Flint for Dreams » personal development

The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz

Paul — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:17:00 +0000

This is a personal development book that stresses the importance of attitude and the necessity to eliminate limiting beliefs.

The phrase "limiting beliefs" more or less means that you will only achieve as much as you think you can, as you will only go as far as your greatest goals.

Other advice in the book entails keeping a busy and varied schedule, eliminating negative people from your life, and trying to achieve more than you thought possible.

Despite the good advice nature of the book, I did find myself getting bored with it, and oddly, dwelling on negative thoughts. So while the concepts were nice, I guess it didn't work so much in terms of turning my mentality around, or inspiring me...

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki

Paul — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:19:00 +0000

Rich Dad Poor Dad is a book that conveys several key lessons which can be summarized as follows:

Save First, Spend Later

Build Assets (Things which make you money like stocks, businesses, rent, interest etc...)

Limit Liabilities (Things which take money out of your pocket like your car, house, pets etc...)

Most trained professionals, or intellectuals, are one skill away from creating a lot of wealth, and that skill is sales

Another beautiful point Kiyosaki makes is that people who start businesses really have no interest in working for money. They have interest in creating win win opportunities that generate money for them.

He gives an example of when he and a friend were kids and his friend's Dad, his Rich Dad, offered them jobs. He dared them to accept, and kept on raising the hourly wage to ridiculous levels, something like $700 an hour. The result is that the kids didn't accept, the amount of money was too ridiculous, and it spoke to the part of them that couldn't be bought. At the point that they stopped caring about money, they knew they could find opportunities, and add value to people's lives. It really is a beautiful thought.

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The E Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

Paul — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:17:00 +0000

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It is good for people looking to start a business but probably more appropriate for people that have been in business for a year or two and now need some help. I believe this book is the answer to almost every problem.

In the big picture, the book is a solution to life problems. As Gerber quotes from Rollo May's Man's Search for Himself:

Freedom does not come automatically; it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound; it must be achieved each day...freedom is not just the matter of saying "Yes" or "No" to a specific decision: it is the power to mold and create ourselves. Freedom is the capacity, to use Nietzsche's phrase, "to become what we truly are".

And so it is that properly setting up a business is a path for freedom, not just from your business but from all aspects of your life, being in control of them, and adding value to them.

It requires using planning, testing methods, and creating innovations. Having fun in the world, and putting yourself to the challenge. Here are a few quotes I like from the book:

The entrepreneurial personality turns the most trivial condition into an exceptional opportunity. The Entrepreneur is the visionary in us. The dreamer. The energy behind every human activity. The imagination that sparks the fire of the future. The catalyst for change. The Entrepreneur lives in the future, never in the past, rarely in the present. He's happiest when left free to construct images of "what-if" and "if-when".

The managerial personality is pragmatic. Without The Manager there would be no planning, no order, no predictability...If the Entrepreneur lives in the future, The Manager lives in the past.

The Technician is the doer. "If you want it done right, do it yourself" is The Technician's credo. The Technician loves to tinker. Things are to be taken apart and put back together again. Things aren't supposed to be dreamed about, they're supposed to be done. If The Entrepreneur lives in the future and The Manager lives in the past, The Technician lives in the present. He loves the feel of things and the fact that things can get done. As long as The Technician is working, he is happy, but only on one thing at a time. He knows that two things can't get done simultaneously; only a fool would try. So he works steadily and is happiest when he is in control of the work flow.

What is value? How do we understand it? I would suggest that value is what people perceive it to be, and nothing more.

What is he really buying when he buys from you? The truth is, nobody's interested in the commodity. People buy feelings. And as the world becomes more varied, the feelings we want become more urgent, less rational, more unconscious. How your business anticipates those feelings and satisfies them is your product.

But when you live by your own rules, when you 'walk your talk,' when you live as you think, then your business will become a thing to behold.

So what could your Prototype do that would not only provide consistent value to your customers, employees, suppliers, and lenders but would provide it beyond their wildest expectations? That is the question every Entrepreneur must ask. Because it is the raison d'etre of his business!

