motivational

This website is about motivational poetry, and also contains resources about motivational prints , motivational books , and motivational strategies .

Title : The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Author : Stephen R Covey
Rating : 4 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Might change your life #8211; or sit on the shelf

This is a powerful guide to self-improvement. The "habits" are common-sense: be proactive, or "seek first to understand, then to be understood". The writing is clear, presenting each habit in a way which is easy to apply to oneself. If you're looking for a self-help guide to living a more focused, targeted life, you can hardly do better than this.

The downside is that this is a massive, densely-written book. Just reading it, let alone internalising and acting on it, is a major project. Many readers will dip into it; lose interest; and let it gather dust on the shelf.

Summary: excellent self-improvement guide, won't work for everyone.

Title : Unleash the Warrior Within: Develop the Focus, Discipline, Confidence and Courage You Need to Achieve Unlimited Goals
Author : Richard Machowicz
Rating : 4 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Some good ideas here, worth a read

It's not that easy to evaluate and review `self-help' books, as what I find useful is probably not at all useful to someone else. I guess it depends on what your perceived `problem' is, or more positively, what is `your area of desired improvement'.
I liked this book, I found it very helpful. This book deals with fears that are preventing you from becoming the person you wish or be or attaining a target that you are aiming for in your life.
The approach is very aggressive as you would expect from the title and front cover. Machowicz encourages you to `live life aggressively'. Machowicz draws on his experience as a Navy SEAL, and tells us about how he went through some very extreme situations that inevitably lead to fear and how he developed mechanisms to cope with and conquer that fear. It is a macho approach and in some places reads very much like the true to life novel by Andy McNab, `Bravo Two Zero'. However, I don't think that should put readers off, there is some very useful insights here. Take the CARVER matrix for example. This is a target evaluation method of military origin. Machowicz applies it to everyday life. If you enter `Waging Project Management Warfare' into a search engine you will find an article where an attendee of one of Machowicz classes applies the principle to software development!
There is definitely as much value in reading this as in relying solely on the works of desk bound psychologists.
I also liked the fact that it was written relatively recently, 2002. The context is relevant. I have read seminal works that were written nearer the turn of the last century, and although the content of these is beyond reproach they are very dated and increasingly hard to relate to the present and the type of problems encountered in today's world.
Some of the author's quotes come from such diverse works as Dune, by Frank Herbert. He refers to the training of Paul Atreides where he is taught that `fear is the mindkiller'. As a part-time Sci-Fi fan, I am encouraged to read a self-help book that values some of my favourite literature.
Throughout the book Machowicz refers to his self-defence style called Bukido. This comes across as a bit of a blatant sales pitch, but does nonetheless encourage the curious to enter `Bukido' into a search engine to see what it is all about. You might want to do that before you buy the book! Machowicz seems to be aggressively following his own advice, and is also now a TV star I believe hosting `Future Weapons' on the Discovery channel. Maybe that in itself should suggest that there is something of value in this book. However, reading the output of famous people telling us `how to become successful' does not always work. I'm thinking of the book by Noel Edmunds, `Positively Happy'. It is also very hard to determine if you should take the cynical, and possibly accurate viewpoint, that the author is more interested in selling his product, in this case his book and his training courses, than he is in the altruistic intent of making you a better person.
The author's intentions and motivations aside, I picked some ideas from this book that I liked and am actively making use of them. Although I have completed the book I still want to review some of the sections at a later date. So for me there was some useful ideas here and so I give it a four star rating.

Title : The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide
Author : Sean Covey
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : A Book For Teenagers and Adults!

Whilst this book is written for teenagers, it equally applies to adults. It is written in plain english, is easy to understand and full of pictures/stories. Most of all its FUN to read. It is like reading a textbook without evening knowing it!! It covers habits that we all need to develop - whatever age we are -taking responsibility for our lives, defining what you want to do in your life, prioritising, adopt a win-win attitude, listening to people, working togehter and taking care of yourselves. I loved it - would recommend it to teenagers, their parents, trainers or just anyone looking for self development.

Title : Change Your Thoughts Meditations: Do the Tao Now!
Author : Wayne W. Dyer
Rating : 2 Stars out of 5.
Summary : This is an acquired taste

As meditation is a personal thing and everyone is drawn to different methods I thought I'd share a bit more about this cd.
It's basically a two line reading of each essay(81 essays) followed by a very loud "DAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO".
Think "AUM" but substitute DAO.

Personally, it's too loud and in my face. I was hoping for a gentle reading of each verse as I have the book and have really enjoyed it(see my review).

This is just an opinion as I know a lot of people like the "AUM". Duz it come with de AUM? No, it comes with the "DAO".