Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (Lori Gottlieb)
Book in a Nutshell: This edition was shaped by a book that stayed with me - and what it reveals about how we lead, grow, and live.
What genre? Memoir, Human Psychology, Behavioral Science
Why read? Written by a psychotherapist and author reflecting on her own therapy, this book is a wise, funny, and deeply relatable look into what it means to evolve and grow. Through her clients’ stories - and her own - Gottlieb shows us that beneath our roles and defenses, we’re all trying to answer the same questions: Can I feel more whole? Can I change my story? It’s a refreshing read exploring the different layers of self-leadership, relationships, and just the messy beauty of being human.
Concepts That Inspired Me
Change doesn’t happen in breakthroughs - it happens in small, consistent steps:
Most of us long for a big “aha” moment, but real transformation often unfolds quietly. In showing up in tougher moments, in telling the truth when it’s not straightforward, in sitting with novelty or discomfort when we long for what’s familiar and in slowly building new truer stories about ourselves.
Humor helps us survive the hard stuff: This book is full of difficult truths, but also unexpected moments of levity. Humor, Gottlieb shows, is not avoidance - it’s resilience. It allows us to hold life’s heaviness with a little more breath. In leadership and life, we can take things that matter to us very seriously - without ever having to take ourselves too seriously.
Grief and growth can walk together: One of the book’s most tender insights is that healing doesn’t mean the pain disappears. It means we learn to carry it differently, with more compassion and less resistance. That’s true for leadership too - clarity doesn’t mean comfort. It means moving forward, even when it’s messy.
Excerpts I Enjoyed Reading
On Looking for More than Just Answers:
“We think we want answers. But what we really want are the things that answers don’t give us - hope, possibility, and a way forward. [Yet], the nature of life is change and loss. And the nature of being human is that we want to resist both.”
On Choosing the Pain That Moves Us
“Sometimes we remind [others] that they’re not choosing between pain and no pain - they’re choosing between the pain of being stuck and the pain of growth. The latter is hard, but it moves you somewhere.”
Question I’m Asking Myself
What truth am I circling around - that I haven’t fully let myself feel or speak yet?
With love, Vanessa
Love these concepts, Vanessa! Thank you for sharing. I’ll have to get the book.