My Adventure and Awakening in the Australian Rainforest

Author : Robin Easton

I have to say that I didn’t know what to expect reading this book from Robin (I’ll have to use a first name basis knowing her already even though I would normally use an author’s last name).  I’ve known of her for some time through blogging but never really connected strongly with her until this past year where we have spent more time reading each other’s content and commenting back and forth.  And in doing so I have to say, I have learned that Robin is a very expressive and heartfelt person in her responses, compliments and writing.  So, when I had the offer to read her book I was excited to find out more about her through her writing and learn more about her stories through her book.  I’m so glad I did!

Naked in Eden is a book that I would never have picked up myself in a bookstore without having the reference of Robin first because I’ve really not ventured out too much past personal development, leadership, business and Christian book genres.  A few exceptions to that of course for various other interests but this time what I knew about Robin and her interest in nature certainly excited me to explore her book.  I have to say, that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and found it very hard to put it down as I found myself absorbed in her fascinating and exciting stories of the rain forest, self discovery, fear, love and life.  The writing itself is a journey into the thoughts, discoveries and mindset of the author as a young woman exploring herself and life on her own in the rain forest of Australia.  The book is an overall story of several years of her life but what I really found intriguing was the deep emotional reflection and writing about how she was thinking in those many months of isolation yet deep connection with the forest.  I especially see now how Robin’s deep emotional writing and soul filled content came to life in the forest.  It shows in how the story unfolds and I found that it especially shows in her writing.

The depth at which the stories and thoughts took me were a joy to read.  I just wrote to her in fact saying how the book has me still pondering the content, days after finishing it, which I consider to be a great thing.  I love any book that keeps me thinking.  I also really found the writing to touch a part of my own connection and love for nature and even though I don’t have the same burning desire to escape society and live in the forest, I certainly appreciate her love of nature and desire to have that understanding of oneself and one’s connection with nature to value it, protect it and love it.

The whole story I found quite gripping and I loved how her husband Ian plays such a different yet vital role both in her life at the time and in the story.  I found myself really wanting to know more about Ian’s perspective on life here as well.  The imagery was superb and I found it easy to imagine and escape myself into the forest with them, to see the characters and critters they faced and even the turmoil with their challenges, fears and emotions.  It is a book and story that I definitely recommend to anyone really.  The wildness of Australia and the rain forest add a great dimension to the book and there is actually quite a lot to learn about the area, the many poisonous snakes and critters, and of course the forest itself.  Last but not least, you will certainly learn a whole lot more about Robin Easton and how her life was changed and formed by her time in the forest.  I definitely found that to be the most exciting part.  I would love to hear the rest of the story, more of Ian’s story and how this still affects Robin today, years afterward.  I expect to have that opportunity directly with Robin and am looking forward to it.  You can find out more about the book at Robin’s site and you can order Naked in Eden on Amazon.com here.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 2 Comments »

Put Life In your Leadership

Author : Stephen D. Wood

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book.  I have a few minor points against it but all in all, this is definitely worth your read.  What I especially liked right from the cover of the book is that it is unique and not really what I expected a book about living a great life would look like.  This unique style stems right from the cover through to the text throughout the book and I am quite happy to have read it now.  I am certainly not a cowboy myself even though I am often out riding horses with my wife.  What I found funny was the moment my wife saw the book, she instantly said, “Hey, Bodacious is one of the toughest bucking bulls ever, why are you reading a book about that?”  I had no idea this had anything to do with the book, and was pleasantly surprised to read about the bull, Bodacious in one of the early stories and to learn my wife was right and knew about him already.  I’m not surprised though, as she does love to watch the bull riding on TV.

Anyway, the book is about stepping up to take life on by the horns (pun intended) and to do more than sit around and watch it go by.  Its about being bodacious and bold in everything you can and to make the most of yourself in life.  I especially enjoyed the stories told and then that each of the life lessons are learned from these short stories and they are easy to remember and easy to relate to.  The book itself is quite short and an easy read in 2-3 hours.  It has important leadership lessons to learn from and is told in a way that it inspires you for your life to not settle, but to put your life and leadership together.  The one thing I didn’t like about the book was that a few of the stories and way the stories are referred to become quite repetitive and the language used seams a bit childish.  Looking past that though and the lessons presents from the stories brings it back to the mature topic of life advice.

The whole premise and message of the book are about what are referred to as the Bodacious Secrets.  These are:

• Be Extraordinary
• Be Unrestrained
• Be Bold

These secrets are expressed as the keys to taking grip of your life, leading things to move in the direction you want and to find the dreams you want in life without having restraints in life to limit you.  Each of these secrets are explored with specifics and story examples that make it easy to connect with, which is why the book does it’s job so well.

