Reviews Preview

I have so many books lying around, some have been read, others are still unread…. So I just wanted to give you a little indication of what’s to come. If you are particularly interested in a review, leave a comment and I will prioritise it for you!

Of course I am also open to suggestions, so if you think something essential is missing or if you have recently read a book that I might be interested in, let me know and I will get my hands on it!

Seminars:

• Unleash the Power Within (UPW) with Anthony Robbins
• Wealth Flight Experience with Roger Hamilton

Audio Sets:

• The Power to Shape your Destiny (Anthony Robbins)

Books:

Health and Fitness:

• Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto
• The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason

Personal Development:

• The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
• The Riches Within by John Demartini

Wealth:

• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• Your Life Your Legacy by Roger Hamilton
• Wink and Grow Rich by Roger Hamilton
• Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas
• Turning Passions into Profits by Chris Howard
• How much is enough? By Arun Abey and Andrew Ford

Breakthrough to Success with Chris Howard (Seminar)

Another weekend seminar with the title Breakthrough… Where is the individuality these days? It seems the marketability of the name counts more!

I am not one to judge the book by it’s cover, or the seminar by it’s name, so I turn up. Although it’s already Friday and the seminar is already in full throw, none of the ladies helping with the registration seem surprised. Later I find out that only half of those who registered actually turned up over the three days, which is explained by the fact that most attendants got their tickets for free (me included).

As I’m entering the seminar at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, everyone is filling in the page “Where am I most stuck in my life and why?” This seems to be the basic theme for the first day, with the following days exploring everything from negative emotions, to limiting decisions, to goal setting and strategic visioning.

Chris Howard claims strategies like affirmations and visionboarding are old-fashioned and only engage a small part of our conscience and subconscious. His explanations make sense, and instead Chris banks on more modern concepts, mainly neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). NLP techniques and qualifications are quite common among professionals like coaches, trainers and presenters all over the world. NLP aims to engage all senses, including feeling, smelling, hearing and seeing and thus is better positioned to effect long-term change in person. The concept is based on the assumption that the brain makes connections and associations which form habits that continue to affect our lives.

As a general (or should I say personal) example, we may associate chocolate with pleasure and relaxation. If we can rewire our brain to see the empty calories, the fat and sugar or even the exploitation of cocoa growers instead, we may be able to kick the choccy addiction for good. We wouldn’t want to chocolate anymore because of our negative associations.

Back at the seminar, we are busily writing down `where-we-are`s and `where-we-want-to-be`s in relation to health, family and career and analysing our values.

After a quick dinner break, in which the food court is so swamped it is nearly impossible to find a salad (did we just review our health?), we return to find the Australian version of Chris, Peter Shaw (Lead Trainer and Master Coach in Australia), on stage presenting for the rest of the night. This swap continues throughout the seminar and Chris is noticeably absent in the early mornings and late evenings….
Many people are unimpressed with Peter at first, but I warm to him throughout the weekend and by the end I am even looking forward to hearing him.

The main content of the seminar is similar to most personal development content: How can I perform at my best as often as possible, or even all of the time? How can I create wealth? How can I build better relationships?
The techniques used are slightly different. Chris has been heavily influenced by Hypnosis and similar techniques that engage the subconscious. At times I feel like I have landed in Little Britain a la ‘Look into my, look into my eyes. Don’t look around the eyes, look into my eyes!’

But it’s not nearly as scary as it sounds: Chris addresses everybody as a group and people can be as involved or detached as they like. But, as Chris constantly reminds us, only if we ‘play full out’ will we get the best from the seminar.

One technique in particular resonates with me: getting rid of limiting decisions.
Limiting decisions are decisions, or life circumstances that prevent us from moving forward. Mostly, we are unaware of these decisions and in some instances they indeed seem like the true life circumstances to us. Basic examples which were volunteered by seminar participants were themes like “I’m poor”, “I’m not deserving of wealth” or “I’m not good enough”. We discuss with a partner what that particular decision has cost us in our life so far and why we are absolutely committed to releasing and changing it.

