Surrounded by Setbacks

By Thomas Eriksen

Eriksen, bestselling author of Surrounded by Idiots, has released a set of books all featuring the ‘surrounded by’ moniker. They sit somewhere between self-help book, behavioural science and popular science. In surrounded by setbacks, the book aims to provide guidance on how to deal with life when many setbacks seem to occur.

Feeling blue

The principal USP of this book, what it offers above and beyond others of its type, is the DISC assessment. I think an issue is that this book doesn’t do the best job of utilising it, nor really offering that much which is new. So let's review what DISC is.

The DISC assessment divides behaviour of humans into four colours or categories -Dominance, Influence, Stability and Compliance also known as red, yellow, green and blue. A person’s tendencies will typically focus on two or even three of these. These tendencies tend to reveal how a person will act – e.g. if green, I mainly focus on complying by rules, so if a boss tells a green to do something one would expect them to do it as close to the instructions given as possible. Similarly, a red might be more likely to contest the request – as they typically skew towards dominance.

The DISC model is certainly interesting. One table in the book runs through the approach, manner, work pace, wants and wants to be of the different colours, for example. The idea is that you can understand your colours and how you will likely react to setbacks, but I would say that there definitely was not adequate time devoted to helping you figure this out. It’s more, here’s several tables, so now you know… I find this problematic, since as far as I could tell I had parts of three of the colours – and I suspect many readers will have the same experience. So what should I focus on? It’s not really covered how to filter it down more narrowly and apply it to oneself, which makes the whole exercise a little redundant.

This system was found in Eriksen’s first book, Surrounded by Idiots. But I wonder why it was introduced around a quarter of the way into this book (in chapter 8 out of 28 chapters). The detriment of doing this is that several of the earlier chapters really seem to waffle a bit and pretty much say things you already knew. I think it would have been better integrated throughout the book, from the outset – here’s the DISC model, how to apply it to yourself, and then how to work from it based upon your own tendencies in response to setbacks.

At the risk of sounding too critical, it’s worth mentioning here that the book is certainly right in many of its observations – there are things you can or can’t control, but you can control your responsibilities or acceptance of things you can’t control. Similarly, there is a responsibility for the things you could do but don’t. You probably see what I mean though where this isn’t exactly a sophisticated idea – I mean most of it was framed by the Stoics thousands of years ago.

Unique enough?

The book even states the main problem of self-help books like this, that, when it comes to setbacks, there are two schools of thought. Either, you need to get your act together and take responsibility, or, you need to look after yourself and not be overly self-critical. This book falls into the former camp, and I was a little disappointed it didn’t aim to reconcile these two approaches when the author was clearly aware of them both.

Some of the practical steps, a phenomenon always present in self-help books, are kind of what you might expect also. Meditate, take time away, work harder each time, write down your setbacks, write down your successes. There’s nothing wrong with them, but it’s nothing new.

The advice generally is solid then. But you will sometimes roll your eyes for the tenth time at being told that you need to do this and that. For example, what if someone truly has setbacks they struggle to work through even when they seem to take responsibility more than anyone else? What if you seem to fit into all 4 areas of the DISC model? Although this book doesn’t claim to have all the answers, perhaps it could have considered some of the more interesting questions too.

Final score

Occasionally, surrounded by setbacks does provide good analysis of what to do. But there is little new here, and it occasionally gets tedious, nor does it utilise the DISC model as well as it could. The model is useful and applicable, but it feels more introduced and ‘figure it out’. A missed opportunity, then, because Eriksen does have good advice and ideas, but it could have been implemented more effectively. One that can be skipped.

4/10