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Books

Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation by Edward L. Deci – Book Review

According to Dr. Ed Deci, there are two types of motivation, autonomous and controlled. One will make you much more productive than the other.

Most of us, however, think of motivation only in terms of quantity: If you reward your children for doing their homework, they will usually respond by getting it done. But is this the most effective method of motivation? No, says psychologist Edward L. Deci, who challenges traditional thinking and shows that this method actually works against performance. The best way to motivate people—at school, at work, or at home—is to support their sense of autonomy. Explaining the reasons why a task is important and then allowing as much personal freedom as possible in carrying out the task will stimulate interest and commitment, and is a much more effective approach than the standard system of reward and punishment.

Dr. Deci, University of Rochester professor and former Science and Health Editor for the New York Times, is an expert on motivation. He believes the type of motivation that pushes you forward makes a huge difference. Autonomous motivation—pursuing a goal for its own sake, or for your own sake—makes you work harder, do a better job, and feel happier than controlled motivation.

Controlled motivation, on the other hand, will probably keep you productive but anxious, and can backfire so badly that you end up doing less work, doing it badly, or even rebelling. What is controlled motivation? Well, pretty much anything involving rewards and punishments. Which, unfortunately, are most people’s go-to tactics for motivating others. Dr. Deci believes you need to change your strategy if you want to optimize your results.

People have a need for autonomy, and resent being controlled. Supporting autonomy (autonomy support) is the opposite of control.

Control can take the form of rewards as well as punishments.

Rewards can still be employed, but simply as an acknowledgement of accomplishment, rather than to control behavior.

Similarly, competition can be employed as long as you don’t pressure people to win. Simply encourage them to do their best and try to finish first.

The real function of competition is to provide a challenge and in the process to have fun.

Autonomy support means taking the other person’s perspective and working from their. Actively encouraging self-initiation, experimentation, and responsibility through encouragement, not pressure.

Autonomy support does not mean permissiveness. You can still set limits, but those limits should be based on reason, not fiat. For example, rather than telling children, “Keep everything neat,” you can instead say, “I know that sometimes it’s really fun to just slop the paint around, but please try to keep the materials and room nice for the other children who will use them.”

Intrinsic motivation is its own reward (see: Flow). But it also leads to better performance and results.

Intrinsic motivation is associated with richer experience, better conceptual understanding, greater creativity, and improved problem solving (all demonstrated by controlled studies).

Extrinsic motivations can mask symptoms, but not the cause. Giving kids pizzas for reading doesn’t make them want to read; it makes them willing to read to get pizza. A better approach is to find ways to help them actually enjoy reading.

Motivation requires that people see a relationship between their behavior and the desired outcome. That’s why capitalism works better than communistic central planning.

There must be clarity about what behaviors are expected, and what outcomes will result from those instrumental behaviors.

People must also feel competent at the behaviors to be motivated. The desire for competence is another fundamental human need, just like the need for autonomy.

Competence without autonomy is not enough–being a competent puppet does not nourish humanness.

The feeling of competence results when a person takes on, and in his or her own view, meets optimal challenges (not too easy, not impossible).

Praising males increases their intrinsic motivation, but praising females decreases it.

Providing negative feedback: Start from the other person’s perspective. Ask them what they think.

The key to living autonomously is whether or not you feel, deep within yourself, that your actions are your own choice. Whether you comply with or defy controls, you are not being autonomous because your behavior depends on the controls.

Neither compliance nor defiance represents authenticity, and neither represents responsibility. To defy what authority says, just because authority says it, is to be irresponsible. But to comply with what authority says, just because authority says it, is also irresponsible.

We all need to internalize certain values–otherwise we would be psychopaths. There are many times when we have to do uninteresting or unpleasant things. But there are two different forms of internalization: Introjection, which simply replaces external control with an internal nagging voice, and Integration, which involves digesting the input and deciding what part of that input should be a part of the self.

If the benefits to supporting autonomous motivation are even half of what Dr. Deci’s experiments suggest, it’s well worth giving his techniques a try. Begin with yourself. What do you really want to accomplish? Why? And most importantly, how does the task at hand move those internal goals forward?

 

Books

Awaken the Giant Within : How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny by Tony Robbins – Book Review

Anthony Robbins, the nation’s leader in the science of peak performance, shows you his most effective strategies and techniques for mastering your emotions, your body, your relationships, your finances, and your life. The acknowledged expert in the psychology of change, Anthony Robbins provides a step-by-step program teaching the fundamental lessons of self-mastery that will enable you to discover your true purpose, take control of your life and harness the forces that shape your destiny

Robbins acts as our coach, intending to teach us what is valuable in life, the beliefs that we need to cherish, and the emotions that are empowering. These will ultimately lead us to success.

Awaken the Giant Within contains many key concepts, such as the Master System; destiny; transformational vocabulary and metaphors; belief system; and emotions. As long as you make use of the right emotions in your daily life, you are on the path of accomplishing your dreams.

The author includes a step-by-step plan that will help you identify which emotions are empowering. According to Tony Robbins, everything that we do is related to our state of mind, the way we feel, and our emotions. Everything we do should be directed towards our enjoyment, to our well-being. It’s only natural, don’t you think so?

In the first chapter, “Dreams of Destiny”, Robbins reminds us that we all had a dream at one point in our lives. But due to a number of reasons, we seem to have forgotten all about it.

In order to accomplish our dreams, we need to change. This concept of change is essential to anyone who wants to improve the quality of their life. But what do we have to do?

Take a look at these steps provided by Tony Robbins in Awaken the Giant Within:

  1. Raise your standards.

It Starts with a Decision. Every decision – or lack of it – has consequences. If you don’t decide how you’ll live 10 years from now, you’d have, by default, decided to let circumstances dictate your life. Every successful person (e.g. Mahatma Ghandi, John F Kennedy) had, at some point in their lives, made a major decision.

