Overcoming Life's Disappointments

By: Harold S. Kushner

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

From Harold S. Kushner, the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, an audiobook that shows us how to be our best selves even when things don’t turn out as we had hoped–that is, how we can overcome life’s disappointments.

Kushner turns to the experience of Moses to find the requisite lessons of strength and faith. Moses towers over all others in the Old Testament: he is the man on the mountaintop to whom God speaks with unparalleled intimacy, and he leads his people out of bondage. But he is also deeply human, someone whose soaring triumphs are offset by frustration and longing: his people ignore his teachings, he is denied entrance to the Promised Land, his family suffers. But he overcomes.

Through the example of Moses’ remarkable resilience, we learn how to weather the disillusionment of dreams unfulfilled, the pain of a lost job or promotion, a child’s failures, divorce or abandonment, and illness. We learn how to meet all disappointments with faith in ourselves and the future, and how to respond to heartbreak with understanding rather than bitterness and despair.

This is an audiobook of spiritual wisdom–as practical as it is inspiring.

Critic reviews

“No human relationship is without betrayal, irritation and annoyance, but Kushner makes clear that it’s what we do about such obstacles that matter."—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Compassionate and wise, Rabbi Kushner is a master of the story that heals.”—Deborah Tannen, author of You’re Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation

“An articulate, no-nonsense treatise.... A readably inspirational homily leavened with subtle humor.... Kushner's book can serve to fortify us in times of loss and frustration.”—The Jerusalem Report

Excellent book

Rabbi Kushner's book is excellent and reminds the often forgotten thing that we need to have the humility to accept the disappointments in life and appreciate the things that have been given to us more. There is a stress on the fact that there must be balance between trying to changing the world and one's responsibilities to one's own family.

Not what I expected

Filled with detailed Bible stories - not just references the entire story - just not what I expected from his other books

Kushner is the one to read!!!

I have all his books, but wanted to listen to this one again. Wonderful book, wonderful man!!!

Stardust for the Saturnine

This book provides momentary stardust to the guy who feels like he's failed, his hopes dashed; the lady who thinks her life is a disappointment in an empty nest or that she didn't live up to her potential in her career; or anyone else who believes her or his road to money and glory has been forever blocked or even decimated.

This book was published in 2006, written by Rabbi Harold Kushner, also the author of the bestseller "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." Whereas the latter was so helpful to those who, like Rabbi Kushner, lost a loved one, this book is manna, like grains of gratitude for seeing and grasping all that it good within your life, even when it seems that all has gone so wrong. "Overcoming" is the book that others have since tried to write, like "The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well is the Key to Success."

This is not an overly religious book or a book only for Jews because it's written by a Rabbi. This is a spiritual book, a positive book, that invokes the life and failures of Moses for its lessons.

If you know someone who has suffered a major life setback, lost a job, a house, a marriage, I cannot recommend to you highly enough that you give this book as a gift.

Not worth

It's a waste of time. the thought process and guidance is wrong and mid leading.