I enrolled in his offer for a review copy of Personal Development for Smart People, and happily got it (mine was an e-book version – his publishing house got so many requests from overseas they couldn’t ship everyone a hard copy). I’ve sat with it the last two weekends to read, and this is what I got.

The 3 Essential Keys to Personal Growth

Steve boils the whole of personal development down to three essential principles: truth, love and power. Whether you experience personal growth from practicing Zen, NLP or sports, the core reasons why you do come from follwing these three principles.

He further explains that the next three principles that are essential to successful personal growth stem from a combination of the first three. Oneness stems from an awareness of both truth and love, authority is truth plus power and courage is love with power. Practicing the three fundamental principles leads to the seventh core principle: intelligence.

Steve devotes a chapter to explaining each principle, and in each chapter he offers ways to expand your practice of each principle. After explaining the last principle of intelligence in Part 2, Steve explains how to use these principles in Part 2 to achieve growth in your habits, career, money, health, relationships and spirituality.

Personal Growth Principles vs. Techniques

Personal Development for Smart People is different from most personal development books out there in that it focuses on practice and awareness of principles rather than technique. While there are techniques inside to work on practicing these principles, the focus is instead of giving you set things to do, Steve offers a working direction on which you can center your personal growth.

Essentially, you get a bag of tools to diagnose your personal growth. Whether considering a new job, finding a special someone or seeking a new spiritual path, you can always ask yourself if the change will bring you closer to truth, love and power or move you further from it.

It’s like the difference between teaching someone a technique in a martial art, versus getting them to build up their physical strength, endurance and agility. A technique only does what it’s good for, but a strong body is able to learn even more techniques faster and perform them stronger. Steve is essentially giving you the tools to strengthen your personal development muscles in this book.

Steve Pavlina & the Tree of Life

What Steve found to be the basic first principles of personal development – truth, love and power – resonated with me, but there’s a curious twist as to why. As I was reading his book, I felt an odd sense of déjà vu. You see, for some time now, I’ve said a little affirmation before doing my meditations, and that is for me ‘to grow in wisdom, power and love.’

I only vaguely remember where I got this, and I think I most probably picked it up from reading an Aleister Crowley book in my friend, the modern-day magician Eleutherios’ library. I chatted with Eleutherios for a while about Steve’s book and he confirmed for me where I got my sources, but then he revealed that the basic principles of wisdom, power and love go further back than Crowley as the basic tenants of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

I’m not too familiar with the Tree of Life or the Kabbalah, so I won’t go too much into it here. I’m just amused by the striking similarity: either Steve has read the same material or the first principles he discovered had already been discovered hundreds of years back! This wouldn’t be unusual if these principles rang true – principles are that because they’re timeless after all – but Steve might have saved himself some work if he had known

(Eleutherios and I concluded that the difference between wisdom and truth is just semantics. Truth leads to wisdom, and wisdom leads to truth.)

In Conclusion

To be honest, I found Personal Development for Smart People a little slim, only about 150 pages in total (I wonder if the printed version feels slim in the hands). To be sure, the material is deceptively simple: three little principles for you to shoot towards may sound simple but it’s not always easy.

Therein lies Personal Development for Smart People’s strength, it’s a simple but not easy book for personal growth and what’s inside will give you a framework to work with towards your growth.

I like how the seven principles feel complete. Many personal development books seem to stress one principle over the other; you might get a touchy-feeling book that’s all about love but glosses over the fact that if you don’t have the power to act, that love is useless. While another might be all about telling the truth and achieving power, but without love as balancing hand you might find yourself losing social skills quick.

It’s also a good book to pick up if you’re having trouble in one of the areas in your life that Steve mentions in Part 2: your habits, career, money, health, relationships or spirituality. Personally, I think I would find some of these chapters wanting if I hadn’t read Steve’s website where he goes into more detail there.

To that end, Personal Development for Smart People is a good starter kit and his blog is a great complement for his book. If you’re familiar with his work online, the book deepens your understanding of what he says and helps you understand his work with new eyes. But if you don’t feel like spending the money to buy the book right now, you can still use the material on his blog to deepen your personal growth.

Personal Development for Smart People doesn’t pretend to offer easy techniques to solve your problems in three easy steps, but approaches personal growth from a fundamental ground-up approach. With this book, Steve shows you how to think consciously to achieve the most from personal growth.

