Title : Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More
Author : Joe Vitale
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : A total mind shift! Total accountability! Freedom
Dr Joe Vitale intriguingly documents his own journey of mental and emotional transformation and how he came to understand the Hawaian method of attracting health, wealth and happiness. As you read he masterfully takes you through his memories as if you were there experiencing each it with him. You find yourself asking the same questions, having the same feelings and having the same revelations that he had as your perspective is dramatically changed. An insightful read that is well worth every moment! I couldn't put it down.
Title : Rules of the Red Rubber Ball
Author : Kevin Caroll
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Have you found your Red Rubber Ball yet??
Deceptively simple and easy to read in an hour or so, its meaning and power go very deep. Best read a couple or three times in quick succession to make sure the simple message but powerful ideas sink in properly. Both inspiring and motivating this book may be just the one to kick you in the "proverbial" and get you on track and make something of your life.
It's all about finding your deepest PASSION interest about something you do in life, committing to it then staying the course not listening to the doubters naysayer's (no-hopers) in life that have already given up the ghost are already halfway through digging their own miserable grave.
Clear set simple to understand follow rules in the book help guide you on the right course keep you their. Keep it by your bedside when you need something to inspire you on those occasional gray "down" days when you may be feeling a bit negative.
Worth a hundred or more of those so-called Self Help copycat Positive Mental Attitude books. It's written by someone who's already been there done it! Are YOU stuck in a rut??
Get this book NOW start a NEW life, for you, your family and those closest to you (your "real" friends). This book may be short, but so is life, so get going RIGHT NOW!! buy this book. You'll be back here sooner than you think raving about it.
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 : 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 : 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".
Other Related Resources:
1: http://www.3point7designs.com/blog/2006/08/17/css-gallery-inspiration-or-repetition/
2: http://www.info-online-hq.com/home/home-accessories/what-to-consider-when-buying-a-cell-phone/
3: http://www.mrinternetnews.com/blog/how-inward-motivation-leads-to-outward-results/
4: http://www.mycee.net/blog/2008/08/16/just-follow-your-heart-and-discover-true-will/
5: http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/blog/2009/04/14/the-only-thing-thats-keeping-you-from-getting-what-you-want-is-the-story-you-keep-telling-yourself-anthony-robbins/
