Advantages: About a third of the book is very useful information
Disadvantages: Too much 'padding'. You already need a ton of motivation to get through this.
Oh no. Not another self help book!
This is reasonably good book for those who do things such as make New Year resolutions, go on diets and have great ambitions and dreams, and then the only thing achieved is to: break the resolution, or carry on eating over and above the diet, or put or dreams and ambitions on the back burner.
So what you need is a motivator, to get you on track. Right?
Well motivation usually comes as the result of the actions of a motivator.
Money is a good motivator. Another is a loved one giving you a good pep talk.
But is a book going to be a good motivator?
Well the sub title of this book is:
"How to get what you wan't from life"
So from the start you are going expecting this book to tell you how. The 'promise' is in the title. For most people that should be motivation enough. It is certainly what made me send off for the book at a time when I felt things weren't going my way.
This book puts forward many of ways of understanding ourselves in relation to motivation and looks at ideas such as hope, drive, confidence, self-esteem. It includes much in the way of lists and tests and inbetween there is plenty of reading at 526 pages.
Plenty of reading there may be, but it is page 43 before we get to Chapter One. I mention this because I don't like a book where I have to go through an over-lengthy Acknowledgements, then Author's Foreword, then a long Introduction, before we get to the meat. Fair enough, we do need these elements of a book, but please, not long and over-rambling. To be fair, the intro contains a nice Ten Steps to More Confidence section, but I feel this would have looked better in the body of the book.
When we get to the first chapter: "Why do you do that thing you do?" the tone is set for this book - it is a load of padding out, with some rather interesting and useful lists and quizzes and tests.
Each chapter of the book follows this pattern of lists and quizzes surrounded by too much padding - how an unmotivated person is expected to read this is anyones guess, still I suppose when the publishers and authors hear the magic sound
"Ker-ching"
It shouldn't really matter to them?
But let's try and make some use of this book. As well as the chapter heading "Why do you do that thing you do?", other chapter headings are:
How to have a perfect day
Why will-power doesn't exist
How to bin friends and disregard people
Do you suffer from false hope syndrome?
Goals, goals, goals!
How rewards really reduce motivation
Do you hate your job?
Don't bleed in the water (how to get your boss's job)
Money, money, money
See you at the top
Is time running out? - time to get ahead
How the tough get going when the going gets tough - setbacks and how to bounce back
Take it to the limit
Are you trying too hard?
Does your motivation come from your body or your brain?
If you have no enemies then you aren't striving hard enough
Want to be worshipped?
Conclusion : why it's not just the size of your carrot that matters
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Now it is within these chapter headings that you really can get an idea of what the book does approach, and as much as I have talked about padding in the text, to be fair, if you have the time and motivation to read this book you will glean a wealth of information from the book. Much of it involves reading between the lines, and the bulk of the usefulness comes from the 'ten ways to..' lists and the quizzes. You should get to know yourself and in turn, what makes you tick or otherwise, and yes, you should at least feel motivated.
I did read the book from cover to cover, but you should gain something from this even if you just skim it, read the lists or do the quizzes.
I feel the author and publisher would have saved time and money condensing the book to just the lists and quizzes and hard, succinct supporting information. It is a little academic in tone and it might be easy for some to simply switch off if not used to reading academic texts.
It is an interesting read, as far as 'popular psychology' goes, but in terrms of being a self help book it is just far too long, too heavy and self-defeating, as you do need some motivation to get through this.
Summary: A good popular psychology book. A good self help book, once you have filtered through the padding.
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