Bonds That Make Us Free Book Review PDF

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Running Head: “BONDS THAT MAKE US FREE”

Bonds That Make Us Free C. Terry Warner The Arbinger Institute

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Bonds that Make Us Free is a well written, very intriguing work that deals with the idea of “Healing Our Relationships” and” Coming To Ourselves,” as mentioned on the title page. Written by C. Terry Warner, who is a teacher of philosophy at Brigham Young University and has earned his PhD. from Yale University, this book discusses the topics of human behavior as they relate to self-deception. All of us deal with relationships, sometimes negative and other times positive. What this book offers is wonderful ideas on how to avoid getting stuck in negative emotion and how to flourish in our interactions with other human beings. Although this book does not necessarily have a plot with characters and an exact story line, it is well organized as Warner shared his thoughts on self-deception and how to rid ourselves of its affects. The first few chapters are spent setting the course for a ride deep into the cavern of the self. The first thing does is set the tone by sharing a personal experience about an encounter between him and his son Matthew. He references this experience throughout these chapters and the rest of the book along with many other real life examples of parents, children, brothers, co-workers, managers, all types of people, which he has interacted with. He talks about the negative and troubling emotions that many people experience and relays to us that the majority of the time; we bring these upon ourselves through self-betrayal. He explains that selfbetrayal occurs when, “. . . we do to another what we sense we should not do, or don’t do what we sense we should. Thus self-betrayal is a sort of moral compromise, a violation of our own personal sense of how we ought to be and what we ought to do” (pg. 20). He also describes how we can feel “stuck” in a sense, by having this self-betrayal mode of thinking. He says “This is what I mean by feeling stuck: experiencing other people or circumstances as having more power over our own happiness than we do. We believe they have the ability to cause troubling feelings

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in us that we cannot do anything about, no matter how we try” (pg. 11). The remainder of the book is spent going into further detail about how we deceive and betray ourselves using the idea of I-It thinking versus I-You thinking. The former being the goal we should seek after. He gives many examples that are easy to relate to and learn from. Through the middle and towards the end, he describes how we can change our way of thinking and thus become unstuck. One of my favorite lines he uses in talking about change is on page 176 when he says, “There is no better means of promoting another person’s changer of heart than allowing our own heart to be changed.” Without revealing much more, I will just say this book will change you if you let it. Warner explains some vital tendencies we have that we definitely need to be aware of and overcome. Applying this book to my life was easy. I felt like every page contained something I needed to work on. It motivated me to want to be aware of these deceptions and change my heart. I highlighted almost every page of the entire book! (I may have to buy it from the bookstore now since it is so marked up. Oh well, it is worth reading again in my opinion). One of the biggest ideas that stood out to me is found on page 62. Warner says, “Failing to win, succeed, or become important is acceptable to them as long as they collect evidence that they deserve to have won, succeed, or become important—and they would have done so it they had not been unlucky or treated unfairly.” This idea of using all your focus and energy to create a false victory is more common than I thought. I have done it and certainly those around me have done it. Just last Tuesday at our intramurals basketball game, some of my teammate chose to blame our laziness and lack of effort on the terrible calls the referees were making. They truly believed we were being treated unfairly when in reality; we were bringing it all on ourselves. Another

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principle that I can relate to is mentioned as he talks about a girl named Mandy. In reference to her story he says, “. . . –the part that made her life hard to bear—was not what her father did to her, but what she did with what he had done to her. In other words, what made her life hard to bear was the unforgiving and resentful way she felt toward him” (pg. 79). I can relate to this because oftentimes I will make life harder on myself by creating it to be that way. I will hold on to hard feelings or magnify my problems or stress until it is something almost unbearable. From reading this book, I understand that I can change that. I can change the way I think and feel. I love that. One last thing I will share, although I wish I could share all of my favorite thoughts, is found on page 194. He says, “Constant concern about the self is bondage. Self-forgetfulness is freedom.” When we are focused on ourselves, we truly are in bondage to hate, anger, envy, selfbetrayal, and a whole slew of other negative and damning emotions. “The natural man is an enemy to God” has never made more sense. That is why I want to focus my life more on others and more on Christ. To get of the I-It way of thinking and turn to the I-You way of thinking is like putting Christ in the center of your focus. That is how we can break the chains that bind us and truly be free. I sincerely recommend this book to everyone. I already made my fiancé promise me we will read it together when we are married. I loved it. I really did.

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Reference List: Warner, C. Terry. Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves. Salt Lake City: Shadow Mountain, 2001. Print....