motivational

This website is about motivational therapy, and also contains resources about motivational proverbs , motivational prints , and motivational music .

Title : Sticky Wisdom
Author : Dave Allan
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : a great read

Written clearly, without patronising the reader. A book created by masters of innovation. Good techniques and tips as well as really interesting applicable cultural perspectives for an organisation wanting to move it's product development strategy forward.

This book is well worth 8 quid as it will help shape/structure your thinking on being innovative, as well as providing you with a 'toolkit' of language to encourage supportive innovative behaviours in others, who are determined to think too critically about fledgling ideas before they have had a chance to grow into potential winners.

Whatif also was 2004/5 best company to work for in the UK which in itself gives weight to the ideas in this book.

Title : Psycho-cybernetics
Author : Maxwell Maltz
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Full of Techniques to

Psycho-cybernetics is THE definitive self-help book. I read Maxwell Maltz's original book and benefited immensely. I was a little wary about reading an update. But I'm glad I did. The information is clearly presented, easy to read and there are practical suggestions for putting the advice into practice. If you have to overcome any bad habit, from shyness, lack of confidence, procrastination, chronic lateness, nail-biting, or anything else, you can do it with psycho-cybernetics. Although this version of the book was written 15 years after Maxwell Maltz's death, it is all in the first-person, as though Maltz himself had written it. Gives a new meaning to the term "ghost written"! But if you can live with that, it's a very enlightening book.

Title : Think and Grow Rich
Author : Napoleon Hill
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : One of the best self-improvement books ever

I was originally recommended this book by a colleague who I saw reading it. His copy was well-used and creased to bits - he mentioned that he always kept in in his briefcase for any journies etc when he could pick it up. After starting to read myself, I was amazed at the lessons in the book - it really starts you thinking about what you want in life, and more importantly, how you are actually going to make it happen. A lot of the book is also commonsense, but I guess that is why I found it so appealing and easy to read. I also particularly liked the case-studies, and I found the author very easy to read.

One slight downside for me was the ties towards the end of the book to the authors own religious beliefs. While I have an open mind on these things, the way it was put over wasn't really for me, and I lost a bit of interest in these parts.

In summary though, its a book I have gone back to time and time again when I need a bit of inspiration or focus. Its also great for getting your positive thinking together both inside and outside of work.

Title : Unleash the Warrior Within: Develop the Focus, Discipline, Confidence and Courage You Need to Achieve Unlimited Goals
Author : Richard Machowicz
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Unleash the Warrior Within

Excellent! A good read full of tips. Richard Machowitz has an interesting, somewhat different point of view - he tells it as it is.

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 : 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.