Pain and Pleasure: The Forces that Drive Us. Everything we do is to avoid pain, or to gain pleasure.  Even if we logically believe that something is good for us in the long term, we may not take action if we believe it’ll bring us short-term pain. Still, all of us have a pain threshold, where the level of pain is so high that we vow never to face it again. The key is to learn to use pain and pleasure to drive our decisions and actions, rather than be controlled by them. We’ll address this in Part 2.

  1. Change your limiting belief.

In the book, Robbins explains the concept of belief systems and limiting beliefs, in great detail. In a nutshell, a belief is basically a “feeling of certainty about something”. A mere idea starts to develop “legs” when we find references or experiences that support it.  The strength of the belief depends on (a) the level of emotional intensity and (b) the number of references.

When we do something, our brains create a neural-connection to the associated feeling or behaviour. The more we do it, the more we reinforce the connection. Eventually, it forms a “neural super-highway”, and we do / avoid the behaviour, even when the sensation stops. Conversely, if we stop a response long enough, the pathway weakens

  1. Change your strategy.

Everything we’ve ever wanted in life (e.g. goals about money, family, career) is to allow us to feel what we want to feel (e.g. loved, respected, happy etc.). Our feelings are our internal compass, to tell us if we are on-course. In the book, Robbins covers 3 important strategies to master your emotions.

  • The Power of State.

Our emotional states are our internal (typically unconscious) reaction to what’s happening around us. You can change your emotional states in 2 ways: by Changing your Physiology (how you use your body), and Changing your Focus (including what you focus on, and how you focus).

  • The Power of Questions.

Successful people ask better quality questions that empower and lead them to good answers. Questions can instantly shift your focus and feelings, help us to prioritize, and uncover resources and solutions. For example, instead of asking “why am I so upset?”, ask “how can I find joy at the moment?”.

  • The Power of Vocabulary and Metaphors.

Language is a crucial part of culture, and it shapes how we perceive, think, feel, and act. Just by changing the words and labels you put on your emotions, you can change how you feel. Robbin terms this “Transformational Vocabulary”. Words affect how we interpret events around us, and generate an immediate biochemical effect. Metaphors are also very powerful because they bring up strong emotions, imagery and associated frames/ rules. In the book, Robbins covers numerous examples and details of words you can reduce the emotional intensity of negative feelings, heighten positive sensations, or soften your approach, as well as how changes in metaphors change perceptions and frames/ rules.

Robbins reinforces the ideas using various perspectives, details and analogies, all of which are important to create the “aha” moment, and to inspire us to action. To get the most from the book, you’ll need to examine the details, and take consistent action.

 

Books

The Power of Positive Thinking by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale – Book Review

The precursor to The Secret, The Power of Positive Thinking has helped millions of men and women to achieve fulfillment in their lives. In this phenomenal bestseller, Dr. Peale demonstrates the power of faith in action. With the practical techniques outlined in this book, you can energize your life — and give yourself the initiative needed to carry out your ambitions and hopes.

For Peale, there was no greater source of personal power or guidance than the Bible. Biblical quotes are the mainstay of the book and perhaps because it is based on this timeless wisdom, it has amazing power. When statements such as the following are highlighted for us, it is difficult to argue with Peale’s conviction: ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ (Romans 8:31) ‘If thou can believe, all things are possible.’ (Mark 9:23)

Peale said we do not have to depend on ourselves as there are incredible sources of power open to us if we only believe in their existence. We make life hard, but an appreciation of the universe’s ability to make good and provide would lead us to see life as flowing and abundant. To gain personal power and peace, we have to be willing to go beyond the personal to something greater than ourselves.

The book features cases and stories, filled with the struggle of humanity, to show defeat is not permanent. Some of the chapters are described below.

The knowledge that what one is doing is supported outside oneself and is serving a divine end, through attunement with the infinite, provides a constantly renewable source of energy. Working only for oneself leads to burnout. Prayer is a space to say whatever is on your mind, in whatever language you choose. Instead of asking for things, give thanks in advance for what you desire and visualise the good outcome. The Peale formula is: ‘Prayerise, picturise, actualise.’

We tend to expect the worst, but an expectation of the best has a way of organising forces in our favour. The subconscious, which regulates many of our actions, merely reflects our beliefs. Alter the belief about an outcome and our actions will seem to be shaped to achieve it. Peale’s phrase is: ‘Doubt closes the power flow, faith opens it.’

Use only positive and hopeful language for a 24-hour period. Then go back to being realistic the next day. Repeat this over a week and you find what you considered realistic a week ago now seems pessimistic. This new understanding of what is realistic moves up to a higher, permanently positive level.

Here are 3 lessons to help you think more positively:

Lesson 1: Believe in yourself and visualize your goals to see how small your problems are.

Yes, confidence is important, because if you feel inferior, you’ll act inferior. We know confidence alone doesn’t solve all problems. After all, it’s not the same as competence, and telling a kid who’s horrible at math that she’s great won’t make her study more for the next test.

However, the case for believing in yourself, that Peale makes, is one we’ve all experienced: the self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a common idea from self-help books, too, Napoleon Hill already addressed it 80 years ago.

It is up to you to actively change your thoughts and believe that you can bring value wherever you go. Peale suggests an exercise to help you do that, which happens to be backed by science.

Visualize your goals and the positive outcomes you want. What should your life look like in 6 months? Which goals do you want to achieve? Then, contrast those by visualizing the problems and obstacles that you might face along the way.

