Alejandra Llamas returns with ‘The Art of Knowing Yourself’
The Mexican-American author stops off in Spain once again to present what she herself describes as a transformational work, which ultimately proposes a fundamental truth: in order to conquer your own life, you need to understand who you really are.
‘The Art of Knowing Yourself’ (Grijalbo, 124 pages) arrives in Spain after selling over a million copies in the United States, her adopted country, where she is already established as one of the big bestsellers, having published nine books, widely distributed in both American hemispheres. Much of her fame comes from being the creator of the MMK coaching process, which stands for Mano Maya Kosha in Sanskrit, meaning Mano (mind), Maya (illusion) and Kosha (layers), and which comprises a methodology for achieving self-knowledge, raising awareness and achieving concrete results in all areas of our lives. In this vein, Alejandra Llamas guides the reader in her latest work on a journey of self-knowledge that challenges the unconscious cultural patterns that govern our decisions and relationships.
The book is based on a premise that could be considered revolutionary: we live immersed in a culture that absorbs us consciously or unconsciously, inviting us to react based on norms that we have accepted without questioning them. Consequently, according to the author, most of the suffering we face comes from self-deception in our relationships and from betraying our own desires.
The work is structured in four main chapters: the importance of knowing ourselves; we can reinvent who we are; conscious relationships and harmony; and living life as a celebration. It explores the fundamental pillars of being: thoughts, culture, beliefs, emotions and language, where Llamas introduces the concept of “the pillars of being” as a tool for recognising how we construct our own reality through what we think, believe and communicate.
After demonstrating that ‘reality is not fixed,’ it integrates concepts from physics, meditation, and spirituality to show how the mind is the instrument of transformation. It also analyses how we relate to each other when governed by the ego, projecting our anger and shortcomings onto others, and introduces the idea of ‘being in the box’—when we betray our own desires—and how this prevents us from knowing and freeing ourselves. Finally, it proposes living with excellence through authentic listening and what it calls ‘synchrodestiny,’ that is, when everything falls into place as a result of aligning with one's own essence.
The book actually contains four central messages: authenticity is liberating; your thoughts create your reality; projection is a mirror, and honour your desires. These messages encapsulate the core of personal transformation, from being authentic as a human being to integrity. The latter, which is fundamental to living a full life, arises from the difference between desire, a loving characteristic, and need, which arises from fear. Llamas believes that "appreciating this difference is crucial to living with integrity.
These are messages from someone who, in addition to her studies and knowledge, knows about the vicissitudes of life through experiences that were often traumatic, from being bullied as a child to a relationship marked by violence with a toxic partner, to depression caused in part by the stress of her job as an artist manager.
Honoured by The Best Sellers Choice as a Hispanic pride, she is also the host of successful podcasts followed by millions of followers on both sides of the Atlantic: ‘Calíbrate’, ‘Palabras al Aire’ and ‘Mata tu Gurú’, through which she disseminates the ideas she now develops in this new essay on the difficult art of knowing oneself.
