It synthesizes ideas from existential philosophy, from the work of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, from the attachment research of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, from the cognitive revolution ignited by Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis, from the breakthroughs in neuroscience led by researchers like Antonio Damasio and Lisa Feldman Barrett. It also draws on the rich tradition of transformational knowledgw and processes that, over the past half-century, have helped millions of people distinguish the invisible narratives governing their lives.