Each chapter has a summary of its main points about these bodacious secrets and you can easy use these summaries as reference and highlights coming back through it again later.  I’d definitely recommend checking this book out for anyone interested in leadership and especially for those wanting to expand their own lifestyles and lead themselves towards the dreams they have always wished they could have and fulfill.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 5 Comments »

How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It!

Author: Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter

Overall I must say that I was disappointed with this book as it didn’t seem to excite me, spark any new ideas or even capture my attention well with ways to build what the author’s topic is all about, your mojo.  You mojo is described that inner spirit or drive we have to do what we do best starting from the inside and expressing that outward.  I think this is because I actually really love the concept of mojo and internal motivation that drives us to excel, unfortunately, this book just didn’t draw me in at all to that.  It is however, still a good book that outlines many of the important factors that are necessary to build mojo and maintain it so for someone without an already high level of inner drive, I think the book would be far more useful.

This was the first of Goldsmith’s books I’ve read using audio version and Goldsmith read this one for the recording himself, which personally I felt was a disaster.  His tone and continuous pausing and repetitive upward tones at the end of every single sentence was incredibly distracting and it would never listen to another book he’s read directly because of this.  His reading style kills the flow completely for me and his repetitive pitch change never seems to match the content he is ready, so I found it was actually quite hard to listen to, and that is very rare for me since I mostly listen to audio books and love them since I’m an audible learner!

What Mojo Offers

Mojo offers a very straight forward easy to digest set of tools and questions to discover your mojo. Having your mojo is described as having work that simultaneously makes you happy and has meaning to you.  Marshall explores a number of effects of mojo and negative mojo or nojo as he names it and he explores the sources of one’s identity.  These are:

• remembered identity
• reflected identity
• programmed identity
• created identity

I found this useful yet at the same time, rather simplified and I was not convinced of how it was actually useful through application, it was simply information and I never connected with the point of it.  There is a useful mojo scorecard and tips throughout to examine your activities and to measure the level of mojo you experience.  It can certainly help to draw you to discover what activities affect your mojo so is quite useful.

More insight is given through a series of stories and questions that Marshall uses to explore your mojo further.  I thought these were a bit disconnected and not really supporting what I was hoping to get from the book as far as experiencing mojo and putting it to work for you more often.  There were many tips but I never got the sense that I really had a clear idea since even Marshall says repeatedly that mojo is all internal and has to come from within.  After hearing that a number of times, I wonder why he wrote the book then?

Also, there are lots of good pieces of information and stories about mojo and many tips on how to discover it.  There is an excellent section on maintaining your mojo and being consistent with yourself and others to ensure nothing prevents your mojo and he explores 10 reason you can quickly lose your mojo which are particularly useful to avoid.  He covers through repeated example a concept of ‘change it’ or ‘change you’ which is really saying that you must decide to change something about your situation to move towards more mojo or you have to change yourself to have different motivators or expectations.  And finally in the book, mojo is explored by using a technique of framing it and naming it.  If you recognize bad habits that kill mojo and give them a name to remind you of that, you can use that name yourself or teach others to use that name to help point that behavior out when it occurs and snap you out of a situation killing mojo.  This is a useful tip and I have always liked the idea of framing associations around behaviors and actions so this one is particularly useful to me.

So overall, this is a decent book and explores many areas of mojo, that anyone who is interested in a lot of self analysis and reflection can benefit from.  I had a number of reason listed above why I rated this lower.  I’d definitely recommend the printed version over the narrated one by Marshall himself and if you haven’t read his other book, ‘What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There‘ I would definitely say you should start with it, as it is a better book all around and similarly helps you to assess yourself and discover your limiting actions prevent your best work.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 4 Comments »

A Leadership Fable About Restoring Sanity To The Most Important Organization In Your Life

Author: Patrick Lencioni

Lencioni is one of my favorite business authors and his fables make his message interesting to read as a story and easy to learn from.  This fable resonated for me since it looks to apply business skills and strategy to your home life, which I’m often finding myself striving to do anyway.  This book is based on the premise that even successful  business people with well structured knowledge and strategy business practice typically lack the application of any such strategy or even goals for managing their own families.  As a result, we have frantic families with nothing more than organized chaos and no clear direction or strategy for being operated.  This story explores that from the point of view of a stay at home mom, Theresa, of one of these successful business strategists.

The family of Theresa and husband, Jude, is introduced showing all the classic signs of family overload with the Jude having a busy work life and some travel away form home while the 3 kids in the family consume enormous effort with all their programs, volunteering and sports they are involved in which of course, create a hectic daily schedule.   As day to day life seems to get in the way of what Theresa and Jude wish their family to be like, an argument erupts and Jude makes the statement, “if my clients ran their companies the way we run this family, they’d be out of business.”  This sets Theresa off on a mission to discover what really is it then that Jude’s strategy consulting firm gives clients and she looks to apply that to their own family.  She discovers and applies a set of questions from the strategy consulting to the family model and uses these to shape a new found purpose, control and direction for her family.  This is all shaped into 3 big questions.