...people have the unerring ability to forget everything they start and to be distracted by trivia.

In a television commercial, we’re told, the sale is made or lost in the first three or four seconds. In a print ad, tests have shown, 75 percent of the buying decisions are made at the headline alone. In a sales presentation, data have shown us, the sale is made or lost in the first three minutes.

Reality only exists in someone’s perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, conclusions – whatever you wish to call those positions of the mind from which all expectations arise – and nowhere else. So the famous dictum that says, “Find a need and fill it,” is inaccurate. It should say, “Find a perceived need and fill it.

Inquiry, the active solicitation of specific information, and controlled experimentation replaced the guessing, blind hope, and feverish busy work that preceded them. Innovation, Quantification, and Orchestration became the driving forces behind their efforts.

“This marketing thing isn’t nearly as complicated as I might have made it seem,” I continued. “But it’s important that you take it seriously. Because it is most often is regarded by small business owners as merely ‘good common sense.’ And I have seen more often than not that the only definition of ‘good common sense’ is ‘my opinion.’ That most small business owners, suffering as they do from what I’ve come to call ‘willful disinformation,’ simply decide what they want to do without any information at all, without any interest in what’s true, and then simply do it. Stationery designed by the local quick –printer with a logo thrown in. Colors picked by their wives. Signs designed by the local sign guy whose experience is in painting signs, not in determining what colors and shapes are psychographically correct.”

Documentation provides your people with the structure they need and with a written account of how to "get the job done" in the most efficient and effective way. It communicates to the new employees, as well as to the old, that there is a logic to the world in which they have chosen to work, that there is a technology by which results are produced. Documentation is an affirmation of order.
Again from Toffler: "...for many people, a job is crucial psychologically, over and above the paycheck. By making clear demands on their time and energy, it provides an element of structure around which the rest of their lives can be organized." *Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, P.389 (pg 104 in E-Myth)

“Most people today are not getting what they want. Not from their jobs, not from their families, not from their religion, not from their government, and most important, not from themselves.
Something is missing in most of our lives. Part of what’s missing is purpose. Values. Worth-while standards against which our lives can be measured. Part of what’s missing is a Game Worth Playing.
What’s also missing is a sense of relationship.
People suffer in isolation from one another.
In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves?
As a result, most of us scramble about hungrily seeking distraction, in music, in television, in people, in drugs.
And most of all we seek things.
Things to wear and things to do.
Things to fill the emptiness.
Things to shore up our eroding sense of self.
Things to which we can attach meaning, significance, life.
We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion.
What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, meaning.
A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential.
A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result.
A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally.
A place that replaces the home most of us have lost.
That’s what a business can do; it can create a Game Worth Playing.”

The curtain is your Comfort Zone. And your Comfort Zone has been the false mask you put on when you were a little girl, because it was safe when your spirit was not. Your Comfort Zone has been the tight little cozy planet on which you have lived, knowing all the places to hide because it's so small. Your Comfort Zone has seized you before, Sarah, and it can seize you again, when you're least prepared for it, because it knows what it means to you. Because it knows how much you want to be comfortable. Because it know what price you are willing to pay for the comfort of being in control. The ultimate price, your life...if this new path, if living with your spirit means anything to you at all, if you truly care about it, then guard it with your life. Because Comfort overtakes us all when we're least prepared for it. Comfort makes cowards of us all.

This book is a MUST READ if you are own a small business or are thinking of starting one.

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The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

Paul — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:20:00 +0000

I am not sure what to say about the Ultimate sales machine. I picked up the book to try get a look into the mind of a salesman. Someone who is trained to convince people to make decisions, and in effect, convince them as to what is best for them.

Chet’s main point is that whatever you do, use pigheaded discipline and determination to stick to it. This explains a lot about salesman, they are stubborn and persistent. Annoyingly so, distrustingly so.