Order your copy of Personal Development for Smart People from Amazon today.

Ever since 37signals introduced me to Gordon and his show, I’ve enjoyed watching Kitchen Nightmares, not just because it’s entertaining, but because you can learn so much from it. Gordon’s not just a one-trick pony who’s getting famous on being egotistical, loud and overbearing, he’s also a great chef and entrepreneur.

Wanting to learn more about why Gordon does what he does, I bought his autobiography Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen: Temper Tantrums, F Words, and the Pursuit of Perfection. After reading it, my respect for Ramsay increased ten-fold – he’s gone through a lot to get where he is today but most people won’t see that in his TV shows.

If you haven’t gotten a taste of Gordon’s bitter medicine yet, sample the highlights in this video!

“I was Often Afraid and Ashamed, and Always Poor.”

Chef Gordon Ramsay, recipient of 12 Michelin Stars, an Officer of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, owner of some of the best restaurants in the world, this immensely successful man by anyone’s accounts, says on the first page of his autobiography that “…as a boy, I was often afraid and ashamed, and always poor.”

What?

In fact, as I continued reading, I discovered that Gordon had nothing going for him right from the start. His family was poor, he had an abusive father who’d give his poor mom a beating, and his childhood dreams of making it as a professional soccer player was crushed when he smashed his knee cartilage.

Not exactly the expected star to a sterling career.

But that was what got Gordon started on a career in the kitchen.

I latched on to the idea of catering college because my options were limited, to say the least. I didn’t know if the football would work out. I looked at the Navy and at the Police, but I didn’t have enough O levels to join either of them. As for the Marines, my little brother, Ronnie, was joining the Army, and I couldn’t face the idea of competing with him. So I ended up enrolling on a foundation year in catering at a local college, sponsored by the Rotarians. It was an accident, a complete accident. Did I dream of being a Michelin-starred chef? Did I fuck!

“I was Gutted. My Eyes Filled Up.”

But his unrelenting work ethic was already evident. When he went to see the famous Marco Pierre White for a job, he had to give a month’s notice at his previous place while Marco wanted him to start immediately. The solution? He worked from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. at one, then work for Marco till 2 a.m. the following morning and did that for an entire month.

And working in the kitchen was – to me, literally – roasting in Hell’s Kitchen.

Breaks were out of the question mostly…One day, he (Marco) was going out for lunch with Albert Roux. That meant we had to do lunch on our own, something that really excited me. However, he said that he was going to make the sauces for that evening’s dinner when he came back from lunch. I thought to myself: oh, fuck, that means he’s going to do the sauces just as we’re going to slip out of the door for fifteen minutes. So I decided to do the sauces myself. I was so proud of them: the morel sauce, the red wine Hermitage sauce, the Madeira sauce, the fish velouté. About five minutes past twelve, just before he went out, he came to say goodbye. That’s when he saw the sauces.

“What the fuck is going on here?” he said. “Who finished those sauces?” Steve Terry clammed up. Tim Hughes disappeared into his pantry. So I put my hand up.

“Marco, it was me. I finished them. I’m just about to bring them to the boil and cook them out for twenty minutes.”

The next thing you knew, it was like Baghdad. Pans were raining down on us. We hid behind the sorbet machine. He went mad. I mean, fucking mad. Finally, he threw the sauces themselves at us. Not only did that fuck up our fifteen-minute break; it put us in the shit for sauces that night. I was gutted. My eyes filled up. There was nothing bloody wrong with those sauces. He didn’t even taste them.

“It was the Bottom of the Bottom.”

I don’t know how many people could have endured working in that environment. But Gordon did and that was part of how he was forged – but the tough times weren’t going to end just yet.

Gordon stayed with Marco because he wanted to learn from the best. And he never relented in learning, even when he had to take a demotion. After training with Marco and then at Le Gavroche, Gordon went to Paris where his salary – low enough as it was – plunged straight down to the national minimum wage.

It was the bottom of the bottom. Miles worse even than being an apprentice…Everyone was ignoring me. Even the kitchen porters had no respect for me. On my first day, somebody nicked my socks.

No one was interested that I’d come from a three-star restaurant. All they knew was that I was a ‘rosbif’ and, as such, I should learn my place.

Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Recipe

It’s really easy to hate Gordon Ramsay. All you have to do is watch an episode of him at his worse on Hell’s Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares, swearing profusely into people’s faces and throwing food at them for good measure.

But a man like Gordon is complex. You can’t just sum him up in a word (a word like ‘asshole’ for example). He’s gone through loads beyond what I think most of us reading this would bear, and he’s pulled himself right from the ranks of poverty to extreme success. He’s done it all through intensely hard work, as I found out from his book, which is a great read about one person’s triumph over impossible odds.

Reading Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen I’ve gained a profound respect for the man. I may not agree with what he’s doing all the time on TV, but at least now I understand where he’s coming from. He may behave like an absolute tyrant to the people on his show, but there’s no mistaking at all where that fiery passion and the secret to his success comes from: an absolute, no-holds-barred dedication to excellence in his craft.

Buy Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen from Amazon today.

P.S. I’ve changed the video in the post, I think this one is a better introduction to the man than the previous one. There’s still lots of swearing in this one though

Eat, Pray, Love is the story of Elizabeth’s travels through Italy, India and Bali as she struggles out of a recent divorce and turbulent love affair, in search of the three things she has been missing in her life: pleasure, devotion and balance.

Eating through Italy

She first travels to Italy, where she learns Italian and gains twenty-five pounds from pampering herself with the delicious local food. I lived voraciously through her delicious accounts of Italian pasta, cappuccinos, pizzas, and her wanton exploration of the local delights inspired me to try out as many eats as I could while in Japan.

Being a wordie myself, I also enjoyed learning a tad of Italian through her (her translation of a football fan’s rambling curses on page 72 is hilarious), especially her favorite Italian word: attraversiamo (“let’s cross over”). I imagined rolling my tongue around the words as she did and I gained a deeper appreciation of this beautiful language through her.

Praying in India

After four months enjoying a life of leisure, learning and eating, Elizabeth hits the other extreme by traveling to an ashram located “far away from Mumbai, on a dirt road in a rural river valley near a pretty and scrappy little village” in faraway India, where she gets up at 3 in the mornings for meditation and service and ends her days 9 at night.

It’s here, I think, that Elizabeth faces her inner demons for the first time. There’s something about meditation, as I found out doing my own meditation retreat in Thailand , that forces you to look at yourself starkly, not in a metaphorical way, but in a right-smack-in-your-face way as you deal with the negative stuff that comes up.

While I was reading her experience of meditation for the first time, I wanted to jump up in the middle of the shinkansen (Japan’s bullet train) and shout ‘yes! it was like that!” again and again. I can’t speak for others, but her recount of the inner difficulties she went through in meditation was pretty much the same for me.

Loving at Bali

In the last leg of her journey, Elizabeth travels to Bali, where a local medicine man has promised to teach her everything he knows. It’s interesting to see how differently Elizabeth deals with people and situations now that she’s been through the pleasures of Italy and the trials of India. I won’t spoil it for you, but this is a chapter where things manage to round up nicely for her.

Funny, Imperfect and Utterly Human

I’m surprised to see so many negative reviews of her book on Amazon (the average score still turns out a high 4 out of 5 stars). Some accuse her of being utterly self-centered and selfish, but I never thought that while reading her.

Instead, I got a sense of a flawed but honest person, and it’s this honesty in her writing that endears me to her book. She doesn’t gloss over the ugly bits she had to go through nor the mistakes she’s made, but her imperfections makes you root for her more.

The book may sound like a dreary, sombre soul-searching sojourn, but Eat, Pray, Love is actually pretty hilarious. Elizabeth spares no account poking fun at herself and never loses her sense of humor while going through the worse bits.

I loved Eat, Pray, Love, it was a witty, enjoyable and insightful read, and I recommend it highly.

Buy Eat, Pray, Love from Amazon today.

One book I’ve just finished reading is the philosophical fiction book If Minds Had Toes, where long-dead philosophers Socrates and Ludwig Wittgenstein live on and argue philosophy in the World of Ideas.

If Minds Had Toes

Socrates asserts that philosophy is useful to everyone, Wittgenstein disagrees, and they agree to settle it with a bet: an ordinary young person would be brought to the World of Ideas and introduced to philosophy. If, after a time, he agrees that philosophy has benefited his life, Socrates gets to keep his presidency, if he loses, Wittgenstein becomes the next president of the World of Ideas.