Question #1: What makes your family unique?

This section looks at core values that really define your family to be unique.  Not just any values you want or aspire to, but actual core values that clearly define your family.  The book through both the story and through the model outline at the end give many examples of how to then turn this into a short paragraph that defines the family, its purpose and the values that it adheres to in accomplishing its purpose.

Question #2: What is your family’s top priority rallying cry right now?

Evey family has an area to work on, solve or stress to relief at any time and this section is to define that focus area and get the family working together to make that rallying call happen.  This could be anything from spending more quality time together, to finishing a renovation to getting a kid to college.  Whatever it is, the family should be focused to achieve it and working together consistently to make it happen.  It can also be used to align short term decision making with what is priority for the family, especially when a new activity or event could get in the way of that rallying cry!

Question #3: How are we going to talk about and use the answers to these questions?

This last question is a way to plan the family strategy and make commitments around them.  Setting up some kind of review of progress, communication towards the goals on a regular basis and fixed times to talk or share important events and decisions as they come up.  This should include how to talk about areas as parents as well as with any children in the family or extended family that are directly involved.  Planning the communication strategy to answer questions about priorities and if the family is making progress towards those only helps to bring the family together to achieve the rallying cry.
So, there is lots to learn from all of Lencioni’s books and this book is no exception.  It’s an engaging story that teaches the ideas well and the examples and struggles are easy to relate to and apply in your own life and family. I definitely recommend it!

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 7 Comments »

A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty

Author: Patrick Lencioni

Naked service providers achieve a completely different level of client loyalty and its primarily about the foundation of any relationship, trust.  That trust is developed by being vulnerable and getting outside your comfort zone, the areas I most admire and aspire to myself.  That is what this great book is all about.  Lencioni does this in his unique style by writing the book and teaching the content as a fable.  He is a fantastic story teller and I really connected with the humor that was added in this book.  The main characters is in charge of ‘integrating’ a new team from a company that was expected to be swallowed up in an acquisition and he quickly discovers that his integration is going to require integrating the smaller company’s more effective consulting methods are what truly need to be integrated.

Of course the main character and whom is telling the story is faced with many challenges of learning this new style of vulnerable consulting service.  The humorous aspect is that the main character constantly narrates his thoughts as if he is saying them and then explains which I found myself laughing out loud from many times and the shock of what is really said versus what is thought brings life to the characters and realism to the story.  In fact, the impact of this I believe actually helps to convince the reader of each of the unconventional service methods that are presented through the main character’s learning by practice approach throughout the story.  I feel the book provides so many great examples (and realistic ones) all while clearly explaining the reasoning and doubts from the dialogue and thoughts of the characters.  It’s a fun story to read and an even better one to learn from if you are at all interested or involved in any kind of service to others.

The following is an outline of the “Naked Service” that is demonstrated in the book and is tough to digest without the context of the story or more examples, but here it is anyway, which I hope will wet your appetite and entice you to read this book.  It’s well worth it!

Fear of Losing the Business

Put your self at stake even when there is a risk to lose that business or jeopardize the relationships.  Honest and self assured consulting is the best approach here.

Principles:

• Always consult instead of sell – demonstrate value by serving
• Give away the business – give away advice and be generous even before they are a client.
• Tell the kind truth – Protect the client needs by telling every truth. Its presented with kindness and respect but never sugar coated even if the service provider will be sacrificed as a result.
• Enter the Danger – Step right into the middle of any uncomfortable situation to fearlessly deal with an issue that others are afraid to address. This grows great loyalty and shows integrity with an opportunity.

Fear of Being Embarrassed

Making suggestions even if they might make them look foolish.  Clients learn that this is a way to trust the provider.

Principles:

• Ask dumb questions – Asking more questions and possibly obvious questions shows courage and results in uncovering
• Make dumb suggestions – Suggestions without confidence often turns into a great insightful suggestion and is what is remembered, not that some suggestions are ignored or denied.
• Celebrate your mistakes – Being wrong is an inevitability and perfection is never expected, so acknowledge mistakes

Fear of Feeling Inferior

About getting past trying to look superior with a high level of standing or expertise.  To get over this, the service provider must be willing to purposefully put themselves below the client and make the needs of others (no matter what it is) more important than their own.