This is called mental contrasting and has been proven to cause changes in behavior that last for weeks with as little as a few minutes worth of the exercise.

Lesson 2: Your attitude determines your entire life.

Your world, your reality, is only determined by what you think about everything you experience in life.

For example, if you leave your house tomorrow morning, and are almost hit by a car, which breaks at the last second, you can treat this as a bad sign and spend the rest of the day walking around afraid of anything and everything. Alternatively, you can take this experience as a wonderful gift, a miracle even, and live your life to the fullest, enjoying every single second of the day and being grateful.

Don’t choose negative thoughts, when you can choose positive ones. Ever.

Lesson 3: Imagine your life free of worry to become less concerned about the future.

Here’s a super meta hack for worrying less: Imagine yourself as a worry-free person in the future. Just imagining that it is possible for you to live without worry will take a lot of your current worries away.

Worry is a major source of stress, and thus often leads to heart disease, arthritis and other sicknesses which cause your life expectancy to go down. So it is in your best interest to eliminate it, wherever possible.

Close your eyes, look into the future, and imagine yourself a few months or years from now, living free from all the worries that currently plague you, and you’ll feel much better when you open your eyes again.

Peale calls this draining your mind and it’s especially helpful before going to sleep, because then positive thoughts will sink into your subconscious, instead of negative ones.

The book’s principles are easily moved from its original time and place and applied to life. It is refreshing because there are no gimmicky techniques. Expect to find only a bag of well-worn tools for chiselling away cynicism and hopelessness.

Although the book contains things like a ‘prayer for salesmen’, it is something more than a hotchpotch of Christian and capitalist morals. Consistent with most of the self-help classics, it says the highest morality is fulfilment of potential: to give up is to deny yourself all the spiritual and material rewards that are rightfully yours.

 

Books

The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield – Book Review

Get ready to transform yourself for success. Jack Canfield, cocreator of the phenomenal bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, turns to the principles he’s studied, taught, and lived for more than 30 years in this practical and inspiring guide that will help any aspiring person get from where they are to where they want to be.

The Success Principles™ will teach you how to increase your confidence, tackle daily challenges, live with passion and purpose, and realize all your ambitions. Not merely a collection of good ideas, this book spells out the 64 timeless principles used by successful men and women throughout history. And the fundamentals are the same for all people and all professions — even if you’re currently unemployed. It doesn’t matter if your goals are to be the top salesperson in your company, become a leading architect, score straight A’s in school, lose weight, buy your dream home, or make millions of dollars–the principles and strategies are the same.

The Success Principles gives the reader the tools required to enhance confidence, deal with daily life, overcome difficulties and achieve their ambitions in life. This book is a lot more than a simple collection of positive ideas thrown together, it consists of 64 workable principles that have been used by successful people from all walks of life since the dawn of humanity. The thing that I love is that the basics are the same whether you are at college, an entrepreneur or unemployed at the moment.

Your goal could be to be the top seller in your office, make a million dollars, become a surgeon or get A’s in all of your exams – the strategies that you will follow are the same.

Once you have read about these fundamentals of success, you will progress to transforming the way you think. After that it’s time to build a ‘Success Team’ and get the most out of all of your relationships. Finally, as is the way with achieving what I call ‘Circular Success’ you will learn how to develop a positive psychological blueprint around money and the day-to-day habits that will allow you to create the life that you want for yourself.

The Book contains fabulous stories of Business Leaders, Elite sports people, celebrities and regular members of society. The Success Principles will allow you to take a ‘leap of faith’ and start transforming yourself immediately.

The Main Things that You will learn from this Book are:

  • How to Change any event, by changing how you respond
  • How to change your perception of the past so you are ready for your positive future
  • How to find amazing Role Models
  • How to be ready when ‘opportunity knocks’
  • How to realise that some ‘good’ things may not be for you so you can embrace the ‘great’ things
  • How to be courageous enough to ask for what you want
  • Why you should surround yourself with Positive People

The book’s thesis is simple: Whatever the reason is for you not being wherever you think you should be, you need to take steps, starting right now, towards changing your situation.

Complaining and feeling bad saps your energy, so that needs to go. What do we do instead? Spend a lot of time on goals. Canfield has, literally, 4 or 5 different goal types he wants you to set, write about and visualize: what you want to do before you die, “quantum leap” goals that represent huge shifts in your life, intermediate goals, immediate goals. He wants you to write your goals on the back of a card and keep it in your wallet. He wants you to have a “vision” for several areas of your life – work and career, finances, recreation and free time, health and fitness, relationships, personal goals, and contribution to the larger community. He wants you to write down a room-by-room description of your dream house. And on, and on.

Once your goals are written, Canfield advises the use of affirmations in order to “unlock the power of the subconscious mind.” Twice a day, using a formula he provides, you should use your affirmations to create strong visualizations and emotions within yourself. These emotions will propel you through the day and towards success. After you know what you want, and have powerful emotions to back it up, you should simply start acting as if you already have what you need – an act that will direct what you do and provide motivation.

If you want to spend some time setting goals and visualizing, Canfield’s a charming-enough companion. He does list some pleasant goal-setting exercises, and the book is an easy read.

 

Books

Outwitting the Devil: The Secret to Freedom and Success by Napoleon Hill – Book Review

 

Napoleon Hill wrote this book in 1938, just after publication of his all-time bestseller, Think and Grow Rich. This powerful tale has never been published, considered too controversial by his family and friends.

Using his legendary ability to get to the root of human potential, Napoleon Hill digs deep to identify the greatest obstacles we face in reaching personal goals: fear, procrastination, anger, and jealousy, as tools of the Devil. These hidden methods of control can lead us to ruin, and Hill reveals the seven principles of good that will allow us to triumph over them and succeed.