Chet goes on to describe ways to sell yourself into mainstream media, create information and portray yourself as an expert. He even goes so far as to suggest making tapes that can almost brainwash you, recording things to yourself like “I love cold calling in the morning” with relaxing music in the background. Scary.

As a scientist, if I am a scientist, I believe in doubt and keeping an open mind, you always want to ask questions, you always want to be open to being wrong, to some other new opportunity. This is good for a soul I believe.

Sales is the opposite. In sales you focus on a goal, you consider all the ways someone can say no, and ways to counter them.

I don’t know whether or not to recommend this book. The parts about getting into the media, planning, and eliciting feedback from customers was useful, the rest was annoying, and honestly, I skimmed quite a bit of this book.

Take it for what it is, and I openly say, I don’t mind if I don’t make this sale.

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The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

Paul — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:54:00 +0000

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss.

The four hour work week is a guide to a self-driven life. The idea of taking responsibility for and controlling your own life seems simple till you actually do it. If you had 3 million in the bank, what would you actually do? What cause would you pursue? How would you fill your days? How long before lounging around gets old?

It is a new topic, and Tim tackles it in a new style by giving a lot of references and how to. In today's information age I think it is good to see a book that points to websites and other resources that lets you explore the ideas and concepts of the book. As you apply them, you adapt and change them.

In short the key of the book says: Be self-driven and do what matters. Stop postponing your dreams and live them. I have done some of this myself and can say that the power of being in control is overwhelming and just an awesome feeling. Tim describes it as going from the passenger seat to the driver seat. Every human being has great potential to not just accomplish their dreams, but more than their dreams and this is a book that can help you get there.

Check out his website

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On Writing by Stephen King

Paul — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:34:00 +0000

Stephen King's book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft takes us through King's journey of becoming a writer. His struggles in childhood, his lottery fortune on selling his first novel, his battle with drugs and alcoholism, and finally his recovery from a car accident. For each trial in King's life the writing redeemed him.

The book is funny, entertaining and informative too. It gives a practical guide to becoming a writer: how to use the language well, find an agent, and set a routine to pound out words. Writing really is best when it is an honest reflection, when it comes naturally, and when you enjoy the message you are sending.

I cannot fully the describe the impact of this book. It is technical, but sweeps you away in story. King's account of getting hit by a van is powerful, one of the few books where I have come close to tears. I have read this three times and loved every second of it.

King closes his book with what every inspiring writer needs...a license to write. No need to wallow in self doubt, to listen to the critics, to remember the writing teacher that says you are wasting time. Really, that is true for every aspect of life.

"Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy...Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up. "

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Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman

Paul — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:21:00 +0000

All these years Dan Millman had grown up struggling to "be a somebody". Talk about backwards! He had been a somebody locked into a fearful mind and a mortal body.

Way of the Peaceful Warrior is a book about identity beyond that of our own desires. The story of Dan Millman is that of a successful gymnast who found that succeding at all he had been striving for left him more disappointed than if he had failed.

All These years I had been sustained by an illusion -- happiness through victory -- and now that illusion was burned to ashes. I was no happier, no more fulfilled, for all my achievements. Finally I saw through the clouds. I saw that I had never learned how to enjoy life, only how to achieve. All my life I had been busy seeking happiness, but never finding or sustaining it.

Millman contrasts the calm we should all feel in our life with the rushed pace that we eat, the impatience we feel for answers when we ask questions, and the undue importance we place on tasks that cause us to feel frustration and anger towards ourselves and others.

I’ve been battling illusions my whole life preoccupied with every petty personal problem, I’ve dedicated my life to self improvement without grasping the one problem that sent me seeking in the first place. While trying to make everything in the world work out for me, I always succumbed to my own mind, always preoccupied with me me me…my only real problem in life is my mind.

What should replace our frantic lifestyle and personal pain is a kind of peace and calm, an appreciation of beauty, taste, and life that only a calm mind can feel.

No need to resist life just do your best. Open your eyes and see that you are far more than you imagine... You are yourself and everyone else too!...You are already free!

Get the book from Amazon: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives