Author

Sarah Susanka describes hereself first and foremost as a student of life. Through decades of studying the art of living more consciously, she has learned to use her own life as a laboratory to help craft the tools for waking up within the warp and woof of every day life.

A thought leader, inspirational public speaker, and an acclaimed architect, Sarah is the bestselling author of seven books including The Not So Big House (Taunton 1998), Home By Design (Taunton 2004), and most recently, The Not So Big Life: Making Room for What Really Matters (Random House 2007). She has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including Oprah, Charlie Rose, and Diane Rehm, and has received many accolades for her work. Fast Company named Sarah to their debut list of "Fast 50" innovators whose achievements have helped to change society. Newsweek Magazine selected her as a "top newsmaker" for 2000, and US News and World Report dubbed her an "innovator in American culture" in 1998. In May of 2007, Sarah was presented with the Anne Morrow Lindbergh Award by the Lindbergh Foundation for "...outstanding individual achievement, demonstrating a spirit of initiative and exemplifying great dedication toward making positive contributions to our world."

In her Not So Big House series of books, Sarah has helped readers understand that the sense of "home" they're seeking has almost nothing to do with quantity, and everything to do with quality. She points out that we feel "at home" in our houses when where we live reflects who we are in our hearts. In her latest book, The Not So Big Life, she uses this same set of notions to explain that we can feel "at home" in our lives only when what we do reflects who we truly are.

A master in the use of metaphor to help explain new dimensions of understanding, Sarah unveils a process for changing the way we live by fully inhabiting each moment of our lives, and by showing up completely in whatever it is we are doing. The process of self-discovery described in The Not So Big Life has provided the compass and formed the core of Sarah's true avocation as a student of life. Through this process of inner work, readers discover more meaningfulness and vitality in their own lives.

What makes Sarah an unusually effective teacher in the art of living more consciously is that she has learned what she knows by living an ordinary life, filled with all the normal challenges of family and career. Brought up in England by parents with little interest in spirituality, she was able to develop and integrate a non-denominational spiritual practice into her everyday life from an early age, using every circumstance, friendship, and passion as the nutrients for inner growth.

Though Sarah is very much engaged in the world as architect, author, speaker etc., she doesn't consider those roles to be her identity. Through all her various expressions, architectural and literary, she is able to convey a different way of being in the world - fully engaged in it, but not defined by it.

Whether writing about a new blueprint for home design or a new blueprint for living, Sarah has a gift for making the complex simple, and for demystifying even the most obscure and esoteric of subject matter. She invites you to explore more here at notsobiglife.com.