motivational

This website is about motivational exercises, and also contains resources about motivational speeches , motivational course , and motivational tips .

Title : The Four Agreements: Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (Toltec Wisdom)
Author : Don Miguel Ruiz
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : 4 pointers to show us fallen angels back to paradise lost.

I've come to believe that the achievement and maintenance of happiness is a day-to-day, moment-to-moment discipline, due to the heavy conditioning we have all received to wallow in and maintain each other in suffering. This book proposes 4 deceptively simple 'agreements' to live by in order to free ourselves of that conditioning. If followed, I believe they can radically transform our lives and the lives of those around us. I say this on the basis of how I feel and the changes I have observed in my transactions with other people only 4 days after reading this book and of putting these agreements into practice. Also on the basis of the changes I've seen in the people I know who have read and been touched by this book as I have. I don't think it's possible not to be touched by it and struck by the sheer basic sense and simplicity of these agreements. All one needs to do is keep them in mind! Stick them on the fridge, beside the loo, in your diary... until they become a natural reflex.

Title : Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Author : Robert Cialdini
Rating : 3 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Good, but not totally convincing or that useful

I bought this book for two reasons - one to make myself more alert to sales techniques, and two to see if there are any useful insights to glean that could be applied to other areas of life.

On both counts the book delivers. Having recently been pitched to at work by a media tracking agency and nearly taken the bait (didn't in the end) I immediately recognised the use of reciprocity and scarcity to try and harry me into signing up. That alone was worth buying the book for, and I will definitely use that insight in future.

In addition, the chapter on consistency is also very useful. I've been involved in trying (and failing) to get people behind certain campaigns in the past. As such the discussion about getting people to make small commitments to establish a self image which they then feel the need to act consistently with both rang true on a personal level, and seems like something worth trying out in future.

So why only three stars? For one I did not find elements of the book convincing. The section dealing with newspaper coverage of suicides is the bit that really troubles me. Some of the data seems both to be limited and have been interpreted quite loosely. I would need a lot more convincing that the stats are being interpreted reasonably, it looks far too rough and ready. Given that this book is really about behavioural biases surely it should be extra careful about interpretaion of data as this is something we humans tend to be very bad at, always looking for patterns that aren't there and so on. That then leads me to query the hypothesis built on top of the data and to be honest I find myself not buying it. That also makes me query whether other chapters suffer from similar flaws.

Secondly, the book isn't actually that useful once you get your head around the key techniques because, as a previous reviewer says, simply having the knowledge that you have biases doesn't make them go away. To be really useful the book should have spent as much time reinforcing ways to resist the influence of biases as it does explaining what they are.

That said it is very readable, and I got what I wanted from it, but it could have been better.

Title : Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Author : Robert Cialdini
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Brilliant Book! A book you will keep going back to again and again. Worth more than 5 Stars.


I've just finished this book. Wow it was mind blowing!

I'm not going to reiterate all the brilliant reviews made about this book, suffice to say it is a useful guide for going into negotiations and other situations were undue and unfair influence might occur. For example, how to deal with dirty influence tricks or even just pushy salesmen, estate agents or recruitment consultants - you can see the tatics that are being used and side step them or use their tricks against them for your own advantage.

An amazing book. Read it for your own sake.

Title : Sink Reflections
Author : Marla Cilley
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Get rid of your clutter and your cleaning lady...

Discovered the Flylady.net website last year, and bought the book soon afterwards. Since then, our house (and world) has been turned around. A simple system to keep the house clean and uncluttered. Nothing extraordinary, not rocket science, just common sense. But it makes keeping house fun and easy - never thought I'd say that!!! The system might sound a bit crazy at first (drying/shining your sink every night), but give it a shot for a week and you'll be converted. Buy the book to keep by your bedside, but make sure you sign up for the (free) e-mail service, to get you truly on your way. www.flylady.net

Title : Psycho-cybernetics
Author : Maxwell Maltz
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Astonishingly practical and enlightening

This book is profoundly good. Do not let the artificial sounding title put you off - it contains chapter after chapter of elegantly written guidance for living. It is evident in the writing that this is the result of not years but decades of observation by Maltz. The chapter on negative emotional habits is in itself worth the money. I bought the book to try to resolve 11 years of tension headaches. After reading teh first chapter, I stopped reading in order to try out some ideas. The headaches are improving, but almost as importantly, I have learnt so much more about myself. Not speculative, extrapolated ideas of the author, but the result of close observations of patients who were councelled before cosmetic surgery. In many cases, the intended facial surgery was canceled, to be replaced by surgery of attitude.
I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Title : Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More
Author : Joe Vitale
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Highly Purifying Stuff in a Toxic World

I had first come across Dr. Hew Len's work in healing a ward full of criminally insane patients on the Disappearance of the Universe discussion group. The amazing thing about his healing technique was that he never actually met these people, he would instead look within himself to whatever it was that was causing this outward manifestation of illness and negativity, knowing that everyone and everything is ultimately One and connected (as any spiritual guru will tell you). He knew he was, at some level, ultimately responsible for the issue.

He used an ancient Hawaiin technique called Ho'oponopono to cleanse the negative feelings that came up in him as he thought about these people by using the same 4 phrases over and over ("I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you"). As he did so, he was evoking his higher Self, or Divinity, to remove the negative feelings, and replace them with its Self (namely Pure Love). This had the effect of removing the negative programs that were running in these 'criminally insane' people so that gradually they were able to live normal lives again.

This book then is a great coverage of this remarkably simple technique, and the fact that all it boils down to in life is to cleanse, cleanse, cleanse our negative memories, feelings and data so that we can become one with the Divine and inspired by It/Him (as opposed to dictated by decisions formed by our fretful conscious minds). We are a sum total of our memories, and bound by interhuman programs handed down to us over millenia, so to clear and cleanse these means unbounded joy and freedom, and Oneness with the Divine, our ultimate goal in life!

This is a MUST READ by even the most hardened and skeptical of souls!!!! Do yourself a favour: go release yourself!!