Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

by Donald Miller

Overview

When it comes to authenticity, is being fully yourself always worth the risk? From the author of Blue Like Jazz comes New York Times bestseller Scary Close, Donald Miller's journey of uncovering the keys to a healthy relationship and discovering that they're also at the heart of building a healthy family, a successful career, and a trusted community of friends.

After decades of failed relationships and painful drama, Miller decided that he'd had enough. Trying to impress people wasn't helping him truly connect with anyone—and neither was pretending to be someone he wasn't. He'd built himself a life of public isolation, but he dreamed of having a life defined by meaningful relationships instead. At 40-years-old, he made a scary decision: he was going to be his true self no matter what it might cost.

Scary Close tells the story of Miller's difficult choice to impress fewer people and connect with even more. It's about the importance of knocking down old walls to finally experience the freedom that comes when we stop playing a part and start being fully ourselves.

In Scary Close, Miller shares everything he's learned firsthand about how to:

• Deconstruct the old habits that no longer serve us
• Overcome the desire to please the people around us
• Always tell the truth, even when it's hard
• Find satisfaction in a daily portion of real love
• Risk being fully known in order to deeply love and be loved
• Apply these lessons to your everyday life

If you're ready to drop the act and find true, life-changing intimacy, it's time to get Scary Close.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780785213185
Publisher:	Harper Horizon
Publication date:	02/10/2015
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	450,992
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Donald Miller is the CEO of StoryBrand and Business Made Simple. He is the host of the Coach Builder YouTube Channel and is the author of several books including bestsellers Building a StoryBrand, Marketing Made Simple, and How to Grow Your Small Business. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife, Elizabeth and their daughter, Emmeline.

Table of Contents

Foreword Bob Goff xi

Author's Note xv

1 The Distracting Noises of Insecurity 1

2 You Are Good at Relationships 9

3 Everybody's Got a Story and It's Not the One They're Telling 15

4 Why Some Animals Make Themselves Look Bigger Than They Are 23

5 Three Things I Learned About Relationships From Swimming in a Pond 37

6 Performance Anxiety in Real Life 53

7 The People We Choose to Love 69

8 Control Freak 81

9 Five Kinds of Manipulators 99

10 Lucy in the Kitchen 115

11 The Risk of Being Careful 133

12 Great Parents Do This Well 155

13 The Stuff of a Meaningful Life 173

14 Do Men Do Intimacy Differently? 187

15 You Will Not Complete Me 205

16 The Place We Left Our Ghosts 217

Acknowledgments 227

About the Author 231

Editorial Reviews

01/19/2015
More than five years after his last book, Miller (Blue Like Jazz) returns to his brand of telling it like it is—this time about relationships. In a conversational tone, he discloses thoughts about intimacy and how to find it: taking off the masks worn to hide the true self. The personality we show to the world often is that of a performer, created to hide who we are while trying to win approval and get attention, he says. Miller’s contemplations come as the result of courting his wife, Betsy, who changed his thinking when it came to relationships with women. Older, married readers might chuckle at the author’s description of Betsy as near perfect, but younger readers will relate to the frankly expressed concerns about pressure to fit in, difficulties in the dating scene, and hard lessons learned, some with the help of counseling. Short chapters tackle topics that range from personal memories and experiences to practical advice about factors that affect people as they develop relationships. Agent: Bryan Norman, Alive Literary. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly