Regret-Free Living: Hope for Past Mistakes and Freedom from Unhealthy Patterns
Written by Stephen Arterburn and John Shore
Narrated by Stephen Arterburn
3/5
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About this audiobook
Regret-Free Living takes the focus from what was and what might have been and shines a bright light onto the path of what is and what is to be. Christian counselor Stephen Arterburn speaks honestly and forthrightly about what it takes to build strong, healthy relationships. Drawing on his own positive and negative experiences, he offers specific steps to rid yourself of relationship regrets, open your heart to healing, and move forward in love. Arterburn’s practical counsel shows you how to recognize the signs and qualities of both happy and unhappy relationships, admit guilt and accept responsibility, find and give forgiveness, set boundaries, love and give out of fullness, and much more. This is your invitation to, with God’s help, rid yourself of relationship regrets and begin building healthy, guilt-free relationships. Will you accept it? The choice is yours.
Stephen Arterburn
Stephen Arterburn is a New York Times bestselling author with more than eight million books in print. He most recently toured with Women of Faith, which he founded in 1995. Arterburn founded New Life Treatment Centers as a company providing Christian counseling and treatment in secular psychiatric hospitals. He also began “New Life Ministries”, producing the number-one Christian counseling radio talk show, New Life Live, with an audience of more than three million. He and his wife Misty live near Indianapolis.
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Reviews for Regret-Free Living
25 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I read Regret-Free Living twice, hoping that maybe a second reading would do for me what the first had not---show me how I am supposed to attain the goal of “regret-free living.” It didn’t. I really wanted to love this book. I don’t love it. While I enjoyed many of the personal anecdotes that Arterburn shares, I found the book as a whole to be repetitive and somewhat disjointed. I also found that it rehashes the same old self-help advice that I’ve found in other sources, just tossing in a few Scripture verses to show that this is a more Christian-based approach.That said, I don’t hate the book. I think it might be helpful to some people---it just didn’t resonate with me.(I received a review copy of this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Arturburn does indeed provide a wonderful breakdown of the various aspects of relationships and how in many lives they become broken. The strength of this book lies, however, more in the practical aspects of forgiveness and "moving on." And whether one has had unhealthy relations or not, it provides some good thoughts for refelction and discussion. However, the provided discussion questions were superficial and not near as in-depth as I would have hoped.I know that Arterburn is a speaker. I say this not because I have heard him (though my wife has), but because the chapters read like sermons or addresses. Consequently they feel disjointed and, at times, disconnected. Grammar was also problematic. Perhaps in the final print such matters will be resloved.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a book on healing relationships.How do you spot a counterfeit? By knowing what the REAL thing looks like. This book takes the reader through the six characteristics of a healthy relationship, and teaches how to recognize unhealthy aspects. It does not shift blame, but allows the reader to focus on where they can change, and how, with God's help, they can improve their life and the outlook on life based on healed hurts from relationships. Discussion questions could have been deeper, but the book itself is an easy read, and one can hear the writer's voice as if having a conversation (and if not read in that way, the style might be distracting)."Christian" and "psychology" or "self-help" rarely fit well together, but this one seems to do the job by helping the reader (that is committed to the effort) learn to recognize and break destructive patterns in relationships, and also to forgive past hurts so a healthier future can be embraced.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I received this book from Early Reviewers. I was expecting there to be a lot about relationship regrets having heard Stephen Arterburn speak at a Women of Faith conference and knowing something about his life experience, but the entire book was about relationships. The front of the book says "Hope for past mistakes and freedom from unhealthy patterns," so I was also expecting him to get into other kinds of circumstances in life where we might be living with regret. For those who have relationship regrets (and we all do to a certain extent), he has great advice. If you're looking for a book that covers other life regret, this is not it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I regard the term "Christian self-help" as an oxymoron, and generally try and stay clear of anything that has the slightest whiff of "I can do all things" divorced from the essential "through God who strengthens me". This book surprised me in many ways - and challenged me