Managing Your Inner A**hole: An Unusual Education in the Fundamentals of Emotional Intelligence

This is a true story that took the author nearly forty years to be able to tell. Ben Prescott grew up in the sixties and early seventies in an ultraconservative family. At seventeen, he found his world destroyed when his father’s sexual addiction was uncovered. Betrayed and abandoned, Ben became an angry young man who gave free rein to the persona he would later describe as his “inner a**hole.” He buried himself in work, school, and alcohol to escape his pain—but when his life hit rock bottom eight years later after a disastrous failed marriage, God showed up in his living room and told him to write down a ten-point prophecy that would give him hope for the future. Over the next two years, each point came true in the exact sequence and on the exact dates predicted. Ben’s life was changed forever, but he did not yet understand the reason for his change. During the next twenty-five years, Ben remarried and raised a family; became a successful entrepreneur; buried half his family; stood by others as they battled cancer; suffered his own life-changing injury; became a multimillionaire—and then lost most of that fortune after 9/11. Along the way he discovered what life is about and realized what he’s supposed to do with the life he has been given. This is the unvarnished account of one man’s education by life and the lessons he learned about what it takes to live successfully. These are the secrets for cultivating emotional intelligence, making the most of relationships, and overcoming the scared, belligerent, immature child who lives within all of us.