By Jheri Hardaway
Staff Writer
Alaina Love’s book Permission to be You promises you can “discover your purpose and passions to bring your best self to everything and everyone.” The heartbeat of Love’s book is the Passion Profiler, a tool designed to move beyond "what you do" and identify "why you do it." Love argues that most professionals suffer from "purpose-blindness," where they achieve external success (the title, the sales quota, the published article) but feel an internal erosion because their daily tasks don't align with their innate passions. Love works to help people process and transform into who and what they truly aim to be.
She categorizes passions into archetypes such as the Builder, the Connector, or the Altruist. The book serves as a diagnostic guide to help readers stop asking for permission to exist as they are and start demanding that their careers reflect their core identity. Chapters include: How Crisis Shapes us, Igniting the Spark, Ten Permissions to Give Yourself, and many other exploratory topics to guide the reader towards empowerment.
An element of this book that I love is the “Pause and Ponder” portions that allow the reader to reflect deeply on the sentiments in each chapter. From questions to surveys, to insightful advice, this book is great for anyone looking to personally improve themselves and their families. Great for parents and wonderful for business leaders, Permission to Be You is a major key to personal empowerment.
