Brave Thinking by Mary Morrissey

I love to live my life with intention, so Brave Thinking: The Art and Science of Creating a Life You Love by Mary Morrissey spoke to my soul.

This is a book about creating the life you have always desired rather than simply accepting the life that happens to you.

Right up my street, right?

Mary Morrissey has spent decades teaching personal development and what she calls “dream-building”, and Brave Thinking takes readers through her approach to turning a vision for your life into something you actually begin to build. The book focuses on four areas: health and wellbeing, love and relationships, vocation, and time and money freedom, and importantly, it isn’t only about dreaming.

The book is structured around three stages—Blueprinting, Bridging and Building—moving from identifying what you really want, through changing the thinking that might be limiting you, to actually taking action.

What would I love?

This was the chapter that really stood out for me.

Ask yourself: what would I love?

Not what seems realistic. Not what other people think you should want. Not what you think you can have based on your circumstances today.

What would you actually love?

It’s such a simple question, but when was the last time you genuinely asked yourself it?

Mary encourages you to imagine what you would love in the different areas of your life before becoming caught up in exactly how you’re going to make it happen. Once you have the vision, you can begin taking steps towards it.

I loved this. We can become so caught up in what is practical, sensible or achievable that we stop asking ourselves what we actually want.

Thoughts and actions

There are “Brave Thinking Tools” throughout the book, but one in particular really stayed with me:

“I am responsible for two things: 1) the thoughts I think and 2) the actions I take.”

There is something incredibly empowering about that idea.

We can’t control everything that happens around us. We can’t control other people. We certainly can’t guarantee that every plan we make will work exactly as we intended.

But we can take responsibility for what we think and what we do next.

Another lesson I took from the book is to do what you can, from where you are, with what you have.

I can take a huge lesson from that myself. It’s very easy to wait. To think you’ll start when you have more time, more money, more knowledge, more confidence or better circumstances. But you don’t have to have everything figured out before you move forward. Sometimes you just need to take the next step from exactly where you are.

About Mary Morrissey

Mary Morrissey is the founder of the Brave Thinking Institute and has worked as a speaker, author, coach and consultant for more than four decades. She has a master’s degree in counselling psychology and is also the author of Building Your Field of Dreams and No Less Than Greatness.

Brave Thinking was published by Page Two in 2023.

My verdict

★★★★☆ 4 out of 5 stars.

If you love books about personal development, intention and creating a bigger vision for your life, I think you’ll find plenty to take from Brave Thinking. For me, the biggest takeaway is probably also the simplest:

What would I love?

It’s a question I’m going to ask myself more often, and once you know the answer, don’t wait until everything is perfectly aligned before doing something about it.

Do what you can, from where you are, with what you have.

Sometimes that’s enough to get you moving in the direction of the life you actually want.

Jill Newey
Editor-in-Chief