Nick Hutchinson reviews Darcy Eikenberg's Red Cape Rescue, a career guide built on three steps: Reset how you think, Revise what you say, Reinvent what you do. The book suggests narrowing your core values to four, assuming positive intent in workplace conflicts, and replacing frustration with empathy to regain control at work.
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If you've hit a speed bump in your career and you're looking for a book to sort of smooth things out, get you back on the road and moving, then this is the book for you. It begs the question, what if you could change your life at work without having to change everything in your life— moving careers, changing industries, that type of thing? Well, Book Thinkers family, if those sound interesting to you, then this is the book for you. Today I'll be reviewing my biggest takeaways from a book I just finished up Red Cape Rescue by leadership and career coach Darcy Eichenberg. And the subtitle of this book reads, Save Your Career Without Leaving Your Job. So Red Cape Rescue, what does that mean? Well, I didn't have a red cape to wear in today's review, but I wore a red sweater and a red hat. I thought it was the closest that I could come up with today. And to explain the red cape metaphor in a little bit more detail, I want to read what Darcy wrote here on page 6. She says, quote, every hero needs a red cape. Remember when you were a kid and you'd grab a towel or a sheet and fling it around your neck? You tossed your shoulders back, you stuck your chin out, you felt confident, courageous even, and most importantly, you felt your life was in control as you stood there in your imagined red cape, even if you only controlled the backyard. Well, Darcy wrote this book so that she could help you feel that same way in your career. She could create the confidence of a superhero so that you could reestablish control and feel vibrant in your work environment. So this book is broken into 3 parts. Part 1 is reset how you think. Part 2 is revise what you say. And part 3 is reinvent what you do. And what I'd like to do for today's review is go through 3 of my biggest takeaways in that first section. That way you can get a good preview to the book. You can see what I thought was valuable in the first section, and you can determine if the rest of the book is worth reading. So we'll jump to the first takeaway. This comes from page 49, and I'll read a quote to kick things off. Darcy says, with clearer values, decisions get easier. And I love that. What she has is a list of core values here in the book And what she asks you to do is spend 2 minutes going through them and find your top 10. What resonates with you? Which one of these are your black sheep values? You know, black sheep are unique because their wool can't be dyed. They cannot be changed. And Darcy's looking for you to find your top 10. After you've done that, she asks you to go back through one more time and find your top 4. This is very difficult to do, and she references Brent Menswarren here, who wrote a book called Black Sheep. And Brant has you do a similar exercise. So I did that back then. It was very difficult to do, but I came up with my core values. These core values cannot be changed. They end up becoming your guiding compass. You filter your decision-making through those core values so that you can make faster, more accurate, life-fulfilling decisions. If something doesn't fit your core values, skip it, move it, move on. If something does, then it will feed your soul. You want to feed these core values. on a daily or weekly basis at work. These are values, but they are valuable. They're actionable. You can implement them directly, directly into your life, and things become easier. Once I was able to articulate my core values to myself, life got better, got more fulfilling, both professionally and personally. So I would highly encourage you to go through the exercise in this book. That is takeaway number 1 from the first section. Takeaway number 2 has to do with positive intent. You see, as human beings, we have a negativity bias. When somebody says something, our fight-or-flight response kicks in pretty fast, especially if there's a little bit of ambiguity and it's not very clear what somebody was communicating with us. And if you're in a hostile work environment and you're not super fulfilled, this tends to happen all the time. Somebody sends an email, you interpret it the wrong way, you respond seeing red, you press send, And then you come to find out you misinterpreted the email, and now you're sitting there, as Darcy says in the book, with like egg all over your face, right? You're the fool. And so with positive intent, you assume positive intent in every situation. You try to look for the way that what they said could have been said in a positive way. It goes in one ear. It's your choice how to respond and take the intent of that message. And when it comes out, Choose positive. So I really love that takeaway. It's something that I've tried to implement over the last couple of years through Stoic philosophy, always looking for the joy in life. Amor fati, the love of one's fate. If somebody says something to you, just love it. And, uh, my third biggest takeaway from this section was to swap frustration for empathy. So oftentimes, if it's tough to see the positive intent, you'll get frustrated. What Darcy says is look for the empathy. I think that Gary Vaynerchuk is a good example of this. If somebody leaves a mean comment on your Instagram post, as an example, Gary says you should feel bad for that person because that negative comment is a reflection of what they're going through. Show a little bit of empathy for what they're going through. They don't really mean any harm to you, they just have a tough situation. And so professionally, if somebody makes an offhanded comment, well, Maybe their kid is sick, or maybe they're in a rush and behind on a deadline. Show a little bit of empathy. Investigate if you have to, but that empathy will go a long way. You want to imagine that positive intent. This section of the book, this chapter, the positive intent was really big for me. So that is a preview of today's book, Red Cape Rescue. I think this book is really important, especially going into 2022. If you're having a really tough time at work, read this book because it might not be your work environment. It may be the way that you're approaching and interacting with the people around you and your workload. You may be able to take control and live a vibrant life within that work environment. Red Cape Rescue, Darcy Eichenberg. She's a great leadership and career coach. I really found a lot of value in this book, and that is today's review. Comment down below, let me know what you think. And other than that, go read something. Adios, bye!
