About the Book

The journey to find or understand one’s purpose often seems a daunting task that invites us to go to no place in particular. In fact, oftentimes, the older we get, the more we implicitly and tacitly give up because secretly, we come to the heartbreakingly sober and wrong conclusion that maybe, we don’t have one. Each day we accept that reality, some piece of us goes dormant until like a plant without water, it slowly withers away and dies a stunningly quiet, uneventful and anonymous death. While there are those among us who are blessed enough to believe they know with absolute certainty why they are here, what of the rest of us—those of us who don’t know, don’t believe or may not even care? Going beyond ideas of self-help is important because these ideas often suggest the existence of a purpose that for many of us, at best, we question and at worst, we simply don’t believe. This journey invites us to not claim we understand but work for a better understanding. At any given moment, all any of us could ever be is just better, and working to be better is a purpose unto itself. “Better at what?” is the most obvious question—better at being you. Once we embark on a journey that invites us to be better men, women, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, spirits and human beings, we find in ourselves a sense of meaning that has the power to transform our lives, our families and the world. Such is a journey called Beyond Self-Help: A Journey to Be Better.

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About the Author

Dr. Eric L. Johnson was born and raised in Chicago, IL and as a youth he experienced many of the challenges faced by many young Black males in large cities: drugs, poverty, gangs, violence, teenage parenthood and educational trials chief among them. As an adult he has to endure a variety of common tribulations confronted by many: including divorce, financial hardship, and familial sufferings. This book is offered as a testimony that life is not about weathering the storm; it’s about dancing in the rain. He writes this book to encourage others to seek a deep sense of peace and joy that can only be experienced by pursuing our better selves and encouraging the people who share our space to do the same.