Kevin Rhodes

Life Beyond Reason is about what happens to us when we decide to create the lives we want in the face of every reason why we can’t. It’s about pursuing our dreams and passions and big ideas, and remaking ourselves and our lives from the inside out. It’s about making dreams come true, living with passion, and bringing our big ideas to fruition. It’s a Hero’s Journey, a midlife reinvention, and personal awakening. Mostly, it’s a helpful, often funny, sometimes poignant, and always inspiring invitation to take your own transformative journey.

The book centers around the author’s misadventures after suddenly leaving a successful law career to take on the job of producing a “big, bold world-embracing show with a life-changing message.” Doing that required leaving the safe confines of reasonableness and prudence for a deep dive into the dangerous currents of a condition “people who study the human brain call mania.” Doing so was exhilarating, but risky. As Kevin writes:

“Mania is plutonium for the for human soul: powerful almost beyond measure, equally suited to creation or destruction, and tricky to control once we let it loose. But dark side or not, mania is why we dream big dreams, and the bigger they are, the more mania we need. If we want to make our dreams come true, we risk mania’s dark side.”

Kevin writes with honesty and self-deprecating humor about what happened next, with sympathy and compassion for anyone with the courage to answer the call to big change and personal transformation. There’s plenty of insight and thoughtful advice here, but no quick fixes or easy steps to success. Kevin wants his readers to succeed and persevere, but also gives them an unflinching look at what it’s going to cost them to actually see their big changes through to completion.

Drawing from broad perspectives ranging from neuroscience and psychology to law and entrepreneurship, and laced with anecdotes about theater and showbiz, the book examines creativity, innovation, change, and personal transformation in practical, non-theoretical terms. It provides useful insights and suggestions for dealing with the real source of our resistance to change: the blockages that lie within ourselves, and the self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors that derive from them. It also helps us deal with the tricky issue of how pursuing our dreams affects our key relationships.

The book makes the case for why self-awareness and personal transformation are “not just for the enlightened, consciousness-raising few,” but “essential to every person’s pursuit of their Big Idea.” Change is hard any time, but lasting change requires nothing short of personal transformation.

By turns inspiring and motivational, reflective and disclosing, challenging and no-nonsense, the book is written in a crisp style that makes it a compelling read in one sitting or easy to get in and out of if you prefer to take it slow and ponder.