The book starts out with Napoleon Hill giving an abridged biography detailing his meeting with Andrew Carnegie, his various defeats, and how he overcame them. This abridged biography is to set the stage for his interview with the Devil. The rest of the book is written in a question and answer formate, with Hill as the interviewer and the Devil as the reluctant subject. Through out the book Hill forces the Prince of Darkness to reveal how he holds countless people in bondage to fear, superstition, greed, avarice, lust, revenge, anger, vanity, and laziness. He then forces the Devil to reveal the seven principles that can help overcome the before mentioned obstacles. These principles will not be revealed here, because I don’t want to deprive anyone of the pleasure of reading this book for themselves.

Beginning with chapter three and continuing to the end of the book, Napoleon Hill conducted an interview or discussion with the Devil. In this interview, he learned how the devil is able to control so many people. More importantly, he learned what to do to stay out of the devil’s control and lead a successful life.

Napoleon interviews the Devil in full dialog. The Devil says he exists as the “negative part of the atom”. This means he has to exist and is part of the human condition. Regardless of the religious connotations here, one thing is for certain – with success comes failure and failure success. Understanding that positive and negative exists in every facet of life is empowering once you free your mind from limitation and accept it as part of the ground rules for living. Being conscious of this fact is the first step to master it. In rudimentary terms, you cannot play football with a hockey stick. You have to understand the ground rules.

The Devil reveals that he controls negative thought while GOD controls positive thought. In his own words – “One of my cleverest devices for mind control is fear, the fear of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age and death.” Remember – this book was written in the early 1930’s. Do any of these fears sound familiar? These fears fall right into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which are; physiological, safety, love/belonging, Esteem and Self-actualization. The Devil’s fears hammer right at the foundation of these needs.

The greatest trick of the devil plays is convincing people he does not exit. The clever move here is that school teachers, religious leaders and parents use fear as a tool to educate about the devil. The problem is that this inhibits accurate thinking. The devil uses this to his advantage because fear is what paralyzes people into the habit of drifting. The greatest of all fears implanted into children is the fear of “hell”.

Devil – “Accurate thought is the death of me……” Thus we can combat drifting with accurate thought.

Paraphrasing the Devil, “I cause people to allow me to do their thinking for them because they are too lazy and too indifferent to think for themselves.” “Laziness + Indifference = Procrastination = Drifting”
The good news is that there is a prescription to avoid all of this. In the book, Hill discussed seven principles for gaining freedom from the devil. The principles begin with definiteness of purpose. It is important to know what your intent is and then start controlling your actions to meet this intent. This means having a plan as opposed to walking around aimlessly. Surround yourself with good people who can help you control your environment. As Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Also, everything takes time to develop, you must wait patiently and keep putting the work in.

In the book, Hill discussed seven principles for gaining freedom from the devil. These principles are:
1. Definiteness of purpose
2. Mastery over self
3. Learning from adversity
4. Controlling environmental influence
5. Time
6. Harmony
7. Caution

The point of the book is self reflection and improvement. If you approach this work with that in mind then I believe you are in a position to glean some useful inspiration and information from this intriguing work. This book is a must read and will open your eyes. The key is to control your thoughts and your habits. Be aware of what is happening and stop sleep walking through life. It’s good to celebrate like Homer Simpson every once in a while but make it a habit and life falls apart.

Top 100 books to read if you wanna become rich!

Books

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath – Book Review

 

Why is change so difficult and frightening? How do you create change when you have few resources and no title or authority to back you up? Chip and Dan Heath, the best-selling authors of Made to Stick, are back with a ground-breaking book that addresses one of the greatest challenges of our personal and professional lives — how to change things when change is hard.

This book teaches you have to be on the same page with your emotional and rational side. It teaches you how to react to certain situations that are very simple and easy to do. Now they aren’t saying change is easy, by far it is one of the hardest things in your life depending on what it is that you are fighting to change. There are better ways to make a change than probably what most think. Most likely they are plain and simple but you have to set forth a goal to achieve this change. One can’t say, “Hey I want to lose weight soon” and just automatically it starts to happen. No! One must set realistic goals as “Hey I want to lose 10 pounds in the next 3 months. This is your rider and elephant starting to work together. Your elephant now has motivation and your rider has direction. Switch is arranged around a correlation (immediately visual and sticky). When we are making a decision we’re often torn between our rational, logical reasons and our emotional, intuitive feelings. Tell the Rider what to do, provide a good argument and the Rider will do it. The Elephant, on the other hand, represents our emotions, our gut response. The Rider might like to avoid those chocolate chip cookies but there is very little the Rider can do if the Elephant really wants it. To complete their comparison they include the Path they are travelling along. If the Rider can direct the Elephant down a well prepared Path then there is a good chance for change. The Path might represent, for example, access to user friendly technology or effective office space design. Switch is arranged in three parts: Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant and Shape the Path.