The release process that follows guides us back in time to the moment we made the respective decision and we eliminate it. We envision colours, sounds, and smells, as we eliminate the decision from our life as if it never happened. Then we move back into the present noticing all the opportunities that we missed and the many that are to come. We conclude with a new empowering decision.

This process is repeated after later on and while the first process absolutely changed my way of thinking about a particular issue, the second one looses me along the way. It may have been the mood, the particular issue I was contemplating or the time of day.

In any case, I can see and feel the powerful results that can happen if you ‘play full out’. I feel happy and relieved; tears are streaming down my face uncontrollably while I am laughing out loud. The feeling is fantastic and I am bubbling with new ideas.

In the rest of the seminar we use similar imaginary journeys to set goals (by venturing into the future and dropping a certain image in the future time stream) and to rid ourselves of negative emotions.

Since Friday night, we keep hearing, from both Chris and Peter, that the best is yet to come. By Sunday (also dubbed Transformation Day) I am beginning to wonder whether there was any point in turning up to the previous sessions at all if we are still waiting for the best.
As the day goes on this reference leads to Chris’s sales pitch of his continued programs (for the special price of X for seminar participants only). This is pretty annoying for participants who don’t intend to sign up for additional courses particularly since we have had to endure continuous pitching of other courses and programs since we started the seminar.

Although I find the end of the seminar to be a let-down, it was well worth investing the time to come here. Particularly memorable are my personal little breakthrough, the new techniques and information and some interesting new people.

As for my choccy addiction, I still enjoy a good piece every now and then. And if all the hypnosis techniques should fail, I just brush my teeth. That does the trick every time…

Flow: The classic work on how to achieve happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Book)

Wow, Flow: The Classic Work on how to Achieve Happiness has been catapulted to the number 1 spot on my Favourite Books list! That said, it took me about three and a half months to finish the whole thing. It’s not an easy read, but if you stick to it and if you’re willing to use your brain and imagination, it is worth every little bit of effort you put in.

To give you some background, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a professor and former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. For the past twenty years he has been involved in research relating to the concept of Flow and decided that his findings should be accessible to people outside academia as well. So he started writing and publishing outside of academia, for laymen (and laywomen).

Let me explain the concept of Flow that is at the basis of Csikszentmihalyi’s work: Flow experience is the total involvement with life, an experience that strikes the right balance of challenge and skills, that makes us learn and grow within ourselves. This can be any experience or activity: reading, playing chess, rock climbing, weaving, dancing, or any other experience that involves you entirely.

Csikszentmihalyi notes that his book aims to present the general principles that generate flow in people’s lives rather than insider tips on how to achieve happiness. It draws on many studies conducted by Csikszentmihalyi and his colleagues and uses concrete examples of how other people have transformed boring and meaningless lives into lives full of enjoyment.

According to Csikszentmihalyi, there are two main strategies that can be adopted to improve the quality of life: to make external conditions match our goals or to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our experience better. A combination of the two would be an ideal path to improve life experience.

Although occasionally flow experience may occur by chance, it is much more likely to occur from a structured activity, or from an individual’s ability to make flow occur.

The following elements would need to be existent to create flow conditions:

• challenging activity that requires skills
• merging of action and awareness
• clear goals and feedback
• concentration on the task at hand
• a sense of control
• loss of self-consciousness
• transformation of time.

If all of these conditions are met, the subject is much more likely to have a flow experience. Some activities are designed to be enjoyable and are thus much more likely to produce a flow experience, these include games, dancing, reading and so on. On the other hand an individual’s ability to create a flow experience for themselves is based on their ability to control psychic energy and direct their experience of outside events. For example, if an individual is focused on the activity itself, rather than the outcome, a flow experience is much more likely to occur.

