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Overview”Clear, lucid and powerful! The Elegant Self is a must read if you are interested in the further reaches of development.”  – Ken Wilber author of The Integral VisionGrow Beyond Conventional Adulthood and Distinctively Give Your Gifts.The Elegant Self offers a unique perspective on the future of you. Explore adulthood through a new lens as you tour the many dangers facing our world today. Gain rare clarity into some of the highest stages of development. Learn how the trap of completeness may be holding your influence in the world back in virtually every facet of life. Enjoy this rare invitation into the courage for you to become more of an elegant self. – Save thousands of dollars by understanding the origin of inadequacy. – Go beyond the limitations of the autonomous self most adults are stuck in. – Free yourself from the trap of completeness. – Leverage paradox to fuel greater influence and impact in the world. – Discover never-before-seen ways to free yourself from limiting habits. Robert Lundin McNamara is a professor of developmental psychology in Boulder, Colorado and is a highly respected authority on the higher reaches of adulthood. Rob is author of Strength To Awaken, a speaker, performance coach, psychotherapist, and expert in helping high-achieving adults make greater impact in their lives.Praise for The Elegant Self:“McNamara’s clear and ground-breaking book is a quintessential example of a view that is “translucent.”  His book helps us to remember that you and I and everyone we know are not things, not even “people” in any static sense.  This book reminds us that we all are, at our best and at our happiest, evolutionary processes, we are works in progress.  McNamara will teach you how to surf the waves of your own evolution.”Arjuna Ardagh, author of Better than Sex and The Translucent Revolutionfounder of Awakening Coaching“Innovative and insightful!”Andrew Cohen, Enlightenext”Practical, elegant, and brimming with life.”-Mariana Caplan, PhD., author of Eyes Wide Open and Halfway Up the Mountain”Rob McNamara has written an informative, practical, and immensely helpful guide to the crucial path of adult development.  If you’re on an inner journey, if you’re seeking an integrated approach to self-cultivation, or if you’re just wondering what your own next steps might be,  The Elegant Self should be part of your toolbox.”- Sally Kempton author, Awakening Shakti “Robert McNamara’s The Elegant Self is an essential guide for anyone on a serious path of self and spiritual development. Both advanced practitioners and newcomers alike will benefit from the profound wisdom, unique insights, and gentle guidance of this manual for enacting an embodied life. McNamara offers novel accounts of the inherent (and beneficial) sense of inadequacy, the limits of all projects of achieving completeness or wholeness in one’s being, the irreducible importance of the ethical in individual evolution, and much much more. My admiration and appreciation for this volume is unbounded; as it speaks directly to people at all waves of human development, hence to all age groups. Indeed, I shall be sharing this book widely amongst friends, colleagues, and students.”Michael Schwartz, PhDProfessor of the History and Philosophy of Art, Georgia Regents University”Clear, lucid and powerful! The Elegant Self is a must read if you are interested in the further reaches of development.” -Ken Wilber author, The Integral Vision”The argument for becoming an elegant self is carefully sequenced, lucid and often offers novel explications and subtle elaborations on the writings of others. You’ll first encounter a careful summary and analysis of Robert Kegan’s view of adult development, the best such interpretation I have seen. Then McNamara gives a rich elaboration of my thinking of what it is like to live at later stages and to become aware of one’s mental patterns and inevitable habituation. The elegant self develops the courage and faith to embrace paradox, not-knowing and the certainty of death with equanimity and a tender heart as an ongoing inquiry into what it means to be a conscious, self-actualizing human being. Stories, metaphors and examples bring to life the more academic and didactic content. Most key to the potential impact of this book, after each chapter, there are guiding questions to help you explore the territory covered after each chapter. Moreover, McNamara offers targeted practices to enhance your skills in navigating the “honor” curriculum. I highly recommend this book to individuals who want to know what it is like to live as an elegant self in a complex world.” – Susanne Cook-Greuter PhD author, Postautonomous Ego Development