The Book

In May 2024, a book that I’ve been working on for about 2 years finally hit the shelves. It’s imaginatively called “The Observing I: A guide to living a more authentic life”, and it’s full of philosophical ideas and psychological methodologies to help you get to the bottom of the nature of you.

If you like the podcast, then the book will be a great accompaniment to what I talk about.

It’s available to purchase on Amazon in paperback and as an e-book.

And, if you're a paid supporter of The Observing I, then you can download a PDF copy of the book here (my thanks to you for supporting me).

Why I wrote the book

I actually started the book before I started writing online, which I've been doing since July of 2022.

I never actually intended to start a podcast. This was all supposed to be a newsletter that went out a few times a week, but it turned into something much larger than that. The book wasn’t supposed to accompany the podcast either. Back in the beginning, they were two very distinct and separate entities, and the title of the book wasn’t even set in stone until a month before it came out.

It was an amorphous, shifting blob of ideas and aspirations. A few ideas from philosophy sprinkled with the practical application of said philosophy, which invariably tended to bring in some sort of supporting psychological framework.

I started on the book not long after the whole Covid lockdowns and, being stuck in your house with little contact with the outside world, offered a lot of time to pace and think and pace again. That thinking took place against a backdrop of having only the internet and a television as the windows into what was going on beyond the safety of my four walls.

It was then that I began to realise that the world is very noisy. I knew this already, but I hadn’t acknowledged it. I was, like everyone else, going with the flow of life because that’s how the world was.

But when I noticed it, it was deafening; a drowning cacophony of clamouring hands all fighting for my attention, devouring little pieces of it in sodden blood stained bowls then coming back for more.

This got me questioning: how we are supposed to maintain a grip on any sense of ourselves amidst all of that chaos? How are we able to make good choices that align with our values and intentions when we’re faced with so many external influences?

So that became the purpose of the book. To get that moment down onto paper, as much for me as it was for any audience, and to curate a set of philosophies and ideas that could become a toolkit for maintaining our own integrity.

I’m hoping that it will work nicely alongside the podcast, and that it will illuminate some of the hidden corners of yourselves. Think of it as a toolkit to better understand your motivations.

If you do read it, I’d love to know what you got out of it. If it helps you move towards understanding yourself and the world around you that bit better, or simply changes your perspective of the human experience, then that would be the biggest success that I could ask for.

Much love,
David