The Ten Things Managers Need to Know from Switch

  1. Our emotions can overwhelm our rational thought, while relying solely on rational behavior can “overanalyze and over think things.”
  2. There are better ways to make a change than probably what most think. Most likely they are plain and simple but you have to set forth a goal to achieve this change. One can’t say, “Hey I want to lose weight soon” and just automatically it start to happen. No! One must set realistic goals.
  3. What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.The book considers change at every level- individual, organizational, and societal. All change efforts usually have something in common: “For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently.” But the question is always that, Can you get people to start behaving in a new way? Dan and Chip mention in this chapter that “In our lives, we embrace lots of big changes- not only babies, but marriages and new homes and new technologies and new job duties.” So that means that it is quite possible for people to change.
  4. What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. The Elephant and Rider are usually on two different pages and trying to persuade the Elephant often exhaust your mind. For example, When you try so hard to stay away from fattening foods because you are on a diet, you mind will get exhausted and won’t want to find the temptation any longer forcing you to finally give in. The Elephant will usually win over the Rider.
  5. The Rider part of our minds has many strengths.“The Rider is a thinker and a planner and can plot a course for a better future. But as we’ve seen, the Rider has a terrible weakness- the tendency to spin his wheels. The Rider loves to contemplate and analyze, and, making matters worse, his analysis is almost always directed at problems rather than at bright spots.
  6. We are all human but sometimes we tend to make the default planbecause that was the first plan given to us and when looking at the facts we look at the negative side, which then leads us to our first decision, which may not always be the best.
  7. Make sure your goals are reachable and specific. If not then you may tend to go in circles when trying to achieve your goal. Taken small steps are best way to achieve any big time change in your life. Too big of a step can end up being too overwhelming and cause you to give up more easily.
  8. “In highly successful change efforts, people find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought.” “In other words, when change works, it’s because leaders are speaking to the Elephant as well as to the Rider.” Change only works if the Elephant and Rider are working together.
  9. The gates of large goals are lined with small accomplishments. Remember to compliment yourself when completing little steps towards your goal, it will help motivate you.
  10. “Any new quest, even one that is ultimately successful, is going to involve failure.You can’t learn to salsa-dance without failing. You can’t learn to be an inventor, or a nurse, or a scientist, without failing. Nor can you learn to transform the way products are developed in your firm, or change minds about urban poverty, or restore loving communication with your spouse, without failing. And the Elephant really, really hates to fail.” So how is it that you keep the Elephant motivated to not give up? “The answer may sound strange: You need to create the expectation of failure- not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route.”

A popular psychology book disguised as a business tome, Switch incorporates aspects of both fields and, according to the authors, is applicable at individual, organizational and societal levels. Switch is more conversational than its popular psychology counterparts and more laidback than a traditional driving business practices book. Despite its mainstream appeal, the book features a substantial scholarly section of notes and bibliographic references. It also details strategies for addressing 12 common obstacles, such as fighting the status quo.

Switch will give new librarians the tools needed to introduce their ideas for moving libraries forward without burdening readers with dense jargon, irrelevant “solutions,” or a sense of longing for a promotion.

Top 100 books to read if you wanna become rich!

Books

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill – Book Review

 

Think and Grow Rich was written in 1937 by Napoleon Hill, promoted as a personal development and self-improvement book. Hill writes that he was inspired by a suggestion from business magnate and later-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. While the book’s title and much of the text concerns increased income, the author insists that the philosophy taught in the book can help people succeed in any line of work, to do and be anything they can imagine. First published during the Great Depression, at the time of Hill’s death in 1970, Think and Grow Rich had sold more than 20 million copies, and by 2015 over 100 million copies had been sold worldwide. It remains the biggest seller of Napoleon Hill’s books. BusinessWeek magazine’s Best-Seller List ranked it the sixth best-selling paperback business book 70 years after it was published.Think and Grow Rich is listed in John C. Maxwell’s A Lifetime “Must Read” Books List.

Hill studied their habits and evolved 16 “laws” to be applied to achieve success. Think and Grow Rich condenses them, providing the reader with 13 principles in the form of a “Philosophy of Achievement”. Mark Hansen has said time has shown that two of the laws/principles are most important: 1) The MasterMind principle/process and 2) “Know very clearly where you want to go.”

The book asserts that desire, faith and persistence can propel one to great heights if one can suppress negative thoughts and focus on long-term goals.

The 13 “steps” listed in the book are:

Step 1: Desire
After the first chapter, I felt some pretty serious trepidation about the remainder of this book, so I read on with some caution, fearing that the first step in this path to success was merely to want something. Not so. Hill basically says that one should use deep desire as a goal. Is there a job you want? An amount of money you want? Define that goal clearly, then set down a specific plan to get there. In a nutshell, this isn’t really different than many of the financial planning topics I talk about on The Simple Dollar.

Step 2: Faith
By faith, Hill isn’t really referring to belief in a higher power, but instead faith that the future holds better things for you – a truly confident outlook. If you take to heart the perspective that the future holds greater things for you – or any other greater belief that you hold – then your future has a greater likelihood of holding these things. Why? They’re consistently on your mind – thus you pay more attention to the factors that will make them happen.

Step 3: Autosuggestion
Although the title of this chapter screams “scam” to me, I was surprised to find that I actually already use most of the ideas within. Basically, the idea is that if you keep repeating your plan for success to yourself, it has a greater chance of actually coming true. Why? Again, embedding a thought deeply within yourself – and repetition does the trick – increases the chance that the thought will come up at the right time when you need it. Think of it as cramming for a college exam – you study a ton hoping that the right answer will come up when you need it.

Step 4: Specialized Knowledge
Guess what? Getting an education is important, whether it’s a formal education at an institute of higher learning or merely an education at the hands of a mentor. I tend to find that finding a mentor is often really useful for figuring out exactly how to succeed in a certain area, even if you do have a strong formal education.

Step 5: Imagination
Another key element is imagination, or the ability to take a vague idea and transform it into something concrete. I think that, for many, this is one of the key stumbling blocks on their path to success. They see the goal, they see where they are at now, but they lack the imagination to construct the path between here and there. How can you do it? Break it down. Just focus on figuring out the next step, and then the step after that and the one after that…

Step 6: Organized Planning
This chapter is a large mishmash of various ideas on how you can effectively “plan” to be successful – in other words, put other pieces into place beyond just thinking about it that will lead to success. First and foremost, one should surround themselves with a team of support – people who have both knowledge of how to go down the path you want to go, but also care about helping you. Second, write a killer resume that will get you the job you need to start building towards success – Hill even recommends internships, though the language to describe it doesn’t really seem to have existed when this book was written. Third, step up to the plate often and regularly and get the job done well. Finally, practice the traits of leadership, of which Hill lists an abundance. This was a very strong chapter, one that did quite a bit to overcome the slight trepidation that I felt about many of the other chapters. I felt this chapter was key to the whole book, a reminder that in the end, your dreams do take hard work (though a good mindset helps a great deal).

