I’ve taken a look back at the self-help I’ve read. Excluding business and excluding instructional stuff I’ve consumed a fair amount. It’s about a dozen over the last six + years, which puts me at a solid two per year. It seems like I should be doing a lot more improving and a lot less sliding back into bad habits with that type of volume.
People in my generation were there for the real transformation to the information age. I’m not talking about the creation of the supercomputer, or the launch of the PC, or the invention of the internet. I’m talking about the 1990s, when every person, not just the IT department, suddenly had a user-friendly spreadsheet and database program at their disposal. I mean everybody.
I grabbed this book to discuss with a fellow reader who was reading it at the same time. I read The 50th Law (Greene’s collaboration with 50 Cent) last year and liked it. This is a completely different monster compared to that book. And a beast it is. It’s long and arduous at times.
This may be the first book I’ve read that was written by a so-called mystic. I’m not even sure what a mystic is. I checked out some wiki thoughts on mysticism and without twisting things too much, I think we can assume that a mystic is some sort of spiritual leader who is usually not validated by any of the mainstream religions.
I’m not sure how I heard about this book. It may have been an Amazon suggestion. I do recall reading an article on it in the WSJ or Newsweek, it kind of grabbed me for some reason. The idea that Fifty (Curtis Jackson), if I may call him that, has some keen insights into building a business empire sounds pretty enticing to me. He teams up with a guy named Robert Greene on this book. It’s less a business book than it is a motivational book. And who better to do the motivating than Fifty?
More self-help, and I certainly need it. This book is not like the usual motivational stuff or the run-of-the-mill pop psychology stuff. It’s a detailed treatise on planning and organizing at the lowest level. It’s about processing all of the “stuff” that crosses your desk each day. Yeah, I feel like a dork, but I’ve lost control of my time completely and I need to work my way out of a backlog. I’m just looking for some ideas.
The subtitle is Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, which is not an accurate portrayal of his main point. More on that in a few. He starts by explaining that your right brain handles all those artistic and creative things while your left brain takes care of the analytical and factual side of things. This country was built by strong L-Directed thinkers, he says, who brought us into the Industrial Age and carried us through the Information Age. But now, in this age of “abundance, Asia, and automation,” (the Conceptual Age as he calls it) being L-Directed may put one at a disadvantage to those with R-Directed abilities.
I’ve been on quite a self-help binge lately; what with my whole mastery push for 2009 and now another Gitomer book. I’ve enjoyed this one the most so far because it really ties in with my current thinking. Historically, my way of thinking was that this whole positive attitude stuff was a bunch of bull. In fact, I’ve spent a lifetime counting my failures, lamenting them, and tossing in plenty of self-deprecating humor. This potentially bad attitude certainly hasn’t destroyed my life. And I feel that I’m a relatively well-adjusted adult without the need for an attitude adjustment, but this book was next in the stack of Gitomer books so I cracked it open.
This is a little book that packs a big motivational and inspirational wallop. Leonard is an ex-military guy and writer for Esquire who took up aikido late in life (age 47). He uses his exploration of aikido as the basis for this book, but his thoughts and theories can be applied to any pursuit. I got a lot of out it.
Yes, this is basically a self-help book. But it’s a business self-help book. Business because it focuses mostly on stuff you can do to grow your business and increase your sales. Self-help because it focuses on developing personal skills that will help you in sales rather than the strategy and tactics of closing the deal.