Get a Hold of Yourself: Embracing Authenticity in a Complicated World

by Troy Watson

Jesus doesn’t shy away from our complexities or contradictions. Nor should we. We often sense a gap between who we are and who we could be, should be, or feel called to be. “I don’t understand myself,” the apostle Paul writes in the New Testament. “Why do I struggle to do the things I want to do and keep doing the things I don’t want to do?” That might be one of the most relatable passages in the Bible! As Christians, we’re inclined to seek the Scriptures for guidance, but even Jesus’ teachings can be confusing. If Jesus says we are to die to ourselves and deny ourselves, how do we do that while loving and being true to ourselves? How do we accept our need for growth and grace without feeling like hypocrites? How can we become more Christlike while also becoming more like ourselves? In Get a Hold of Yourself, pastor Troy Watson digs into some of Jesus’ puzzling teachings to unearth how we can learn to face contradictions rather than avoid them. Jesus’ perplexing stories and paradoxical sayings are meant to shake people from their social defaults and awaken them to a new reality. When we embrace ourselves as both sinners and saints, hurting and healed, cowardly and courageous, we are empowered to live more authentically in our complicated world.

205 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 29, 2025

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

In honest moments, we may confess that parts of the inner journey are uncomfortable things that we prefer to defer.
As Troy Watson points out in his provocative and useful new book, “Get a Hold of Yourself,” that posture doesn’t serve us well.
“Most of us have an ‘Avoid This’ setting turned on in our internal navigation system, that inevitably causes us to hit a dead end or get stuck,” he writes.
Watson is refreshingly candid in naming his own stuck places. He encourages readers to uncover the hidden reality that is our authentic self.
Our authentic self must be uncovered, in a journey that thrusts us into confusing and unexpected territory, he writes.
Getting there requires embracing paradoxes and replacing our need for certainty with the gift of curiosity.
Watson does an excellent job of reflecting on Jesus’s cryptic command for his followers to be snake-like and dove-like.
Snakes are survivors, he notes. “Learning to adapt to reality, instead of expecting reality to adapt to us, is essential serpent wisdom.”
Only once we understand serpent wisdom can we move to the dove journey that leads us to our essential self.
The author warns about being trapped by our ego mind, fixated on imagined threats and past failures or imagined slights.
Our essential self is the only “part” of us that can’t be hurt, by anyone or anything.
When we allow that authentic self to shine through we “most effectively love God, others and ourselves.”
Well worth reading and revisiting

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly enjoyed the second half of this book. And feel I could benefit from rereading the entire book at some point. I think different parts will be relevant to different people depending on where they are at.

[Katie Dennison · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ending was really goodm