Step 7: Decision
When it comes time to make decisions, make them. Don’t defer to others and don’t delay the decision. This is perhaps the biggest part of becoming a leader and a person that people will depend on and follow. It’s fine to gather information, but when the time comes, be decisive: come up with a firm decision and stick with it.

Step 8: Persistence
Persistence means that you know you’re following the right path for you and that you won’t allow a few mis-steps or stumbles along the way keep you from achieving your goal. Many people give up the first time they’re dealt a blow, but sit down sometime and read a biography of a great leader and see how many times they were knocked down – and how viciously it happens. I recently read a great biography of Winston Churchill and I was actually stunned how true this was in his life – he had a lot of missteps and at least one complete collapse (where he basically had to start again from square one) during his political career, but he was persistent about it and eventually wound up as Prime Minister. Don’t let some bumps in the road keep you from following the path, even if they seem like huge stumbling blocks that you are going to have incredible difficulty surpassing.

Step 9: Power of the Master Mind
The title of this chapter set off warning bells, but it actually just refers to being able to pick the minds of others for ideas, and often sharing them in fair exchange. You remember the suggestion for surrounding yourself with people who can support you? This group should include as many smart people that you know, especially ones that you trust well enough to bounce ideas off of. Basically, find the smartest people in your life that you trust, and utilize them to help you think through your plans.

Step 10: The Mystery of Sex Transmutation
This chapter was perhaps the vaguest in the book; it advises tapping into your sex drive in order to drive yourself to further success. The book offers several tips on how to do this, but I generally feel like many of those would lead to frustration for many people rather than success. For me, the love and support of a caring partner is reallly the best spur to success that you can really have, regardless of the details of one’s sex life.

Step 11: The Subconscious Mind
Whenever you think a negative thought about your dreams, immediately and forcefully remind yourself that not only is such a thought a waste of time, it actually just pulls the dream out of your grasp. Instead, make an effort to think in positive ways about your plan, slowly training your mind to not pull up negative thoughts about achieving what you want to achieve.

Step 12: The Brain
Although the terminology is as fuzzy as can be here, the basic idea is that most people send a lot of nonverbal cues about what they’re thinking, and putting extra effort into trying to pick up on those cues can pay enormous dividends. I will say that quite often I have a terrible time with nonverbal cues that others give me – perhaps that’s why I enjoy blogging so much, because I don’t really have to worry too much about nonverbal cues.

Step 13: The Sixth Sense
Again, buried under a lot of New Age-esque terminology is a really simple idea: meditate. Simply sit back, close your eyes, and let thoughts slip away. Once your mind is empty, the chapter gives a number of things to think about, but I often find that some of my best ideas come from the moments when I really do let all of my thoughts completely slip away from me – the good ideas just appear.

“Think and Grow Rich” was a great read and packed full of powerful content, but it is not without its flaws. Hill does a fantastic job of writing in a style that is easy to read and accessible to almost any reader, while still thoroughly examining and explaining the topic at hand. There are frequent examples and anecdotes throughout each chapter that provide qualitative evidence of the importance of each lesson, as well as illustrating how to go about applying that lesson to your life.

Considering the fact that this self-improvement masterpiece is still widely read more than 75 years since its initial publication, you know that the information to be gained from its message is valuable. If you read, study, and apply the 13 lessons to be learned from its pages, you will find it much easier to build success in any part of your life.

Top 100 books to read if you wanna become rich!

 

Books

The Law Of Attraction by Esther Hicks – Book Review

 

This Leading Edge work by Esther and Jerry Hicks, who present the teachings of the Non-Physical consciousness Abraham, explains that the two subjects most chronically affected by the powerful Law of Attraction are financial and physical well-being. This book will shine a spotlight on each of the most significant aspects of your life experience and then guide you to the conscious creative control of every aspect of your life, and also goes right to the heart of what most of you are probably troubled by: money and physical health. Not having enough money or not having good health puts you in the perfect position for creating more of that which you do not have. This book has been written to deliberately align you with the most powerful law in the universe—the Law of Attraction—so that you can make it work specifically for you.

Using the Law of Attraction isn’t difficult – after all, it’s based on a another Law of Nature, which simply says that “like attracts like”.

First of all, for some reason, the Law of Attraction works in a positive dimension. What I mean is that if you try to prevent something happening it won’t work. If you try to avoid something, you won’t manifest the avoidance. If you try to create a negative, you most likely won’t succeed.

It’s like saying “I don’t want to be in debt.” The reason this doesn’t work is because the very act of thinking and visualizing a state of “not being in debt” is focusing on the problem that you want to solve – which is the reality that you don’t have enough money.

Some people say that the less specific your goal, the more likely you are to get it. Others say that you need to precisely set out the details of your objective before the universe will produce what you want.

But it stands to reason that the more specific you are in setting your goal, the narrower the range of opportunities you give to the universe for producing what you want.

For example, if you want more money, you might think it would be appropriate to visualize having a million dollars in your bank account by this time next year.

And some people – in fact lots of people – would agree with you.

Others, interestingly, would say this isn’t the right way to go about it. What you should be visualizing, they would say,  is something more general that produces a sense of abundance for you.

