Featured Image: Anne Burton

Disclosure: This book was gifted to me by Anne’s publishing company in exchange for my honest review. All views concerning this book are 100% my own and not of anyone else’s.

I know what you must be thinking and Anne stated this in her book, “Why in the world would someone ask, what’s it like to be human?” I mean, don’t you know? – you are human, right?

Of course, I am! Otherwise you’d be reading something that a robot wrote, but no I’m very much human and hopefully, you are too, unless you really are a robot reading this…hmm…

Being human is a trait that we all should “know” how to do and do very well, because “being human” means, you’re just being yourself, right? but according to Anne Burton’s book “Being Human – A User Guide” being human is far more entailed than it sounds. The user guide was created by Burton and is based on her own learning experiences and personal journeys over the last 10yrs and our mind and actions play a big role in both. Things, Burton stated she wished she’d known when her children were babies.

“I wrote it because the contents of this book have helped me enormously and because I wish I had known about it sooner, when my children were babies, because there are things I would have done differently. I wrote it because I wanted to share what I have learned so far in this experience of being human.”

Anne Burton, Author – Being Human

There are many things that I’ve encountered in my life and I sometimes say, “If I knew then, what I know now” Mannn, I would do things so differently! If those issues are not handled, we take those negative vibes into adulthood and begin to act out in ways that are not normal and therefore use excuses for our behavior. Anne mentioned it in her book but I’ve always heard people say, “I was born this way” or “I can’t help the way I act” – but, no one is born a certain way or born to have a negative attitude, it’s a mind thing. Anne refers to this as the “Nature vs. Nurture” debate in which she states research says that experience and environment can change our gene expression and that genes can be switched on and off.  I’m a believer that life and circumstances shape us, maybe our family background wasn’t so great, however; I’ve seen people not become products of those environments and “chose” a different and more positive path.

Being Human – A User’s Guide is what this is all about. The influences, behavior’s and experiences that either shape our life for the better or the worse. According to Anne’s book, we spend the first seven years of our lives (that’s from the time we’re born up until 7 yrs old) in somewhat of a trance. Information gets into our brain through our senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and feeling. We process it, make meaning from it and then our brain stores it without us even knowing its done such a thing.

That part was really powerful to me; it’s amazing because I don’t really remember when I was 3 or even 4, 5 or 6 yrs old. I remember bits and pieces or you can say glimpses of things during that period. Interestingly enough there are quite a few random memories that have come up out of the blue either from childhood or even early adulthood that I didn’t remember doing or knew my brain held on too.

Anne calls these experiences “Programs” where our brain takes our memories, experiences, sights, smells and sounds and create scenarios which tell us how to respond, act, communicate, make friends and even down to what we put in our mouth to eat.

Another program our brain is good at is keeping us in line with our HABITS!

Habits are those things that we do without even giving it a second thought, things that our brain knows we should be doing automatically and programs us to do it. Ever heard the saying “It takes 21 days to create a habit.” And I still believe that’s true, however, I do believe in most cases that if we do something repeatedly for 5 days, our brain picks it up as a daily routine and next thing you know, our body becomes in sync with that newfound thing and it’s a wrap, sort of. The more you do it, the more the habit grows. Ever felt funny about not doing something that you would normally do on a daily basis? It’s almost like you can’t function because something’s missing from your day.

Anne states that all these programs are run automatically, like an alarm going off at a particular time. There was something else Anne mentioned in her book, that made me do a little research on and that’s “left-brain thinking” – In Being Human, Anne believes that it’s this type of thinking that keeps us stressed out, rather than what I call – Living in the moment and letting some things go..

Now, I have to tell you, I didn’t understand or even know that there was such a thing as left-brain nor right-brain thinking, but there really is and what I found out was pretty interesting.

It’s said that people are either one or the other “left or right” brain thinkers – meaning one side of their brain is more dominant than the other side. According to Healthline; If you’re more analytical and methodical in your thinking, you’re said to be left-brained. If you tend to be more creative or artistic, you’re thought to be right-brained.

Per Anne’s book and the information I learned, I realized – I’m right-brained. How about you? The left and right brain thinking is just a little piece of what Being Human or as I’d like to call it, understanding how our human nature acts, responds and communicate with everyday life issues is only the half…

Anne also believes that we have six programs that make up our human operating system. Burton believes that these entities may need an upgrade or reboot to support the day by day processes of being human and to get us to where we want to be in our lives.

They are the Six C’s of Being Human:

• Consciousness
• Communication
• Connection
• Courage
• Creativity
• Compassion

Burton states that all these programs are linked together and dependent upon each other to work properly if one is more valued than the other, Burton states we could and will feel the detrimental effect of how the other ones respond. Therefore she advises that you work on each of them daily.

“I don’t know what you should do with your life or what you want to achieve only you know that. This is about taking care of aspects of your life that will help you whatever it is that you decide to do ”

Anne Burton, Author – Being Human

Being Human – A User Guide per Burton is not a book that’ll make you change in an instant. It takes time and with practice, you’d be able to make subtle changes to your mind as well as your environment. Look, we all have issues, maybe we didn’t have the best childhood or maybe your childhood was great and the pitfalls came in when you became an adult. Thing is, we all have something to work on, things that can make us do better, be better and live better but it takes the practice of trying to do the right things as well as make the right choices every single day. We may not be able to change where we’ve been, but we can definitely change where we’re going and that my friend is what Being Human is all about…

About Author Anne Burton

Anne Burton was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire in 1965. Before starting to write the BEING HUMAN book series she worked as an accountant in industry. Here she learned first hand how difficult change can seem and how the way that we live our lives has, for many of us, become disconnected from what we need to function well as human beings. This realization leads to her passion for understanding why we do the things we do and what determines how we experience the world we live in.