A book by Grant L Lidster

Aligned

What every living thing knows about exchange
that we have somehow forgotten.

An honest look at why relationships thrive or fail — in marriages, families, workplaces, friendships, and the quiet rooms where we meet ourselves. Not a self-help book. A field guide to how living things actually exchange.

A field guide
Aligned
What every living thing
knows about exchange
that we have somehow
forgotten
Grant L Lidster

“They are two living things, each pursuing what they need, and the pursuit happens to line up.”

— from Aligned

From the opening

I am not a therapist. I am not a researcher. I am not a person who studied human behavior in a classroom.

I am the CEO of a chemical company. I am the son of a woman who gave the last of what she had to keep five children fed. I am a husband, a father, a friend, and a man who spent thirty years watching how people actually treat each other when the lights are on and when the lights are off.

Almost everything I am about to tell you in the next fifteen chapters, I learned by paying attention.

What the book is about

Fifteen chapters on the places exchange shows up and what it asks of us.

01Everything Wants Something
02Why We Don't See It
03The Engine Underneath
04We Were Never Meant to Be Alone
05The Person You Wake Up Next To
06The People Who Made You, and the People You Are Making
07The Work We Do, and What It Does to Us
08The Ones Who Used to Pick Up
09The Village That Disappeared
10What We Are Actually Selling
11The Conversation You Are Not Having
12Choosing the People You Build With
13The Ladder You Are Climbing
14The Person People Are Glad to See
15Where Is the Fruit

About the Author

Grant L Lidster is the CEO of a chemical company in San Diego, CA. He is a father, a grandfather, and a survivor of cancer that came too early. He spent most of his adult life learning, the hard way, that selflessness is not the same thing as love. Aligned is what he learned.

Stay connected

The book is the beginning. The community — ways to actually live aligned — is being built at livingaligned.org.