Why 'It's That Simple' is a Must-Read for Adults and Teens Alike
The world is becoming AI dominated and yet, beings who live here now, us human beings, don’t even know how to navigate life for a truly fulfilling experience.
We grow up chasing ‘success.’
We chase this mysterious meaning and this mysterious feeling behind the word ‘success’ without even knowing what that really means. We chase it because we think that where we are is not enough.
When we are kids, where we are IS enough in our body and soul. We KNOW it.
When high school sets in, we are PRESSURED to create a successful life. We are pushed along like cattle into a path that makes sense mostly to the people in our lives and to the people around us in society.
“You couldn’t possibly know how to get to success,” they say, “you are just a young human.
But is that really so? Do teenagers and young adults truly not know how?
Or is it the case that adults think they know how to lead our youth but, in truth, don’t really know what they are doing? Where to go? How to go? The perfect path to go?
Could it be that our teenagers and young adults, if left to follow their own innate intelligence, will carve out the best and most wonderful life path for themselves?
To both points - there is truth.
Adult or not:
If you feel like you need to chase happiness….
If you feel like you have to chase/have meaning in your life
If you feel like you need to rush to accomplish something to achieve some sort of success, then you have forgotten how to navigate human being-ness. You have forgotten who you are.
You were born knowing this, but have been veered away from this KNOWING that is SO CRUCIAL to actually living a healthy and fulfilling life.
Here is the book that will change your life
Mavis Karn has created a user’s manual for human beings that will BRING YOU BACK to where you belong inside yourself.
YOU need this book. I need this book. WE ALL NEED THIS BOOK.
This book will remind you that you have already arrived in this life, and that the only thing left to do, is to move forward having fun in what brings you joy - this is THE ONLY thing that needs to happen for you to create a fulfilling and happy life.
“It’s THAT Simple!” says the title of the book and says Mavis in every single beautiful short and sweet chapter.
It is so simple that if you try TOO HARD you will completely miss it.
Mavis Karn is a professional counselor and teacher with 45 years of working with individuals, families, schools, businesses, hospitals, prisons, professional athletes, and teams. She used to work with incarcerated juveniles and taught them about the nature of thought and helped them to understand their precious humanness.
When she left that job, she wanted to give them a gift that would stay with them forever to help them ingrain what she had taught them. So she wrote them a letter called THE SECRET. Here is an excerpt:
I have a secret to tell you, nobody meant to keep it from you… It’s just that it’s been one of those things that’s so obvious that people couldn’t see it…like looking all over for the key that you have in your hand.
This letter became the jumping off point to writing “It’s That Simple: A User’s Manual For Human Beings.”
Why will this book change your life?
So, what is the secret?
The secret became the MAIN IDEA in this entire book:
“The secret is that you are already a completely whole, perfect person. You are not damaged goods, you are not incomplete, you are not flawed, you are not unfinished, you do not need remodelling, fixing, polishing or major rehabilitation. You already have within you everything you need to live a wonderful life. You have common sense, wisdom, genius creativity, humor, self esteem…you are pure potential…you are missing nothing.”
How would you carry yourself in the world if you knew, REALLY KNEW, that you are missing absolutely nothing?
What would you do?
What would say?
Who would you choose to interact with?
Your life would be beautiful.
It would be beautiful EVEN WITH mistakes - because you wouldn’t see them in a bad light but as someone tapping on your back and saying “hey, don’t go over there. Come over here, this is where you are meant to be. This is where you are meant to go towards. These are the people meant to be in your life.”
Mavis starts ‘Letter One’ or chapter one with ‘The Secret’ to set the tone and explain the user’s manual in a nut shell.
Then, along each of the rest of the fourteen chapters, she gives you ONE KEYSTONE instruction with a LOVELY and CLEAR insightful explanation, that if you apply it, it will unravel a beautiful journey of life for you, taking you closer and closer to that inner knowing and inner life experience that you were born with but have forgotten: that you are pure potential and you are missing nothing.
This book shows you how to live life in a way that will bring you closer and closer to KNOWING that the secret is so.
A favourite excerpt
It is very hard to pick a favourite excerpt in this book but ‘Letter Three’ marked me strongly as a good part of my life was MARKED by me traveling through this life in ALL the buses I did not want to be in.
Letter Three: A Story About Buses
One morning, as I was standing at the bus stop ready for another long day of bus rides ahead, a man I’d never seen before said to me, “Excuse me, but why are you always riding the buses?”
“Well,” I said, somewhat defensively, “everyone knows that’s what buses are for. To ride. My whole family has always ridden them all day long – sometimes even all night long. “
He looked at me as though I was the one who was strange.
“That’s not what buses are for,” he said. “They are for getting you where you want to go. Haven’t you noticed that everyone doesn’t always ride every bus?”
Mavis writes about the fictional story of a girl who has ridden random buses all her life because she thought that is what buses are ‘SUPPOSED TO’ be used for - to just go and ride them all day long. This is what she saw her family doing and so the ‘tradition’ was passed on.
That ‘riding buses all day long’ belief was so very ingrained in her and she had created such momentum in her daily life about it, that she didn’t even notice that some people got on certain buses and off certain other buses.
She always felt tired and like her life had no meaning —- aka she was living her life according to a belief that wasn’t even hers.
Once she REALIZED the POWER SHE HAD to CHOOSE on which bus to get on, how long to ride it, and when to get off, her entire life began to EXPAND and feel so much better and more fulfilling and healthier.
Then another bus came by, and another, and another, but I let them all go by! it was still awkward and unfamiliar, but it was getting easier and easier. Soon, I noticed that I still had the money I would have spent on those buses, and I hadn’t gotten lost once all day. In fact, the more buses I didn’t get on, the more energy I had.
Something ‘tapped her on the shoulder’ and woke her up to something she was not aware of. A BLIND SPOT. That ‘something’ happened to be a man, who had the impulse to ask why she was doing something that was not serving her over and over again.
This was me for about 30 years of my life.
I was miserable and riding all the wrong buses.
My tap on the shoulder was having kids - to be written about in another post soon.
But this ‘Letter Three’ tells you a couple of the BIGGEST SECRETS OF LIFE and one of the BIGGEST POWERS YOU HAVE as a human being which is: to decide which ‘bus’ to get on, how long to ride it, and when to get off.
Epic book moment insight
When you ride every common bus just because others are doing it, you betray yourself and begin to lose trust in your choices.
You lose your power.
You stop plugging yourself into the source of your livelihood and life gets hard and boring. This makes you anxious and stressed and a fragile nervous system. This creates a very stressful biochemical environment in your body. That makes you get older and sick really fast.
Action step for your health
You do not need to ride every bus. Once you realize you are in the wrong bus, all you have to do is hop off with gusto, trusting your instincts, trusting yourself.
The KEY HERE IS WITH GUSTO.
When YOU OWN THIS DECISION, you will create an incredible healing and powerful electrical resonance in your body that is unmatched by anything else in this world.
THIS IS WHEN you begin to create a biochemical environment in your body that is conducive to true optimal health, longevity, and healthspan. Your cells FEEL and HEAR you. This is not woo woo, this is science.
Is the bus you are riding where you want to be? Or are you riding it because someone in your life, that you think knows better than you do, told you you should be riding it?