Socrates’ beautiful twenty-something secretary Lila chooses 15 year-old Ben – who’s working part-time at fish and chips joint Cod Almighty – as the ordinary person, and she acts as his guide to the World of Ideas’ world of ideas.

Ben is introduced to ideas like Solipsism, differing points of views about the Self, Beauty and Free Will. Along the way he bumps into a sports-car driving Plato, a crabby Kant, the scruffy Socrates and the stuffy Wittgenstein. Philosophical ideas are explained through ordinary characters who argue back and forth in front of Ben and Lila, who jump in with the occasional question and opinion.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when Lila brings Ben to a happiness forum, where philosophers from the Buddha to John Stuart Mill each have a minute to present their opinion about happiness.

‘A great philosopher, if there’s such a thing, once said that happiness is the fulfillment of human potential through the faculty of reason. He claimed that well-being consists primarily in intellectual activity. Bullshit! Wisdom, knowledge and learning have often been cited as the key to a fulfilling life. But only because philosophers write the definitions.’ The crowd slowly began to stamp their feet. ‘Just be happy: stop talking about it. Find happiness in beauty, in nature, in other people. Not learning, but living, is the key.’ He spoke louder. ‘Anything worth living for must also be worth dying for. And no one dies for their pet theory of causation.’

The crowd began to chant: ‘Po-et! Po-et! Po-et!’

‘What’s that all about?’ Ben asked Lila.

Now people were storming the stage and throwing bread rolls.

‘That’s John Donne, the poet. Poets and philosophers tend to row. They each think that the other one is wasting his time with empty words.’

Funny stuff

Most of the ideas are explained in an easy to understand way, although I had to re-read a few paragraphs to wrap the ideas around my head. Author Lucy Eyre doesn’t give definite points of view, but allows her philosophical characters to present their points and counter-points, leaving it to the reader to figure it out for themselves in the end.

If Minds Had Toes & Sophie’s World

If Minds Had Toes is a lot like Sophie’s World, both fictional books that discuss philosophy using a fictional narrative, but Minds is a slimmer, easier book at 288 pages in comparison to Sophie’s World’s 544 pages. Sophie’s World is a more complete history of philosophy, and is more serious in tone when compared to Minds, which presents less ideas and is more whimsical. Sophie’s World has a stronger plot, while Minds’ plot is pretty flat.

At the end of the novel, I’m not convinced that Ben’s life has come to benefit from philosophy, but all in all If Minds Had Toes wraps up sweetly. It’s a fun read, not too heavy and reads like a young fiction novel. I particularly loved the cover and the cute, sketchy illustrations scattered throughout the book.

If you’re looking for something more comprehensive, look at the delightful Sophie’s World, but for something light, If Minds Had Toes makes for a breezy read.

Buy If Minds Had Toes from Amazon today.

Do You Need to Have Read GTD?

The obvious question is if you need to have read Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free Productivity to appreciate this book. It certainly helps, as Allen refers to his GTD concepts from time to time to make a point, but it’s not necessary. You can apply a lot of what he writes in this book even if you haven’t read or aren’t familiar with the GTD method.

Perspective is the Most Valuable Commodity on the Planet

The 52 productivity principles are organized into 5 parts; Clear Your Head for Creativity, Focus Productively, Create Structures that Work, Relax and Get in Motion & Remind Yourself of the Fundamentals.

Each principle is introduced in a bite-sized essay about 2-3 pages long, and include insights like the headline above. It’s refreshing to read a book that’s not repeating the same lightweight generalizations about achievement over and over again.

Instead, what you’ll find in Ready for Anything are thoughtful reflections on maximizing productivity – defined by Allen as ‘making something happen with as little effort as possible.’ Let me share some excerpts from my favorite principles.

Cleaning Up Creates New Directions

Completion of open loops, whether they be major projects or boxes of old stuff we’ve yet to purge and organize, prepares the ground for cleaner, clearer, and more complete energy for whatever shows up. We’re often not sure what’s next or what to tackle.

At that point, just clean or complete something – something obvious and in front of you, right away. Soon you’ll have the energy and clarity to know what’s next, and you’ll have cleared the decks for more effective responsiveness on every front. Process your in-basket, purge your emails, or clean your center desk drawer. You’ve got to do it sometime anyway.

