A powerfully inspiring book about how to avoid the bullies in our midst

Journey of North Denver Johnnie:
Using Street Smarts to Add Value to Your Career
By John Santone

This is a powerfully inspiring book about how to avoid the bullies in our midst. This world is filled with people who make us feel small and unvalued. Santone shows the reader how not only to overcome this overwhelming negative feeling but to thrive by gathering our own inner resources and changing our attitudes.

Johnnie Dane was a wimp who didn’t believe that he could stand up to people in his life. At the age of thirteen, he was abused and humiliated by one of his students at a parochial school, Peter Schavinski. He accused Johnnie of calling him a Nazi, and one of the sisters at the school believed the student’s story without even asking Johnnie for an explanation or his side of the story.

When Sister Mary heard Peter Schavinski’s story, she further humiliated Johnnie in front of his classmates. Johnnie felt awful. But instead of turning away from the situation and succumbing again to wrongful accusations and terrible treatment, he decided to stand up to her and leave. This was the beginning of his transformation into the person who he is today.

He got transferred into another school, however, this school was dangerous and he had to develop a lot of street smarts. He had to learn a lot about himself to cope in this school. But Santone turned adversity into a platform of life lessons. This book is full of his life lessons.

The first is to never give up. Because when we give up, we give the bullies in our midst the upper hand on how to keep manipulating us into believing that we are less than they are.

Further, you should continuously assess your strengths and weaknesses so that you could develop goals to accomplish your objectives. To obtain most goals, you need a plan, initiative, confidence, and perseverance. Thus, if you want to change, you have to change things.

Lastly, it is impossible to predict the future. All we can do is to have a plan for the future. But we should not hold onto our plan too tight since things can change quickly and then we have to revise our plan.

These insights and much more are part of this powerful book. I recommend this book to anyone who has been hurt, put down and humiliated and didn’t know who to turn to. This book provides insights into career management and workplace advancement from a person who had successful sought-after position in successful companies.

Rating: 5 stars

Reviewed by: Irene S. Roth