That might, for example, mean starting a business which does a great deal of good in the world, and in the process makes you rich.

It can be hard to cut through different views like this, and get to the truth, although in fact I think there’s a simple explanation which resolves different views and opinions on the right way to go about attracting wealth and abundance.

You see, one of the things we do know about the Law of Attraction is that it absolutely depends on a person’s ability to believe that what they’re trying to manifest will in fact appear in their lives.

I think you can see quite clearly that if you’re trying to manifest a million dollars in your bank account, yet at the same time you fundamentally don’t believe there’s any way this could happen – well, it won’t happen.

If you extend the concept that belief is essential for manifestation, and you state it like this: “The Law of Attraction will only create in your life or bring into your life those things which you believe to be possible” – well, then I think you have an explanation as to why different people have different approaches.

Money, and the Law of Attraction is formatted in five, vibrant essays:
Part I – Processing of Pivoting and Positive Aspects
Part II – Attracting Money and Manifesting Abundance
Part III – Maintaining Your Physical Well-Being
Part IV – Perspectives of Health, Weight, and Mind
Part V – Careers, as Profitable Sources of Pleasure

A lot of people ask if the Law of Attraction isn’t just coincidence or synchronicity.

The answer to that is, “yes and no”.

In the sense that the universe produces coincidences to take you nearer and nearer to your goal or objective then, yes, it can look like coincidence when something you have been desiring to create in your life manifests for you.

On the other hand, it depends what you think of as “coincidence”. If you think a coincidence is pure chance, then co-creation between you and the universe is not a coincidence.

We’ve all had the experience of thinking about a friend and then hearing the phone ring, only to pick it up, and discover that the person on the other end is the person we’ve just been thinking about.

This is a good example of telepathy at work. It’s quite possible to communicate subconsciously, not in words as we would communicate verbally, but in an energetic form which allows us to enter the consciousness or awareness of another person.

Indeed, whether you believe that is possible (or not) is probably quite a good indicator of whether or not you are going to be successful in using the Law of Attraction.

You see, you have to suspend your disbelief and enter what can sometimes seem like a magical world when you begin to manifest your reality.

Top 100 books to read if you wanna become rich!

Books

The Law Of Divine Compensation, on Work, Money and Miracles by Marianne Williamson – Book Review

 

Marianne Williamson is a bestselling author (Return to Love, Healing the Soul of America), a world-renowned teacher, and one of the most important inspirational thinkers of our time. In The Law of Divine Compensation, she reveals the spiritual principles that help us overcome.

Williamson has been a teacher of The Course in Miracles (“a self-study program of psychotherapy based on universal spiritual themes”) for 35 years. She has watched it work wonders in people’s lives as they “change the nature of thinking from fear and limitation to faith and love.”

The author sees a great need for the spiritual themes of The Course in Miracles as she hears about peoples’ fears in these times of economic uncertainty about unemployment, the dangers of investments, the waning of the economy, the debt crisis, house foreclosures, and the widespread anxiety over having enough money to make it through older age.

This book is a great read—easy to get through and filled with both lovely anecdotes about Williamson’s own experiences and practical stories about her clients’ lives. She breaks down the process of evaluating and developing your own abundance in the following steps:

  • Align yourself with love. As you start to understand the Law of Divine Compensation, it is revealed that the universe is set up to work in your favor. As you accept love into your life, you have more access to infinite possibilities from the universe. Williamson writes, “The thinking of the world is simply upside down, with the naturalness of love feeling almost unnatural at times and the unnaturalness of fear feeling natural.” This was a mind blowing moment for me.
  • Embrace your faith of the positive. As we all know, our thoughts are incredibly powerful and shape our reality. Whether you are religious or not, your faith can activate or deactivate the Law of Divine Compensation. If we have faith in love and positivity, we activate our abundance and set in motion activities to support our goals.
  • Transform your negative sense of self. Have the courage to dig deep and consistently acknowledge and reveal the fears and scripts that you may have been buying into. Fears are limiting and deactivate the Law of Divine Compensation, and painful thoughts that we have arise from over-identifying with the material plane. Be aware that negative thoughts can come from 1) a negative sense of self, 2) anger, and 3) guilt.
  • Continue to release anger and see beyond guilt. Anger can be a powerful and helpful emotion, but often our anger is misguided and simply a projection of our own fears and resentments for people and triggers around us. Find the freedom to forgive yourself and others—by forgiving, we do not grant victory to those who wronged us; instead, we surrender the aspect of mind that is blocking divine correction.
  • Practice shifting your thoughts and actions from fear to love. This is an incredibly important step, and where I really feel the “meat” of the work comes in. You can be aware of your current state and set your intentions until you’re blue in the face. The real action comes when you are triggered and become aware of the fear and then consciously choose to acknowledge, heal, and persist on. Even if it happens in a split second, it’s still incredibly powerful. I’ve been using The Tapping Solution to help process these feelings in the moment. They even have a specific financial webinar to help accelerate the process and activate your abundance.
  • It’s never too late. Any miracle you might have deflected is “held in trust for you until you are ready to receive it.” The universe has an inbuilt insurance policy.
  • Remain positive. Williamson writes that there are four rules for miraculous work creation: Be positive. Send Love. Have fun. Kick ass. This is by far my favorite takeaway from the book, and I’ve been using it as a mantra ever since.

The Law of Divine Compensation applies equally to all situations, but in this book we will focus on its application to money and the lack thereof. In a time of economic uncertainty—when circumstances make it particularly tempting to believe in the scarcity of the material plane over the abundance of the spiritual—our capacity to think differently is the miracle-worker’s edge. Bills stare you in the face. Foreclosure looms. Credit is wrecked. Jobs aren’t available. And with all that comes chaos on many fronts. Who doesn’t need a miracle then?