You Won’t See How to Do It Until You See Yourself Doing It

Your brain’s pattern-recognition mechanism is triggered by the images you identify with and the focus you hold. You see the outcome first, and then you are unconsciously made conscious of information. Whether it’s how to catch a ball, create a company, or care for your parents, the vision comes first.

If you won’t see yourself having or doing something until you see how to do it, you’ll never recognize the methods, though they are all around you. Notice what you notice and how you make that happen.

Small Things, Done Consistently, Create Major Impact

Real change occurs not with a flash in the pan but with steady engagement at some new level of interaction. An automatic investment of a small percentage of your income, attending an exercise class every week, consistently sharing about your realities with your staff or family, sitting down to a regular contemplative or meditative reflection every evening – these are the keys to significant progress.

Who Should Buy This Book?

Allen is a personal productivity coach, and the amount of experience and thought he’s put into the subject of productivity shows in Ready for Anything.

Because the book is divided into 52 mini-chapters, each 2-3 pages long, it’s easy to read – you can flip to any page and digest that chapter, once you finish that you can pick the book up again where you left off or anywhere else.

I’ve enjoyed and learned from this book tremendously, I still pick up and go through from time to time. I love it when a book gives you an ‘aha’ moment – or what Allen called ‘a blinding flash of the obvious’ in his book – and Ready for Anything is full of ‘aha’ moments.

I recommend it highly for anyone who wants a productivity book that’s not centered on abstract principles, but is focused on real, applicable steps. Get it now at your local bookstores or buy it now from Amazon.

I bought this book a while back from the local Borders, but I passed it to my friend immediately after. A week or so ago he returned it to me, raving about how he re-read it right after he finished it, how inspiring it was and how it’d make me feel like a right lazy git.

I finished it last week, and well, it did all three to me.

We all know Michael Jordan, and before I read Driven from Within I thought I knew Michael Jordan; the shoes, the success and that one game I caught when he scored this magnificent goal, right at the last second. It was an amazing shot – he leaped and soared through the air, through everyone who was trying to stop him – it felt like he was staying longer in the air than any human being had a right to – and he slamdunked that beauty of a shot and won the game.

But reading this book I realized I didn’t really know him at all. Driven from Within shows you Michael Jordan could do what he did and become who he became. It chronicles his journey from high school to his triumph in the NBA, his career switch to baseball, his return to the NBA and subsequent retirement.

Michael provides some of the commentary while his mom, business associates and friends pen down thoughts of their own. Reading their thoughts I saw a man who was deeply committed to hard work, his values and excellence, with no excuses allowed.

This paraphrased excerpt written by George Koehler is a good example:

To this day, I don’t think anyone appreciates how seriously ill Michael was in Game 5 of the 1997 Finals against Utah…Michael wakes up with an upset stomach…Nothing works. He felt like throwing up, but he couldn’t throw up. And he’s getting hot and cold flashes…

We get on the bus to go to the game at 3PM and he’s just a rag doll. He has no energy. He still hadn’t thrown up. And he still hasn’t slept. Now he’s got antacids, sleeping pills and laxatives in his system…

At 5 o’clock, an hour before the game, he can’t stay awake. So he pumps himself full of coffee. He goes out and plays, and we all know what happened. He plays 44 minutes, scores 38 points, brings Chicago back from 16 points down, hits a three-pointer to put them ahead, and the Bulls win…

He hasn’t slept in more than 36 hours, he’s got pepperoni pizza, all the medicines, sleeping pills, who knows how many cups of coffee, Gatorload in his body – anyone else would have been in the hospital…

Michael was so dehydrated after the game that he could hardly move. He looked like he was dead. He was barely conscious. I had seen the whole show to that point, and I am still amazed by what he did with what he had to deal with. That’s just who he is, and it’s hard for people to understand the depth of his will.

It’s damn inspirational to read how hard this man worked, and I saw a lot of parallels between him and Bruce Lee; their absolute dedication to excellence, leading the way by having higher expectations of themselves than anyone else had a right to expect, and their commitment to do what they felt was right.

Buy Driven from Within from this Amazon link today, and help keep Life Coaches Blog running, with 20% of our profits pledged to charity.