Carmel Valley resident releases self-help book ‘You Are What You Do’

Longtime Carmel Valley resident Daniel Park recently released his latest book, “You Are What You Do: Live the Life You Were Meant to Live,” to help others overcome the obstacles that prevent them from pursuing their biggest goals.

Daniel Park

(Courtesy)

“I wanted to help people live the best life they could,” said Park, a graduate of Yale Law School who also has a bachelor of arts degree from Swarthmore College and master of arts from Stanford University. “In part, I wanted to help myself live the best life I could.”

Park, a 15-year Carmel Valley resident and an attorney for more than 20 years, is chief campus counsel for UC San Diego. He previously authored a few other books that focus on law and the legal system. For his latest work, he wanted to branch out into the self-help realm, encouraging people to “live a life that feels authentic to them, that gives them meaning and purpose and feels satisfying.”

“One of the problems I see people having is not that they don’t know what to do, but they struggle with finding the motivation to get started and the motivation to keep going,” he said, adding that “there are a lot of distractions in life that throw you off.”

One of the common setbacks many people face as they work toward their goals, Park said, is spending too much time on unimportant tasks. The fear of failure to perform more important tasks, he said, can prevent people from ever starting them. He added that “as long as you’re making progress, you’re on the right path.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about obstacles to getting started and moving forward, and I thought that it might be helpful for other people if I shared some of those ideas and insights that I’ve accumulated from my own reflection and my own study on the topic,” he said.

Park said he wrote “You Are What You Do” in about two years. His other books include “The Legal Mind: How the Law Thinks,” “How Would You Rule” and “Love in the Dark and Other Stories.”

“At the end of the day, what is life for? Life is for achieving the things that only you can achieve in your life,” he said.

“You Are What You Do: Live the Life You Were Meant to Live” was released on Oct. 18, and is available on Amazon in paperback and ebook editions.