Getting Out of Your Own Way
Unlocking Your True Performance Potential: A Guide for High Level Performance
By Nancy Shainberg, CSW
Luminous Press January 2002
ISBN 0-7908004-0-1 Trade Paperback
Nonfiction / How To

Reviewed by Beverly J. Rowe, MyShelf.Com
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This book is about developing a sound, strong, inner self and increasing your chances to become the success of your dreams. With years of experience as a performer and a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of performing artists, Shainberg brings her expertise to bear on helping you to raise your performance potential in any endeavor.

Her methods are "inside-out" conditioning of your inner self, rather that the "outside-in" methods that are more familiar. She claims that most of us are "sitting on the fence;" a pop term for our terminal ambivalence. We survey all our life choices, but do not really commit to any one of them. We need to focus on what or who we really want to be, and what we want to do with our lives. Shainberg admonishes us that the best way to achieve the future is to achieve the present, and that we have a responsibility to ourselves to stop chasing a perfect future and concentrate on the present.

Here are tried and true methods to help us focus on what needs to be changed about ourselves to access our full potential. This step-by-step plan to re-create yourself and become the successful person you want to be, is just what I need to apply to my own life.

She tells us how to use our mistakes and shortcomings as opportunities to learn and change and to become your own ally instead of your own worst enemy. This well written guide to success is laced with anecdotal examples of the application of Shainberg's approach to finding the "real you." I think I'll read it over again and map out a plan for improvement using Shainberg's practical techniques. It makes sense.