motivational

This website is about motivational activities, and also contains resources about motivational slogans , motivational qoutes , and motivational prints .

Title : The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness
Author : Stephen R. Covey
Rating : 3 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Interesting and Inspiring Summary of the Book

Stephen Covey's book "The 8th Habit" contains a lot of very good ideas but is rather padded. This audio CD provides a very useful summary of the key points in the book. Although it is still a bit preachy at times, it does avoid most of the homely self-indulgent anecdotes of the book. The audio CD though, has one major weakness in my view - it doesn't spend enough time on what I feel is the most important feature of the book - the 4 Roles of Leadership. Barely 10 minutes of the CD covers this vital development plan for 21st century leaders(and that coverage is fairly poor). So read the book, reinforce the key points with the CD, and skim the book again focussing on the leadership aspects. That should help you get to grips with the material.

Title : Positive Thinking, Positive Action: Essential Steps to Achieve Your Potential (Personal Development)
Author : Douglas Miller
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Voyage into your new future with confidence

In addition to the other POSITIVE contribution below this book is broken down into nice short easy to digest paragraphs chapters. This book is a no hype no frills book that gets to the point the basics of what it is to be "truly" successful, including many valuable and do-able tips exercises on how to achieve "REAL" success.

It's written in a very clear style, language typeset, the lessons and techniques are easy to read, understand digest, thus allowing one to get through the book without having to wade through pages of American Psychobabble slang. Nor does it languish on the "I knew a man once who bla bla bla ....." typical of most of the ancient PMA (Positive Mental Thinking" books about success positive thinking.

Douglas' reputation credentials must have been quite remarkable to have his book published by the BBC World Learning!

Take yourself out of the of Carnegie, Covey Hill et al dark ages read this modern thoroughly well researched course that will propel you to your own success.

No luck needed.....just read it!

Title : S.U.M.O. (Shut Up, Move On): The Straight-Talking Guide to Creating and Enjoying a Brilliant Life
Author : Paul McGee
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Asolutely fantastic

this book is absolutley fantastic it is easy to read and easy to understand. i agree wiv the last reviewr the best self book i have ever read

Title : E-myth Mastery: The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World Class Company
Author : Michael Gerber
Rating : 1 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Heavy going, heavy on psychobabble

If you're into overwrought emotional prose this ones for you.

I quote "without the passion of the soul, the mind creates an endless stream of empty suits, dreams without heart..."

or this gem

"a part of me is just afraid. that part of me feels like i'm jumping off a cliff, but in some strange way I also trust that I'll fall into something soft and safe"

After about 100 pages it starts turning into a business book again, but after wading through the cod philosphies at the start of the book I was actually angry at the author for putting me through some really badly written stuff, concerning a lady called sarah from 'all about pies' who'd lost her passion, apparently. I knew how she felt by this point in the book.

If you buy it read the real stuff at the end of the book, but really, don't encourage him.

To misquote the book I certainly felt like jumping off a cliff at times.
If only he'd have just stuck to the business. Why does everyone have to be a cod psychologist these days? Nuff said'

Title : Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Author : Robert Cialdini
Rating : 4 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Excellent content somewhat marred by impractical conclusions

3rd edition/publication (2007), Collins Business Essentials, 320 pages (of which 280 pages for actual book)

Influence is another of the twenty books Charlie Munger recommends in the second edition of Poor Charlie's Almanack. Its content is excellent (and sometimes even hair-raisingly remarkable - as when he shows that media reporting of suicides actually causes more of them via the social proof bias) but I think Cialdini could have done a much better job of turning the research evidence into useful/practical advice. (The same problem manifests itself in Gilbert's book `Stumbling on Happiness' - though Cialdini's is the better book.)

I was discussing this book with a friend who had also read it and I thought he put it very well: Cialdini is one of those clever people who is not very wise. That is also why Poor Charlie's Almanack is so good and unusual: Munger is both clever and has deliberately attempted to distil a lifetime's worth of reading over a broad subject matter area into practical advice on how to live a successful/useful life.

In particular, Cialdini shows us clearly that a significant number of our psychological biases work completely unconsciously. (By that I mean it can be demonstrated that a certain bias has affected a group of individual's actions/conclusions whilst they strenuously deny they have paid any attention to or are even totally unaware of the biasing factor.) For example, Cialdini quotes one study where "men who saw a new-car ad that included a seductive young woman model rated the car as faster, more appealing, more expensive-looking, and better designed than did men who saw the same ad without the model. Yet when asked later, the men refused to believe that the presence of the young woman had influenced their judgements."

He then goes on to suggest various complicated ways to try to monitor ourselves to see if we are being affected by some of these biases - in order that we can attempt to limit the damage from faulty decisions (often in situations deliberately set up to cause our faulty decisions to be detrimental to us and advantageous to some other). For example, he highlights the "extreme caution" needed in auction situations where one encounters the "devilish construction of scarcity plus rivalry" - and suggests that we watch ourselves for signs of arousal so that we can stop short.

Well, I think Munger and his partner Warren Buffett have a much more practical and simpler way of dealing with that problem, based on the wisdom of the rustic that Munger likes to quote: "all I want to know is where I'm going to die so can avoid going there." The whole thrust of Cialdini's book is that these biases are often unconscious and are in any case often very strong (and usually much stronger that we believe/expect) - which is another way of saying you're unlikely to have good results fighting against them.

Much better to simply bypass the problem where possible and do as Buffett does and refuse to get involved in auction situations. Using rules like this, to paraphrase Munger on a different subject (tax shelters): if you always avoid auction situations you might miss out on the odd good deal, but overall your life is likely to be better.

This is also why I consider Taleb (Fooled by Randomness) to be much wiser than Cialdini: he understands that being aware of biases doesn't make them go away. You need tricks and methods to live successfully with them.

I also think the advice in Cialdini's epilogue is very poor. He suggests that we rise up to fight people/organisations who misuse our psychological biases for their own ends: "In short, we should be willing to use boycott, threat, confrontation, censure, tirade, nearly anything, to retaliate."

This is crazy advice: the effort and time required to do it would leave little for anything else and would also guarantee a miserable life focussed on negativity. It also shows Cialdini's lack of familiarity with good training principles (an excellent book on the subject is Karen Pryor's `Don't Shoot The Dog'). Plenty of research now shows that positive reinforcement (rewarding behaviour you like) is at least as effective as negative reinforcement and much more so than punishment. It also has the huge benefit of leading to a much more pleasant life.

However, even with those caveats (essentially that you have to do your own thinking about how to cope with the biases that Cialdini does an excellent job of laying out) it is still a very useful book.

Title : You Can Heal Your Life
Author : Louise L. Hay
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : brilliant

I read this book some many years ago, and as i was writing reviews i thought i would do one for this. At the time i read this book i thought it was tremendously good. A great value to anyone looking at healing of any nature. Also of value to anyone who needs some inspiration. Well done Louise. A great book.

Title : The Richest Man in Babylon: Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
Author : George S. Clason
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Want to Learn how to get wealth ?

This should be a must read especially for young people. Anyone who wants to get on the road to financial freedom needs to read this book.