motivational

This website is about motivational thoughts, and also contains resources about motivational sports quotes , motivational music , and motivational songs .

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 : 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 : Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Author : Robert Cialdini
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Priceless

I have been entertaining my friends at dinner parties with this book. Cialdini, who admits to being a bit of a sucker himself, shows all the ways we've been manipulated over the years by small gestures and situations contrived by salesmen.

There are so many good stories. The one about Joe Girard, a car salesman who sends out each month 13,000 cards every month to former customers with a card saying, "I like you". Surely people wouldn't fall for that? Yes they do, he made more than $200,000 a year selling cars. He's in the Guinness Book of Records.

There's the story of how the Chinese got the American prisoners in the Korean War to betray their country by setting them essay questions. There's accounts of the trouble we can get into when we insist on being consistent or make a vague commitment to supporting a cause.

Cialdini exposes loads of sales techniques and has some fascinating insights into what motivates us.

As a self-employed person I'm really grateful for this knowledge. This is a book that everyone should read.

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 : 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 : Lessons in Mastery: 5 Spoken Word Cds, 6 Hours
Author : Anthony Robbins
Rating : 4 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Lessons in Mastery

The concepts included in these audio CD's are similar to those explored in the book 'Awaken the Giant Within' A reasonable buy if you need motivation, or to explore different concepts in gaining overall satisfaction with life, job etc. An additional advantage is that this CD set takes less time to cover than reading the book.