at the same time.Arterburn does not flinch from asking the reader to take responsibility for their own actions. He points out the symptoms of unforgiveness, contrasting them with his six qualities of a happy, healthy relationship, always pointing to God as the healer and not our efforts or therapeutic strategies. He also confronts the reader with the need for making restitution for the wrongs one has done - not simply thinking that being forgiven absolves one from their responsibility to make right the wrong that was done.The chatty, informal approach helps but also hinders - this reader would like to have been given tough questions for journal work or group discussion that would help me to face and acknowledge areas in my life where I am in denial, holding secrets or resentments, and protesting my innocence too much, instead of facing the ugly truth and being cleansed and healed from it. Without such questions there is the danger of this book being used in a group study where the questions asked of each participant probe no deeper than the turf covering the underlying septic tank.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Regret free living is about learning how to deal with stuff in your past. If you want to live a regret free life you have to love others selflessly. Regret free living is learning to live a life where you don't have regrets. I enjoyed the book but wish he had gone into a little more detail on some of the chapters like the one on restitution.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Although I have not read any other books by Steven Arterburn, I have certainly heard about them. "Every Man's Battle" was the rage a few years ago so I probably set my expectations on what I had heard about his earlier book. My hopes were not realized. This book will certainly not attain the acceptance of his earlier "best seller." It suffers the malady of "pulpit to print" because each chapter reads as if it were a transcription of an Arterburn sermon. The result is a poorly written book lacking focus and structure. Errors in fact and faults in grammar abound. One can only hope that the "proof" copy gets the editing it deserves because Arterburn has identified a significant issue. Many are, in reality, crippled emotionally by destroyed relationships and have become victims who lead lives filled with remorse over what might have been. To them, Arterburn offers insights that are both biblical and practical. He has identified a need and formulated a potentially helpful response, but these wounded individuals deserve a better presentation of the answer.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I really wanted to like this book. I respect everything Stephen Arterburn has done--from his "every person's battle" books to being a mover in the women of faith conferences to his counseling efforts. And we all have regrets and past actions that we are very sorry for...But this is just bad writing, and I couldn't get past it. (I work as a part-time editor, so that could be why.) I hope that lots of the errors will be fixed in the regular version that comes out, but I also couldn't get past his jokey writing style. Somehow it just didn't fit with the regrets I'm trying to give to God to heal. It wasn't until I got to chapter eight that I even became remotely intrigued with what he had to say. When he starts to discuss making our own mission statements for life, I was inspired to read on and actually compose one for myself. Maybe he wrote it for those who like self-help books? I think I also expected more scriptural references. For serious scriptural counseling try Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands by Tedd Tripp, or Forgive and Forget by Lewis Smedes.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I poured through Stephen Arterburn’s most recent offering Regret-Free Living I could not help but wonder why I could not have had access to this book years ago. We all, to varying degrees, have regrets in our lives. The most profound regrets usually come from the relationships we experience. Sometimes even the relationship we have with ourselves. Mr. Arterburn uses excellent, practical examples and a broad range of real-life applications to describe events which cause us all to suffer the self-inflicted punishment of regret. At the same time he offers biblically based, common sense advice for avoiding broken relationships and repairing/restoring those that are in need of mending. If you need counseling on giving and granting forgiveness, even for forgiving yourself, this one’s for you.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The author, Steven Arterburn, deals here with a problem common to all of us--regrets--small regrets, large regrets, regrets that float somewhere in the back of our minds on a daily or weekly basis, regrets that cripple our lives and lead to mental or physical breakdowns and regrets that encourage us to make poor choices with the rest of our lives. Arterburn who had a very large regret in his life now seeks to arm us with a plan to overcome the regrets that haunt and cripple us. Being a counselor on a radio talk show and leading seminars for troubled people has given Mr. Arterburn a large supply of examples for the efficacy of the course of action he is advocating.