If you identify only with your body and its reality, rather than with your spirit and its reality, then you’re tempted to think that diminished material assets somehow diminish who you are. But you are not merely a being of the material world; you are a being of unlimited spirit. And in spirit there is no lack. You are not lacking just because your circumstances are.

If your core belief is “I lack” and you carry that belief with you, then you will subconsciously perpetuate or create the circumstances that reflect the belief. But your circumstances are completely malleable: they simply reflect the dictates of your mind. Regardless of what limits exist in your material world, your immutable truth is that you are an unlimited spiritual being. By remembering this, you summon the Law of Divine Compensation. You are a loving idea in the Mind of God. Circumstances should not and need not tempt you to believe otherwise. The universe showers you with love not because of what you have done or not done, but because of who you are. Think of the universe itself as a personal love note from God to you. God is love, and in sharing His love you share His power. By aligning yourself with thoughts of infinite love for yourself and others, you gain dominion over the lower thought forms of the world.

Mistakes and wrong turns need not throw us off. The capacity for correction is built into the universe, just as it is into the workings of a GPS. If you’ve programmed an address into your GPS but then take a different turn than it recommends, the GPS automatically creates a new route. And so does the universe. Perhaps you thought you’d get to where you wanted to be financially through achieving a certain credential, doing a particular job, or making a particular investment. But then something happened: the economy worsened, you made a mistake, or someone else did. The Law of Divine Compensation gives us the assurance that the universe will simply create a new route. What is lacking shall become abundant, and what is wounded shall be healed. From “out of the blue”—or miracle-mindedness—miracles will flow forth naturally. Why? Because perfection is your eternal home, to which the universe is programmed to return you whenever you have deviated, for whatever reason, from the thoughts that get and keep you there. That is how loved you are.

Top 100 books to read if you wanna become rich!

Books

The Science Of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles – Book Review

 

As featured in the bestselling book The Secret, here is the landmark guide to wealth creation republished with the classic essay “How to Get What You Want.” Wallace D. Wattles spent a lifetime considering the laws of success as he found them in the work of the world’s great philosophers. He then turned his life effort into this simple, slender book – a volume that he vowed could replace libraries of philosophy, spirituality, and self-help for the purpose of attaining one definite goal: a life of prosperity.

The first step on the road to wealth is to begin to act in the “Certain Way”. This entails believing categorically that there is a formless substance that truly exists and upon which our thoughts become impressed. Positive thoughts lead to a positive life while negative thoughts lead to a negative life because the formless substance of the universe simply receives whatever is sent to it. Since each person has the ability to control the types of thoughts they allow in their minds, each person has the ability to shape the formless substance to positively impact their future.
What this book gives you is a method for the success that is as certain of results as mathematical equations, if it is followed to the word. Getting rich is all about what you do and not how hard you do it. People can spend all day punching a wall for nothing but you could spend a day of investing in stocks and double your money with a fraction of the effort. Getting rich is not a matter of what environment that you start in, it is a matter of causation. Things come to you when you make them come to you. Born with no capital then go get capital and get rich. In a bad place then get in a good place. Got bad people around you then get rid off them. You are the one who gets the success.
Wallace says that it is a misconception that wealth is limited, he says that nature is inexhaustible. In fact he talks of a ‘formless substance’ which continually produces wealth for the men that desire it and work for it. The formless substance reacts to the needs of men. He claims that collectively the world is rich, individuals are only poor because they do not act in the certain way. It is this certain way of acting that he discusses in his book. So do not accept the common tale that markets are flooded and there is no way for you to make money, just remember the world has endless resources and you just need to find a way of tapping into them.

Every single thing that has come to men is as a result of an initial thought, thoughts always find a way to manifest themselves into reality. Before you attempt to do anything you have to have a clear thought of the end result or what you achieve is not under your control. Get in the mindset of dedication and you will be dedicated, equally get into the mindset that you are a successful person and that is what you will be. Once you have a thought live it, breath it and it will soon be a reality. The power to turn thoughts into success lyes in the ability to control the way that you think. Thinking health in the midst of disease and thinking wealth in the midst of poverty is the key to success. Do not become distracted by other peoples failure or they will become your own. Don’t think according to what surrounds you or you have no control over your fate.

The only way that you are going to be consistently bringing wealth to yourself is if you give more in use value to people than you get in cash value for return. Wallace uses his book as an example, if you follow the advice in his book then you will become rich, you will have turned a something of little value, just some paper and ink, into something worth thousands or millions of pounds in use value. Do not try to exploit customers for your own gain, your aim in life should be to advance their lives more than your own. If you are doing this then you cannot feel bad for becoming wealthy because along the way you have made others wealthy. You should want for others what you want for yourself and wealth will come to both of you.

You need skills to be successful, professional singers are really good at singing but there are plenty of amazing singers that haven’t made it in to major league. There is clearly something that is missing and that thing is, in Wallaces’ opinion, that certain mindset for success, the tools needed to deliver your talents. You can give a person the tools needed to build a chair, but if they don’t know how to use them effectively no chair is getting built. The mindset for success is more important than the tools needed to give it to you. Desire is power waiting to manifest itself. If you want to achieve something enough then you will learn how to do it. You can become successful in any business, you will just need to make the tools necessary along the way.

Top 100 books to read if you wanna become rich!

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The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz – Book Review

The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz – Book Review

Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant – Book Review

Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant – Book Review

The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason – Book Review

The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason – Book Review

The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley – Book Review

The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley – Book Review

Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals by Thomas C. Corley – Book Review

Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals by Thomas C. Corley – Book Review

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