Business Book Review: The Pivot Year by Brianna Wiest

For anyone standing at the crossroads of where they are and where they want to be, The Pivot Year is for you.

My Rating: ★★★★

Length:  374 pages

Publisher: Brianne West

Released: 2023

Key Takeaways for Personal Branding

A few years ago, world events seemingly catapulted the word ‘pivot’ to the top of our business vocabularies. But, how much of this mindset do you still remember in your work and personal life? How much are you using it to imagine new realities you perhaps never dreamed possible? That’s where Brianna Wiest reminds you of the power of the pivot.

In The Pivot Year, she says:

“I hope that this is the year you find the boldest, bravest kind of courage. I hope that this is the year you walk fiercely into the life that was always meant to be yours.”

The Pivot Year offers individual inspiration for 365 days, acting as your biggest cheerleader for your pivot toward your desired future.

With no references or quoted research, the book reads like almost one by-big affirmation. Which isn’t a bad thing. It’s a soothingly simple relief from sometimes over-engineered ideas. The Pivot Year’s premise is simple; become the person you want to be.  Outside of tracking the day of the year, the book offers no other headlines or titles and explicitly frames no key concepts. But, they are there nonetheless. Here are my personal top takeaways:

Letting Go and Choosing Growth

To become who you want to be, you have to be okay with shedding parts of who you have been up until this point. Including parts you may have loved, but have now outgrown:

“You will have to learn that some things are right for a time, but not forever. You will have to learn that moving on from them does not diminish the place they held within you, the importance they have to you, or the impact they had on you.”

“The space between no longer and not yet is what defines the pivot periods of our lives."

“You are meant to grow as new evidence and experience are presented to you, as you adapt to new ideas, solve new problems, gain new skills, hear new perspectives, and see more of the world as it really is.”

“Losing yourself is not always a bad thing. The point is to lose some versions of yourself. The point is to let some parts of yourself disintegrate within the fire of your personal transformation.”

“Your idea of yourself will reform as you give yourself solid, undeniable, consistent proof that you are different than you once believed yourself to be.”

It’s Still Within You

Whenever you lose something you once loved, remind yourself that the thing that allowed you to get that thing in the first place is still within you. What’s within you can’t be taken away:

“We don’t have to grieve what we think the world took, but to remember that whatever beauty we grew within our lives is still within us—and wherever we go, and whatever we do next, we will grow it there, too."

This Too Shall Pass

Personal transformation change rarely ever comes easily. You’ll likely experience your own personal winter. Like all seasons, the pain that comes with change will pass too:

“Whatever pain you think you are in right now cannot begin to compare to the peace that will one day come over you. It cannot begin to compare to the joy that you will one day know.”

“Chapters of great transformation often feel like they carry on forever, but the truth is that they are often gardens that grow from tiny seeds that you’ve been planting for a very long time.”

“Every hour is a new beginning.”

“Maybe you should trust that in what isn’t working, because it might be trying to guide you to what will."

“Maybe you should trust the missed connections, the calls gone unanswered, the opportunities that had every reason to work out but didn’t.”

“You may fear the quiet times in your life, when your soul goes through a winter. However, it’s often those same times when the most profound and human work of all is being completed.”

“Nobody tells you that you will eventually think about every last thing that haunts you for the very last time, and you will not even realize it is the last.”

More Favourite Quotes

Maybe you don’t need to find more energy, maybe you just need to find a dream that makes you actually want to get up in the morning.

The question is not whether something makes you feel immediately as though you’re unquestionably fated for it, but whether or not it grows with you. Whether or not it gives you the opportunity to stretch, to change, to become better"

Will resist your own growth. You will resist your own growth because you were taught that what’s most familiar is most worthwhile. You will resist your own growth because you came to believe letting go is a loss when it is in fact a beginning.

The Pivot Year by Brianna Wiest Available on Amazon.