Coming August / September 2023.
AVOIDING PROPELLER BLADES www.AvoidingPropellerBlades.com
Making the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life
IMAGINE
Imagine lifting your consciousness, thoughts, and realisation of self to truly know yourself like never before, verucas ’n’ all. What price would you pay to empower yourself to build the life of your dreams?
Imagine developing a language and toolkit to navigate yourself, your life, your family, your anything—finding love, business, and career success, and being the parent you can be proud of on your deathbed (not the glossy magazine cliche). Who would you seek to touch with this new aura?
Imagine breaking through to clarity and personal power and influence to make choices that finally serve you. The deeper you. The real you. At last taking your own reins. What would that feel like?
Imagine transforming to attract those around you, not repel them, to develop an energy that magnifies and electrifies those you touch. How does that stir your soul?
Imagine your partner and kids walking in one day and saying, “Wow, you have changed. I love you more than words can say.” Is there any better outcome than that for a living human?
You don’t have to imagine anymore.
In this book you will learn:
- How to elevate your consciousness to make more effective choices and decisions related to any life choice.
- How to accept your fallibility with grace, humour, and optimism.
- How to boss your mind like never before, to empower yourself to live fully and unconditionally.
- How to navigate your history, stories, and screwups to reset and arm yourself for the future like never before.
- How you too have life stories, just like in this book, yet you have buried the gold. This book will be the spade to dig the gold out of the swamp for you to invest and use—today.
- How humour and self-deprecation can set your mind free to get unserious, to get playful.
- How to embrace your vulnerability to build courage that will set you free on the road to love, fulfilment, and success.
You are more powerful, awesome, and omnipotent than you think.
REVIEW
June 9, 2023
Avoiding Propeller Blades:
Making the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life
Chris Taylor
Aviva Publishing (2023)
ISBN: 978-1-63618-270-4
New Book Explores How to Learn From and Dodge Mistakes
Avoiding Propeller Blades: Making the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life by Chris Taylor is a witty and fun, yet heartfelt and earnest book about how we can learn to dodge the blades that come at us in life so they don’t slice us in the face. Of course, we’ve all taken a slice or two, or maybe more, as Taylor knows—after all, we are human. But if we learn from those experiences, we can grow and make our lives better.
In forty short chapters about his life, Taylor explores the times he’s been faced with a propeller blade and how he dodged it or learned from being hit by it. Taylor has certainly led an interesting life. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK—which makes him a Geordie—he moved twenty years ago to New Zealand. During his fifty-plus years, he’s been a chemical engineer; become a coach for individuals, teams, and organisations; been married three times (his current wife is the embodiment of Superwoman); and been a father. All these experiences have had their propeller blades to avoid, and though bloodied at times, Taylor has learned from them all.
Each story is written in Taylor’s quirky style, full of humour, slang, references to pop culture (British rock bands, sports, television and film etc.), and playful tangents that enlighten us to the curious person who is Chris Taylor. The stories entertain while offering valuable insights. Taylor is no stranger to self-reflection, and best of all, he can laugh at himself and the mistakes he’s made. He summarises each chapter with an Aha Moment and Lessons Learned, and then he offers the reader some questions to reflect on how his experiences may be similar to theirs and how they might have handled the situations he encountered. The purpose of the lessons and questions is to empower the reader to make better decisions. As Taylor states, “Empowerment for choice is my mantra.” He believes people cannot delete struggle, that is part of life, but they “can use struggle to build a more self-aware, conscious, and resilient you.”
The stories Taylor shares are too numerous to discuss in detail, but I’ll mention what were a few of the highlights for me. They range from Taylor’s teenage flair in wearing a red scarf to class and not conforming to his forays into mountain biking and public speaking.
But at the heart of the book is what Taylor has learned from his relationships. Perhaps the most memorable chapter is titled “Marrying Superwoman.” Taylor discusses how he met this amazing woman who took him on even though she was significantly younger than him and made more money—wheelbarrows full—than him. Adjusting to being married to her made him question many things about himself, including how eventually to be okay with her being the family’s primary breadwinner.
Of course, marriage comes with in-laws. Taylor shares how he met and got to know his current father-in-law, Joe. The relationship started out a bit rocky, but in time, Taylor came to accept and value his father-in-law. He realised that the opinion he formed of Joe in the beginning needed to change if they were going to have a relationship. Today, they go out for coffee and Joe comes running when Taylor’s car battery is dead and he needs a charge—but that’s a whole story in itself.
Other men have also played key roles in Taylor’s life. He had an amazing coach who sadly died, and he had a friend who failed him as a business partner—one of the hardest propeller blades he ever had to face. Taylor shares about his relationship with his father, who was often an absentee in spirit if not always body. He goes golfing with his eighty-seven-years-young stepfather. Most poignantly, he mourns his older brother Steve, whom he grew up admiring only to grow distant from when his brother became standoffish and made poor financial decisions that hurt the family. I could painfully relate to how Taylor was left with many questions and mixed feelings after his brother died since my own brother died unexpectedly. I appreciated Taylor’s deep honesty about his feelings regarding Steve. In the end, Taylor says, “He [Steve] was a decent, moderate man in many ways, just like our father. He was unavailable for true connection, however. I think of my father and brother, and that word comes back to me. Unavailable. Emotionally, spiritually, authentically. I think they were both lost souls. Adrift.”
Life goes on and so does Avoiding Propeller Blades, with stories about how to find new ways to love and find fulfilment. One of my favourite sentences in the book is when Taylor realises that in marrying Superwoman he will acquire two stepdaughters—and his future wife’s dog, Choccy. Taylor remarks, “Two stepdaughters for one dog is a fair deal.”
Despite all the wisdom he shares, Taylor also makes it clear he is still learning. Not long ago, he thought about buying a sports car, an M3. He tells us, “This story is about letting go of what is not you. The not you—whatever that is for you—is the propeller blade.” Eventually, he realised the M3 was not him. “My deep inner self work led me to a breakthrough of realising that wanting an M3 is all about wanting to belong to a club I do not fit into. A club for others who honour different values.” He’d much rather mountain bike or coach clients than drive a fancy car. I would say he has his priorities/values right.
We can all take a lesson from Taylor—actually many lessons, including always trying to make effective choices, empowering ourselves through constant learning, accepting our faults with grace and humour, embracing our vulnerability, and having the courage to keep going.
Avoiding Propeller Blades offers a unique perspective on many of life’s issues and how we can navigate if not always solve them. Chris Taylor is a welcome new voice in the field of humour and personal development. I hope you will benefit from his words by finding less propeller blades in your life.
For more information about Chris Taylor and Avoiding Propeller Blades, visit www.AvoidingPropellerBlades.com.— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and Award-Winning Author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place