In How to Navigate Life, psychologists Belle Liang and Timothy Klein provide research-based strategies to foster self-awareness, manage emotions, and build strong relationships. Blending clinical expertise with practical exercises, Liang and Klein equip readers with skills to handle life's complexities. For entrepreneurs, the book offers valuable insights on nurturing personal growth and maintaining mental health amidst the stresses of starting a business.

I enjoyed this book. As someone who has personally experienced the loss of a sibling, it was a fun read and a nice reminder of why it’s important to live life to the fullest.

How to Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career, and Beyond
By Belle Liang and Timothy Klein

How to Navigate Life by Belle liang and Timothy Klein is a well written and a great read - awesome resource for students, educators and families on how to navigate the complexities of college bound kids and the demands of their life as they navigate, college, career and issues beyond that. I love that the book taps on the importance of instilling purpose and passion rather than the pressure to perform.

I highly recommend this book. Reading this will help parents, children, and families to reflect on how to make choices to live life more meaningfully and joyfully.

How to Navigate Life by Belle Liang, Timothy Klein
Posted on September 9, 2022 by Kevin Holtsberry

With a daughter about to graduate high school and a career in something of an awkward transition, How to Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career, and Beyond by Belle Liang and Timothy Klein seemed like a book I should read.

"Today’s college-bound kids are stressed, anxious, and navigating demands in their lives unimaginable to a previous generation. They’re performance machines, hitting the benchmarks they’re “supposed” to in order to reach the next tier of a relentless ladder. Then, their mental and physical exhaustion carries over right into first jobs. What have traditionally been considered the best years of life have become the beaten-down years of life.

Belle Liang and Timothy Klein devote their careers both to counseling individual students and to cutting through the daily pressures to show a better way, a framework, and set of questions to find kids’ “true north”: what really turns them on in life, and how to harness the core qualities that reveal, allowing them to choose a course of study, a college, and a career.

Even the gentlest parents and teachers tend to play into pervasive societal pressure for students to PERFORM. And when we take the foot off the gas, we beg the kids to just figure out what their PASSION is. Neither is a recipe for mental or physical health, or, ironically, for performance or passion. How to Navigate Life shows that successful human beings instead tap into their PURPOSE—the why behind the what and how. Best of all, purpose is a completely translatable quality to every aspect of life, from first jobs to last jobs and everything in between."

I was lucky enough to get a digital review copy from NetGalley and moved it to the top of the TBR pile.

I struggled a little when rating it on Goodreads. It is probably a 3.5 stars but you can't do half stars so went with 3. The book contains lots of good advice and ways to think about navigating life (which is good given the title). High school and college students and their parents would benefit from reading it and working through the thought processes outlined in the book.

The main weakness, for me anyway, is that it sits awkwardly between a book for students and a book for parents. Some sections are clearly aimed at parents, mentors, etc. and the voice and tone align with this perspective. Others seemed aimed at students or young people and the voice seems just a little off. Perhaps I am just nitpicking, but a book with two seeming audiences and two authors didn't always speak with one voice.

I also think the focus on inequality is a bit overdone.

Lastly, it wasn’t always a great read as a straightforward book. Some of the early sections almost feel like a workbook. I could see sitting down with young people and working through the skills and value sections but as an older adult it was a bit of a slog reading through that. Or it could be I should have just stopped and worked through the issues for myself and then with my daughter. Regardless, those sections offer very practical career and college planning type advice about how to understand your skills and values.

I guess what I am saying is that intellectually I can see that there is good advice here but I didn't always love reading it. It just felt a little too self-helpy if that makes sense.

In short, if you need an earnest but insightful guidance counselor in book form, read this book.

I was hoping this would be for more of a college audience based on the description and title. It should be called "how to help your student navigate life" or something along those lines. I was going to have my high school seniors read it, but it's really meant for parents/mentors.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

HOW TO NAVIGATE LIFE by Belle Liang and Timothy Klein covers "The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career, and Beyond." Liang, professor of Counseling Psychology at Boston College, and Klein, clinical therapist and school counselor, do a good job of "chunking" the book's content so that sections are clearly labeled and bullet-pointed or highlighted; tables and charts are used to help summarize key points. The first part of the book contains a chapter for each of five principles: mindset, games, skill sets, value types, and needs. Then, Part Two looks at the work of re-purposing, particularly in terms of relationships and certain life stages (high school, college, and the workplace). Throughout, Liang and Klein provide toolkits, reflection prompts, and exercises for readers. This text will require thoughtful commitment, as the author readily acknowledge. The text is filled with jargon and ideas designed to provide, as the publisher says, "An essential guide to tackling what students, families, and educators can do now to cut through stress and performance pressure, and find a path to purpose." One chapter alone looks at affirmation, advocacy, challenges and the role of snowplow parenting, and mentoring. All of which seems to be written more for the adults ("parents, educators, and life mentors") in a teen's life. Liang shares personal family stories, too, commenting on her own father's Seeker’s Journey – "his courage to step off the path again and again to answer the call to adventure. It was not easy. It involved wrong turns, failures, and pivots. It involved persistence and sacrifice. It involved great blessings and reward for generations." Be prepared to devote significant time to this text where the authors – whose expertise and credentials are impressive – argue repeatedly (and somewhat ironically) for self-reliance and becoming whatever you choose to be. Roughly twenty percent is devoted to source notes which could be helpful to psychology classes and discussion groups.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an advance copy to read and review in exchange for my opinion. I was thrilled to be approved to read this as I have a son in college and thought this book would give me lots of good pointers to use with him. (Remember Mom and Dad are dumb and have never been through this stuff!). I was right (again) this book is fantastic and is a very easy read with lots of good advice that is easy to understand. This book was broken down in easy to read short paragraphs graphs, charts and bullet points, This book would be a great high school or college graduation gift.

First of all, thank you so much to St Martin's Press for the chance to read and review this book prior to release.

This book is about "equipping young people to navigate school, career, and life with joy an excellence." I was a business management major in college and could definitely see this book being supplemental to a college textbook in class.

I love how it was broken down in easy to read short paragraphs often with bullet points, charts, and graphs.

I think this would make a perfect graduation gift for both high school and college students and is a book I could easily see myself coming back to time and time again to read sections that are applicable for that stage of my life.

This book will be hitting the shelves in August of 2022!

Where was this book when I was in high school?? How to Navigate Life offers some great insight and actionable items for those who are perhaps a bit unmoored in their life plan or who have a goal but aren't quite sure how to get there. The authors provide useful, evidence-based background information on what happiness and success are (and are not) as well as actionable items for nearly anyone, from those just starting out in life to those who are pivoting in life or who just need a refresh on how they approach creating and finding success.

A provocative and insightful book that will no doubt inform strategies and tactics I use to help students learn and succeed. Especially love the focus on helping students cultivate a purpose mindset and think realistically and deliberately about their life goals, interests, values, strengths, and service to the world.

I thought this was a very informative book that I highly recommend to teachers to connect with their students and help guide them towards internal and external success. The first half of the book is a long persuasive essay about the purpose mindset, core values to have, needs of the world, etc. It has many references to science articles, real life news, and pop culture to show how these view points affect our youth generation’s mindset on what happiness is and how to attain it. After showing the best science-backed methods/mindset of success, the second half of the book goes into details of HOW to apply these to high schoolers, college students, the workplace. This book is so thorough in its explanations. I think it is perfect for teachers, but also students who are trying to figure out what values to emphasize in personal statements or college essays. It’s a perfect example of a persuasive essay that proved its point beautifully. I highly recommend this book.