Throughout the book, Flow is described in various circumstances:

• Physical activity, or the body in flow
• Mental activity or the flow of thought
• Vocational activity or work as flow
• Social activity , or flow in solitude or in company
• Tragedies transformed by flow.

In the chapter that studies flow and vocational activity, Csikszentmihalyi makes a very interesting observation: most people have most of their flow experiences while they are working or on the job and least likely to experience flow during their leisure time. Yet people wish to spend less time at work and more time doing leisure activities. This raises several important questions about our society and people today: Are we so impressed by societal values and opinions, that we think we have to hate our jobs? That we think it would be preferable to do nothing all day and never grow our skill set or our mental capacity? And what would our society, or even humanity in general look like, if all of us remained in a state of complacency?

Csikszentmihalyi asks similar questions in the last, and in my opinion best, chapter of the book, The Making of Meaning. Here, all the threads weaved throughout the book come together and such major themes as life goals, purpose and meaning are discussed.

This chapter discusses how, why and when people decide who they are in life and what it is they want to achieve. Among psychologists exists a consensus that this process happens in a sequence of steps, starting with the preservation of the self and eventually leading the individual to merge the self with a larger whole (such as a religion, a life purpose, etc). However, Csikszentmihalyi notes that most people stay in the first stages of this development process and only “if a person is lucky and succeeds in controlling consciousness” they can progress to the final stage.

My favourite section in the book discusses purpose and life goals and encourages us to stick with our convictions:

“Purpose gives direction to one’s efforts, but it does not necessarily make life easier. Goals can lead to all sorts of trouble, at which point one is tempted to give them up and find some less demanding script by which to order one’s action. The price one pays for changing goals whenever opposition threatens is that while one may achieve a more pleasant and comfortable life, it is likely that it will end up empty and void of meaning.”

I think this is true for everyone of us. Some may not have any life goals or a strong sense of purpose, while others may have an exact plan of what they want to achieve. Our resolution should be the same, find our life purpose, live for it and fight for it. Because with a life purpose, we can turn every experience along the way into flow!

You can check out Flow: The Classic Work on how to Achieve Happiness at Amazon.

Count Your Blessings By Dr John F. Demartini (Book)

Count Your Blessings was my very first encounter with Dr Demartini and I nearly didn’t make it! A friend had recommended the seminar and I thought it would be good to read one of his books in preparation. As I looked at the local library, this was the only one available (probably not the best selection criteria!) so I went for it!

I had done a bit of research on Dr Demartini on the internet (including YouTube) and can’t say that I was entirely convinced. The book didn’t really help. The introduction and the first chapter were so cheesy I would have stopped reading if it wasn’t the personal recommendation. The cheesiness of the book seemed to tie in with the slick pictures of Dr Demartini I had seen on YouTube…. I didn’t really get him at all!

But as I kept reading Count Your Blessings, a few topics sparked my interest: mainly the health aspect and the experiences John draws on from when he ran a Chiropractic Practice. A basic theme of the book is that your psychology influences your state of health and your body. For instance, if you hold a grudge deep inside for years, or you are always bitter, you might develop cancer. So John’s theory is that if you dissolve your grudge (or any other emotional charge) you will heal again.

I am not sure it is that simple, but then again, many of us never know until we experience a serious health condition ourselves. Only recently I read an interesting article about a medical practitioner who is a pioneer in the area of evidence-based medicine. When she developed an aggressive, terminal cancer, she turned mainly to alternative medicines (including Yoga, meditation, certain nutritional concepts) and is still alive, a year after her initial diagnosis (she writes a blog for a medical journal). But I definitely believe that we can be healthier when we are grateful, don’t hold any grudges and see all facets of the situation we are in.

As in all of his books, at the end of every chapter, John includes Affirmations and certain exercises for the reader to complete. Most of these exercises focus on gratitude, and as the title suggests, counting our blessings. The underlying theme is, the more we are grateful for, the more we receive to be grateful for. The Attitude is Gratitude!

Of course I completed the exercises (more or less involved) and at the time I had pulled a muscle in my leg. I had been to the physiotherapist numerous times without any improvement. One of the exercises required the reader to focus on the positive aspects of their illness / problem.

If you have ever completed any of Demartini’s exercises (such as the Collapse Process), you know that it’s not as easy as it sounds. You are often asked to come up with reasons or justifications and that doesn’t mean just two or three. The minimum requirement is normally 20-50 reasons (if not more)! The reasoning behind this is so the reasons are not only logical, but become emotional as well. You feel gratitude, rather than think gratitude. And I am convinced that this method (feeling rather than thinking) makes a difference!

So I completed this exercise and afterwards I kind of forgot about it. But after a few days I noticed that the pain my leg was entirely gone! I couldn’t pinpoint when, where or how it happened, whether it had anything to do with Demartini’s exercise or the physio, all I knew was that it was gone! I know this is a measly example, especially compared to Demartini’s claims that he has cured cancer patients with this method.. But experiencing something first hand, not matter how small, makes a totally different impact! And it definitely led me to finishing the book.

You can check out Count Your Blessings at Amazon.

Secrets to Financial Success by Dr John F Demartini (Audio Set)

Just like John’s other Audio Sets (especially The Art of Communicating), I enjoy listening to this one. If you have read How to make One hell of a Profit and still get to Heaven you will find this CD set is repeating most of the concept. I enjoy listening to it though and by hearing some of the concepts repeatedly, they are easier to understand.

This CD set is quite long (8 CDs) and it is a recorded version of John’s Secrets to Financial Success Seminar. It addresses both personal finances and finances for businesses and many of the concepts for these areas are similar and grounded in the same ideas. I focused more on the personal finance ideas as this is more applicable in my life at the moment.

Similarly to the book, the basic concept of this Audio Set is to progress your financial literacy and investments by starting with the basics, such as a high interest savings account and progress from there. The slogan is “Earn the right to risk”!

• High interest savings account (Saving)
• Term deposit (Saving)
• Government Bonds (Investing)
• Blue Chip Shares / Established Real Estate (Investing)
• Other shares / Other Real Estate (Investing)
• Initial Public Offerings / Speculative Real Estate (Speculating)
• Equity Funding (Speculating)

This system is based on the fact that we can digest a fluctuation of up to 10 percent in our financial portfolio without any psychological stress. Anything more would cause severe stress and psychological instability.

So the trade-off of having smaller returns in a high interest saving account than in a share portfolio is the security of knowing the money in our savings account is safe whatever happens to the stock or property markets.

Considering the downturn in the economy at moment, and the fact that many younger generations haven’t really experienced a downturn of the economy before, this concept seems like a good idea. Although it can be hard, to watch others make incredible returns during good times, the idea is that the slow and steady will win the race.

I like the practical advice John gives to encourage us to start saving:

As per the 10 percent fluctuation rule, he recommends to either save 10 percent or a nominated amount each pay period (which ever is greater). Every three months, we should increase this amount by 10 percent. If we started at $100 per week, we would increase this to $110 after three months and $121 after six months.

If we ever find ourselves with some spare cash, this can of course also go into the savings account. But remember, the savings account is not to be touched for anything but saving or investing! Once we have managed to save our first cushion (about 60-90 days, or three months worth of wages), we start to save the same amount (60-90 days or three months) for the next category on the list (see above).We can use the time it takes us to save the next amount to learn about the new investment category and therefore “Earn the right to risk”.

John also has some tricks up his sleeves to motivate us to keep saving: For example future projections on how much money we will have in one years time, two years time, five years time, etc. To do this we calculate our current savings amount, consider the 10 percent increase every three months and the reinvestment of the interest. This will slowly lead to exponential growth of our savings! Eventually, we will have saved enough money that we can live of the interest alone!
The time this takes is of course dependent on the amount of money we save each week. But no matter how long it takes, I find it very motivating and inspiring that a slow and steady approach can have returns that will eventually make us financially independent.

