By ROCKNE ROLL
The Jewish Review
Dorice Horenstein didn’t think she would write another book. 
After publishing “Moments of the Heart,” her award-winning debut, Horenstein had plenty going on. But the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic forced everyone to make a lot of challenging choices, Horenstein included. When she started thinking about how those choices are made and the processes that go into successful decision making, another book was born. 
That volume, “Choose to Be Your Own Champion: The Six-Step Playbook to Become Your Best Self,” is coming out later this year through Morgan James Publishing, with a launch party scheduled Thursday, May 22 at 6:15 pm at Congregation Neveh Shalom in Portland. 
While “Moments of the Heart” poured out of Horenstein almost fully formed, “Choose to Be Your Own Champion” is the product of deep research, observation and consultation.
“I’m in the business of studying people and myself and how to become better,” Horenstein explained. “How do I make choices that I could, at the end of the day or the week or the year, put my head down on a pillow and say, ‘I did well.’”
The process, it turns out, is right there in the word – CHOOSE. Six letters for six steps: Clarity, Honor, Openness, Oneness, Strategy and Enactment. Each theme is explained through stories from Horenstein’s experiences – as an Israeli Defense Forces officer, as an Israeli woman coming to the United States with, in her words, “$600 and a suitcase,” as a former synagogue education director and as an internationally known speaker on positive intelligence, resiliency and leadership development. She invited contributors to speak to three specific instances of big, powerful choices that she’s not experienced herself: A woman who came out as gay in the 1990s, a woman who converted to Judaism more than 20 years ago, and a woman in her 80s who talks about aging with intention. All three will be honored at the May 22 event at Neveh Shalom. 
“People say, ‘Oh, you can put your feet in someone else’s shoes,” Horenstein said. “To some extent, you can in the idea of empathy, but you can’t really know all of their experience.”
Some concepts are rooted in the ideas of positive intelligence that are at the core of her speaking practice – in the section on Clarity, Horenstein discusses the idea of saboteurs, the self-critical inner voices we all face, though each of us in different ways, and how, left unchecked, they can lead us in directions that don’t align with our values. In other areas, such as in the chapter on Oneness, she delves into Jewish tradition and language. 
“Oneness with yourself, it’s the idea that you feel in your gut, that the choice that you’re making is the right choice, that you feel a sense of relief,” she explained. “When you feel oneness, you also feel wholeness, and the idea of wholeness in Hebrew is shalem, which comes from the word shalom. Shalom is ‘hello,’ ‘goodbye,’ ‘peace,’ so when you feel wholeness, you feel peace, that’s how these two words are connected.”
Though there’s plenty of Jewish wisdom on its pages, this is a book that’s for everyone. 
“This book is for people in the corporate world, entrepreneurs, professional people and it’s for your own personal development,” Horenstein said. 
Learn more about “Choose to Be Your Own Champion,” Horenstein’s work and the May 22 launch event at doricehorenstein.com.