Mentors: How to Help and Be Helped

by Russell Brand Narrated by Russell Brand

Overview

"British comic Russell Brand narrates this powerful combined memoir and personal growth lesson as if he were performing a one-man play... this audiobook reveals Brand's startling insights about how we human beings can make a lot of serious mistakes but somehow keep the faith about our potential for healing, love, and honesty in all of our affairs." -- AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner

This program is read by the author.

Russell Brand explores the idea of mentoring and shares what he's learned from the guidance of his own helpers, heroes and mentors.

Could happiness lie in helping others and being open to accepting help yourself? Mentors - the follow up to the New York Times bestseller Recovery - describes the benefits of seeking and offering help.

"I have mentors in every area of my life, as a comic, a dad, a recovering drug addict, a spiritual being and as a man who believes that we, as individuals and the great globe itself, are works in progress and that through a chain of mentorship we can improve individually and globally, together . . . One of the unexpected advantages my drug addiction granted is that the process of recovery that I practise includes a mentorship tradition.

"I will encourage you to find mentors of your own and explain how you may better use the ones you already have. Furthermore, I will tell you about my experiences mentoring others and how invaluable that has been on my ongoing journey to self-acceptance and how it has helped me to transform from a bewildered and volatile vagabond to a (mostly) present and (usually) focussed husband and father."-Russell Brand

Mentors: How to Help and Be Helped describes the impact that a series of significant people have had on the author - from the wayward youths he tried to emulate growing up in Essex, through the first ex-junkie sage, to the people he turns to today to help him be a better father. It explores how we all - consciously and unconsciously - choose guides, mentors and heroes throughout our lives and examines the new perspectives they can bring.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

[A] compact book with a huge heart. . . . [Mentors] is self-consciously a hero's journey, from lost youth to mentor and father . . . [with] many touching personal confessions and real . . . insights”
—The Guardian

"[Brand] shares stories of who he was and how he changed via the help of various mentors . . . [illuminating] his transformation from an angry, disillusioned person to the more well-rounded father and spiritual person he is today."
—Kirkus Reviews

DECEMBER 2019 - AudioFile

British comic Russell Brand narrates this powerful combined memoir and personal growth lesson as if he were performing a one-man play. And yet, changing his intensity to emphasize an observation, or his pacing to share a quick aside, he sounds totally spontaneous and even intimate as he describes what he’s learned about getting help from a mentor and serving as one. This is raw, poetic, and vulnerable writing from the 13-years-clean addict who knows a thing or two about losing his way and yearning for help. But more than hearing about his harrowing journey and colorful mentors, this audiobook reveals Brand’s startling insights about how we human beings can make a lot of serious mistakes but somehow keep the faith about our potential for healing, love, and honesty in all of our affairs. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2019-03-12
The actor/comedian and former drug addict explains how mentors have helped him change his life.

Sex, drugs, fame, power—these are just some of the things Brand (Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions, 2017, etc.) has been addicted to in his lifetime. In this meandering narrative, the author shares stories of who he was and how he changed via the help of various mentors at different stages in his life. Chip, himself a former drug addict, helped Brand get off drugs by showing him he needed to be honest, willing, and open-minded about life. He taught the author "that it is okay to talk about your feelings, more than okay, mandatory," including feeling "vulnerable, inadequate, fearful and angry." Meredith, an acupuncturist, took on the role of mother, nurturing Brand through the difficult details of his divorce. Jimmy identified Brand's codependent relationships and helped him move beyond them, forcing him to re-evaluate what he took and what he provided in each of them. Each of the author's mentors has assisted in his transformation from an angry, disillusioned person to the more well-rounded father and spiritual person he is today. "All of us live on a canyon wire between the person we used to be, the person we are ascending and the person we are aspiring to become," writes the author. "Every day the pugilistic slog goes on for me….I'm back and forth between the kind and ideal me…and the ‘Venom' version of myself, all fangs and inner eelish sinew, writhing." After readers meet each of his guides, they will clearly understand how they have helped Brand, but it is debatable whether this knowledge, delivered in a rambling way throughout the text, will be enough to get readers to look for mentors of their own.

Circuitous stories of how advisers and role models have influenced and supported the changes in one man's messy life.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172069345
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	04/09/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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