Book launch speech by Mary Hutchison

Diana’s book launch – speaker Mary Hutchison, a Canberra-based author and public historian

It’s a great pleasure to be launching Diana’s book Setting Yourself Free: a practical guide to self-change, and to be part of the celebration of her achievement.  Particularly because she’s my sister.

A book launch is a great opportunity to tell something of the story of a book beyond what is between the covers.  I want to tell you a bit about the journey of writing Setting Yourself Free, as well as introduce you to its content and intentions.

Diana wrote the first draft during the 1990s and I can remember our mother Elizabeth announcing with pride, and some surprise, ‘Diana’s written a book!’   I also remember having coffee with Diana and a psychologist friend of ours at around the time she must have been working on it.  Her conversation with Henry that day about aspects of her work as a psychologist in the NSW Department of Corrective Services gave me a glimpse of the issue that is central to her practice – then as a psychologist, now as a life coach – the issue of how people can take charge of their lives and set a course for themselves that is positive and fulfilling.  This issue is the raison d’etre, the heart, of Setting Yourself Free.

At the same time that Diana was thinking about this issue in relation to the wide range of people she counselled in the prison system, she was also starting to seek new directions for herself.  This eventually led to a graduate diploma in the psychology of life coaching at Sydney University. As she says, the book grew out of her own journey of self-discovery, as well as having its genesis in her professional practice. 

As you may have gathered Setting Yourself Free has been something of a family affair. One of Diana’s first readers of her first draft of the book was our cousin Rod Hutchison.  For many years Rod had been creating exquisite small pen and ink drawings of local landscapes and Diana wondered whether he would do some illustrations for the book.  He agreed, and in a departure from his usual style responded to what Diana had written through a series of perceptive, wry cartoons that highlight moments in the process of working out who you are and what you want.  I am so sorry that Rod did not live to see the book published but I am very glad that he is part of it.

As things worked out, it wasn’t until a number of years after Rod had done the illustrations, when Diana thought she had almost let go of her psychologist self, that she came back to the book.

My own role in helping with redrafting and editing came at this point of the book’s  development.   At this stage another family member, Michelle Herriot, also read the book and provided comments which fed into my work with Diana. This involved  successive drafts created at a distance using email and track changes – (not Diana’s favourite) – and detailed sessions at Diana’s kitchen table.  It was an interesting process for both of us – moving us into a relationship more related to our different expertises than our position as sisters, which in turn required new ways – I think better ways – of communicating.

This is a small example of how the process of writing the book has been as much about self-discovery and change as its content.  For Diana it has been a long term experience of personal development, which she stepped into on the basis of the same principles and practices that she writes about in the book.   In working on the book with her, I became part of that experience.

I think it’s a great strength of Setting Yourself Free that it is so thoroughly based on both professional and personal experience. Another great strength is that Diana talks about personal development in a very practical and down to earth way. She provides simple examples of how we work psychologically as a basis for exercises which she sets out as a step by step program. And I think a third strength is the way Rod’s sympathetic humorous illustrations highlight the process Diana describes.

Diana wrote Setting Yourself Free particularly to encourage and support people who might be making conscious changes in their lives for the first time – people who have perhaps reached a decision that change is necessary to improve their lives but are unsure about the next step. But making life changes is a daunting  task whatever our experience.  Lessons we think we have learned usually have to be learned again in the context of the particular circumstances we find ourselves in.  So Setting Yourself Free may offer food for thought for anyone in the process of sorting out life issues.

One of the sections in Setting Yourself Free I found most instructive is about communication. It’s something I generally think I’m pretty good at understanding, but the way Diana describes what can go wrong in communication helped me realise that in one particular situation I had been ignoring something that when you know about it seems obvious.  The distance between obvious and insoluble can be so near and yet so far. Another aspect of the book that strikes a chord with me is that it doesn’t promise a quick fix or marvellous revelations.  It emphasises the hard work of

working out life directions and setting goals to achieve them.  Diana’s model for self-change is not a recipe for instant results but a map for an ongoing journey. 

I want to finish with a summary of what I see as the key ingredients of the book.

In Setting Yourself Free, Diana highlights aspects of the process of taking charge of your life that are crucial for anyone to take into account as they work on change, whether a whole of life change or changing the outcomes in a particular context – and whether they are new to considering their directions in life or not.  She has stern words to say about taking responsibility for our actions. She offers ways of identifying our impact on others. She suggests ways of moving carefully through the process.  She invites us to think about what we value and shows how this can lead to a sense of purpose.  She encourages us to think about what we believe about ourselves and suggests ways of replacing beliefs that hold us back with ones that move us forward. And she provides a model for setting goals that are achievable.

Setting Yourself Free provides a program for change that people can follow if they wish, or adapt to their own needs.  It is also a straightforward guide to the self that provides important reminders about how we work as individuals and in interaction with each other.  It offers tools that can help individuals take greater charge of their lives and set directions that are relevant it them.  It also understands the difficulties that people can experience in learning about themselves and making changes and offers encouragement through the process.  Setting Yourself Free respects its readers and believes in their capacity to make changes in their lives for the better. 

These ingredients seem to me to be the essence of life coaching and I like to think of the book as a pocket life coach.

I now declare this pocket life coach launched and commend it to you.

To find more about my book go to www.directionscoaching.net.au