Nov
20

Words-on-Wednedsays notes on Bob Beverley

On this Words on Wednesdays, WoW is following up on guest writer, Bob Beverley’s recent post in MilitarySuccessNetwork.com. What follows are a few questions he answered during our conversation about his books and his personal mission.

Bob Beverley

Bob Beverley

When Nate, Marius and I met Bob Beverley, we were not yet a team and MilSuccessNet was not yet our mission. In a sense, however, he did bring us together at a communications boot camp we had come to separately from three different cities. His opening remarks to the 40 or so in attendance were so human and warm, that our minds and hearts were opened to the information and to the connections we were to make over the next four days.

We again, independently, chose to read his weekly ezine, The Dig, and most recently posed a few questions of Bob, some of which we share here: Bob, Is there something specific you’ll like to tell our readers? Perhaps, given your therapeutic practice, on PTS, family challenges, or finding personal balance?

“I’ve had quite a few military personnel in my practice.  The biggest thing I would tell anyone is that we all need to get way more help than we imagine.  We need lots of help.  It is a fact, nothing to be ashamed of.

We need to bravely speak the truth about what we have gone through and what is going on in our lives. Our personal balance is hard to pull off because there is so, so much pulling at us–internally and externally.

The basic thing is “Do no harm” and be proud of good intentions and every kind thing we do.”

His approach in his full-time psychotherapy practice meshes with MilSuccessNet’s mission of Heard, Understood, and Acknowledged. Bob’s visceral response to the self-help talk, religious jargon, academic theorizing and new age viewpoints was that “it showed little respect for real people and the reality of their problems and how hard their lives are.”

To frame his response, he crafted his website “Find Wisdom Now” to be a place where he says, “You will feel understood. Victims will not be blamed. Real, workable advice can be found.”

His prescription has “no side effects except peace and tranquility. It’s wisdom; the under-rated necessity for your life and the guardian of your success.”

The emphasis on wisdom sidesteps easy catch phrases like “just do it” or “just let it go” or “don’t take it personally”. Rather he acknowledges that we are bound “by fear, habit, fatigue, character flaws, circumstance, genetics, money, and deep pain”.

There are no quick fixes to sell.

So, with the understanding that everyone needs help, and lots of it, why did a therapist nestled in the mid Hudson Valley of New York State turn his attention to Tiger Woods?  Surely, the fallen golf icon, had enough resources to get what he needed to recover?

Bob, why did Tiger Woods’s plight call to you especially?  

As a psychotherapist, I deal with affairs on a daily/weekly basis and I felt I could write to us all and to him at a deep, understanding, warm and firm level.  Hard to pull off that balance!

The book jacket says that it’s ‘a book written for real people with real problems—who want to make their life better.’ It’s a process that takes time.

He doesn’t knock Tiger Woods. Rather he gives the time to share his wisdom and his love in a series of 35 letters addressed to Tiger. Bob “illumines the possible dynamics behind the fall of Tiger Woods—dynamics that are a part of every human life.”

It’s the wisdom that Bob exhorts us to call on, that also sheds light “on relationships, affairs and the many ways we cheat ourselves and one another. I’ve written this, if you want to be wiser about relationships, your inner life and illusions of the world.”

In this mix, his letters explore guilt, shame, leaving people behind, forgiveness and starting over again.  These, he sees as related issues to the big splash that dripped down on all of us from the media coverage which the rest of us peered through to come to our own conclusions.

Books are a big part for many of us to help sort the larger picture. Yet, being human, we may need a little push to get rolling on either writing to express ourselves, or reading to process or to heal. And, so it was for Bob also, to take the next step to authorship.

What motivated you to write publicly, Bob? What do you feel you can do by going beyond your daily, human contact in your practice?

My twin brother, Jim, a world religion and cult expert (author name: James A. Beverley), basically pushed me to write.  He’d call me on the phone and tell me that I was a good writer with unique, deep things to say.  I guess I finally listened to him because I wanted to reach a wider audience.

Check into the pages of “Dear Tiger” on Amazon.

Bob Beverley’s other publications include:

How to Be a Christian and Still Be Sane

The Secret Behind the Secret Law of Attraction (with Kevin Hogan, Dave Lakhani, and Blair Warren)

And E-book titles include the strangely appealing title: How to be Wildly Successful Even If You Know You Are A Loser, the MilSuccessNet, WoW affirming Get Books! Get Wisdom! ,  The Power of Fear, and The Core.

About Bob Beverley

Bob’s books are said to contain short-cuts to wisdom and success but his own path to wisdom had few shortcuts!

A New Brunswick born Canadian, he went on to graduate from Wenham, Mass. with a degree in philosophy and English Literature from Gordon College. After his junior year abroad at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, he received a Masters of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.

In 1991, Bob received a Certificate in Psychotherapy and Marriage and Family Therapy from the Blanton-Peale Graduate Institute in New York City.

 

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