Principles:

• Take a Bullet for the client – Finding moments when we can sacrificially relieve some burden from the client and then confront them with the kind truth
• Make everything about the client – A powerful tactic by focusing on helping, supporting and honoring the client
• Honor the client’s work – Take an active interest in the client’s business
• Do the dirty work – Be willing to take on needs of the client regardless of the level of the work and do it humbly to earn gratitude and loyalty
• Admit your weaknesses and limitations – General weaknesses should never be covered up since it prevents you from doing best in areas you can thrive

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 7 Comments »

Maximize Your Free Time to Create New Wealth & Purpose

Author: Robert Pagliarini

It is a total joy to share books with my readers and especially books that I learn a lot from or that I can really connect with.  The book “The Other 8 Hours” does both of those things for me and so it is my pleasure to tell you how great this book it.  Robert contacted me to offer me a free copy with hope that I would review here at LearnThis.  I was excited by the description and title yet apprehensive when I don’t have it recommended by many people since it is a new book just out.  Long story short, I loved the book and will definitely recommend it as one of my favorites.

The Creative Spirit

The book explores personal development by specifically focusing on what you do with the 8 hours or so every day that you are not working or sleeping.  It focuses you and inspires you to make that time available to become a Cre8tor, a person with a drive to create new opportunities, that generate more wealth and purpose and happiness in your life.  The book has 4 main sections in it:

• Get a Clue
• Get More Time
• Get More Money
• Get a Life

All of these sections have chapters to explore each statement and there is actually quite a lot of depth to each topic.  Pagliarini covers everything from examining the life leeches that exist around us taking away from the available time that COULD be ours to a fantastic set of resources with each chapter that can kick start any Crea8tor channel you want to pursue.  There are strong messages in each of these four areas and I’m fortunately enough to have experienced many of these in my own life so have explored and even executed many of the challenges put forward.  I certainly have not however, collected such a strong, consistent and enjoyable text to read from all these lessons and clearly Pagliarini has down much in his own life to experience these as well AND he has done an immense amount of research to back things up with statistics.

Another aspect that is unique in this book that I really enjoyed are there being many 1 page short stories and examples of people who have taken these techniques and put them into action, each showing the major benefits to be had as a result.  I found the stories to be quite enjoyable clips to read and put much of what is written into real life context that is easy to relate with.

Get More Time

The tips on getting more time are absolutely timeless and powerful.  There is so much in here that I agree with as a productivity lover it was simply fun to read, yet there was also much to learn from even with the countless hours I’ve put into this area already myself. One example of this is termed “boosting” and used to describe taking on a second job or side job that is so mindless or easy that you can use it to actually study or work on other things while getting paid.  It gives two benefits, some extra income to use for creative channels or to catch up on debts as well as to further yourself in new knowledge areas, business plans or others such needed Cre8tor work that is difficult to make time for.  While I don’t plan on taking on any second mindless jobs myself, I will certainly use and share this concept again, some people come to mind to me for this right now.

He includes what I can easily say is the best 18 pages I’ve ever read on the powers that grip us in life and suck our time away from us.  Everything from TV watching or being disorganized to doing more than is necessary.  There are 24 items lists in this section with the typical common behavior and then a short straightforward solution that anyone can use to tackle that problem.  If you take nothing else out of this book, take this, as you will find yourself creating more time and increase your productivity, which obviously I’m a big fan of doing!

Get More Money

This section of the book is brilliant and clearly the main content as it covers in superb clarity 10 separate suggested channels or areas to follow as a cre8tor that can bring in new wealth and opportunities to make a better life for yourself.  The examples of course continue throughout and each of these channels are outlined with many ideas on what they might look like, how you can start, a typically process map for executing it and then a great set of resources to get started in each one.  This is absolutely packed with great content and again, easily makes the book worth buying just for these chapters alone.

Get More Life

Finally after touching on all the great aspects and opportunities, Pagliarini covers what many critics want to see.  What makes all this difficult is life.  Life gets in the way and needs to be managed better to even dare take on few work in our other 8 hours.  This section helps here and has many compressed lessons on productivity, habits, goal setting and other great techniques to manage all this and actually get it all done.

Conclusions

There are a few sections scattered through the book that talk about purpose and legacy and what you can do that is bigger than yourself but I must say this was the only thing I was a bit disapointed in.  Everything I thought was quite finance centric and the overall read of the book to me was about making more money.  That is an overall message though, not the only one.  So much is covered this is likely just a personal feeling.  I am really quite impressed by this book and am certainly going to check out more from Pagliarini as certainly has a best seller here if I had to make any guesses.  It’s a fantastic book that I encourage anyone to read.  It truly applies to to anyone with even the slightest desire to get a little more out of life or to change your current circumstances.  I still have many references and websites to check out from several chapters that will keep be coming back to it for the next little while.  I know each of you will enjoy it as well.

Note: I always avoid reading other’s reviews once I start a book as I know that lets me write the most objective review I can.  I’m happy to see that after writing this, I just checked out the reviews for it on amazon is its getting 5 stars across the board as well.  So, go check that out the reviews if you need to see more or to buy the book.  Also, check out the book website at TheOther8Hours.com.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 4 Comments »