I took the advice to heart and have opened an additional savings account. There are heaps of internet based savings accounts that pay great interest rates and don’t charge any fees. Now I have one transaction account, one savings-then-spending account and one savings-then-investing account! My Savings-then-investing account gets fed automatically every fortnight! Now I only need to do those calculations to see how long it will take me to become financially independent…

The Art of Communicating by Dr John F. Demartini (Audio Set)

John’s tapes are some of my favourites to listen to. He is very funny at times and I have definitely had a few looks on the bus when I was laughing out loud!
The Art of Communicating is a fairly short CD and centres around communication (surprise!), values and relationships. The basic message is, that we all live according to our own value systems which can be vastly different from one another.

We perceive the world according to our values and the priorities in our lives. Think of the classic example: How do a businessman and a mother perceive the same situation? For instance a childcare centre may be perceived by a mother as a haven for her children to play and learn, while the businessman may see how the centre is not earning enough money and not operating properly as a business.

We can’t expect others to change their value system. So the key is to find out about their value system and to communicate in it. Your boss may only be interested in meeting the budget, but if you show him/her how an excursion will increase motivation and productivity and promote team work, they might just re-evaluate your proposal.

One of the most interesting points that John raises is that many people have no idea what their value system actually looks like! So he proposes a basic formula to find out what your REAL priorities are in life (and not what you pretend they are). Ask yourself the following questions:

•How do you spend your time?
•How do you fill your space?
•How do you spend your energy?
•How do you spend your money?
•What do you think about?
•What do you visualise? What do you see for yourself, what is your dream?
•What do you talk about (to yourself and others)?
•What do you react to?

You can write down a few answers (say three) for each question and see which one occur repeatedly. The one you have named most often, will be your highest value. You may just surprise yourself!

John also makes an interesting point about ‘Should-ing’. Whenever we think ‘I should do this’ or ‘I should do that’ we are imposing someone else’s value system on ourselves. Clearly, if we think we should go to the gym, but we’d much rather stay at home and read a book, we value reading a book more but are imposing on ourselves the idea that going to the gym is more important. Similarly, if we spend our monthly wage on a handbag and think ‘I really should be saving this money’, we clearly value the handbag more but are thinking about our parents who are telling us to save our money to invest.

Recognising this can be really powerful: every time I now think ‘I should’ I start to analyse whether I really want to do something. Do I just think I need to do this because everyone else is doing this? Or is it actually helping me to go where I want to go? If it is helping me and I can see the connection to my value system, it suddenly changes from ‘I should do this’ to ‘I want to do this because it helps me achieve X’. If it is really just a ‘should’, then I won’t even bother doing them!

All in all I find this CD is definitely worth listening to! It’s so short you can listen to it in one go and in fact I often re-listen to this one. Whether it is the whole thing or just bits and pieces that I particularly like, this CD is a good reminder of how we communicate and interact with people and definitely helps to increase self-awareness!

Audio Books / CD Sets

I really don’t like fiction audio books, but when a friend lent me a few CD sets from different speakers, I thought I should give it a go.

I always wondered how these sets sell so well and now I totally understand! The difference of listening to fiction or non-fiction is like day and night!

For me, reading fiction is about getting lost in the moment, about imagination and creativity. I can only get to that state if I am the one interpreting the book, if someone else interprets the words, the intonation and the characters I loose the connection to the text.

But reading, or listening to non-fiction is a totally different game! It’s about learning, logical thinking, and applying someone else’s theory to our own lives. And I enjoy listening to this just as much as I enjoy reading it.

And the convenience! I love listening to tapes on the bus or in the car, when I am going for a walk or a run, while I am cooking. Hooray for multitasking!