Leo Babauta of Zen Habits just released a new e-book entitled The Essential Motivation Handbook. It’s an e-book that helps you find the motivation you need to reach your goals.

As you know, motivation is essential for success. Why? Because there is no such thing as easy success. You must go through difficult times on your way to success. Without motivation, you may get discouraged and stop without ever reaching your destination.

This 112-page e-book helps you find the motivation you need by giving you practical tips in 25 short sections. Here are some of them:

• The Only Two Secrets to Motivating Yourself You’ll Ever Need
• A Guide to Beating the Fears That Are Holding You Back
• Top 20 Motivation Hacks
• Progress, Progress, Progress! 5 Tips To Keep You Moving Forward
• 25 Killer Actions to Boost Your Self-Confidence
• 16 Ways to Motivate Yourself When You’re in a Slump
• 30 Incredible Places to Turn When You Need Inspiration
• How to Doggedly Pursue Your Dreams in the Face of Naysayers
• The Yin And Yang Of Persistence

Leo’s previous e-books have been very successful. Zen To Done, for instance, is the best-selling productivity e-book to date with 10,000 copies sold. I expect that many people will also find this motivation e-book useful. You can find more information here.

Optimizing your personal finance is one of the most important things to do. The reason is that your financial situation affects other parts of your life. If you had financial problems then it would be difficult for you to live life to the fullest.

That’s why I was glad to receive a review copy of I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. The book aims to help you optimize your personal finance. Though the word “rich” in the title might mean different things for different people, here is what it means for the author:

What does rich mean to you? For me, it’s about freedom — it’s about not having to think about money all the time and being able to travel and work on the things that interest me.

I agree completely. Being rich is not about having a lot of money. It’s about having the freedom to enjoy life without financial worries.

Inside I Will Teach You To Be Rich

The book starts with an introduction followed by nine chapters.

Introduction

When it comes to personal finance, the worst thing you can do is not taking action. Don’t wait until you get the perfect solution before you act. Instead, use what the author calls The 85 Percent Solution: a solution that isn’t perfect but is good enough to get you started.

To help you keep the balance between enjoying your life and controlling your expenses, here is a principle you might find useful:

Spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t.

1. Optimize Your Credit Card

In the long term, having good credit can help you save thousands of dollars on large purchases because it can get you lower interest rate. So it’s essential that you improve your credit. The most important  thing you should do to improve your credit is paying off your credit card bills each month.

2. Beat the Banks

The next thing you should do is setting up the right bank accounts. You need to have two different accounts: a checking account and a saving account. Having these two accounts makes managing your money easier.

When setting up your accounts, one important thing you should pay attention to is the fees. Fees are often more important than interest rates because they could easily wipe out the interest you earn. Get yourself accounts that have the lowest fees possible.

For saving accounts, find one with high interest rate. An online saving account usually meets this requirement.

3. Get Ready to Invest

Investing is essential to get rich. In fact, the author said that investing is the single most effective way to get rich. Through proper investing you can achieve your financial goals and have enough money for retirement.

This chapter outlines five steps you should take to invest. The first step is contributing to your 401(k) to get your employer’s match. Then you can do the next steps to bring your investing to the next level.

4. Conscious Spending

Conscious spending means you make the decision of where you are going to spend your money. A Conscious Spending Plan has four major categories where your money can go to:

• Fixed costs
• Investments
• Savings
• Guilt-free spending money

One way to implement your plan is by using an envelope system in which you allocate money for each category. Once you spend the money in a category you can’t spend more, but you can transfer money from one category to another.

5. Save While Sleeping

You should automate your finances as much as possible so that you can spend your time on other things. For that, the first thing you should do is linking your accounts together. Then you should set up automatic payments and automatic transfers between those accounts.

6. The Myth of Financial Expertise

Financial expertise is a myth because the so-called financial “experts” don’t know what will happen in the future. You can often earn more by investing yourself because that way you minimize the fees.

7. Investing Isn’t Only for Rich People

Above anything else, the volatility of your portfolio depends on your asset allocation. So make sure that you have the proper allocation between different asset classes. You can do this by picking a portfolio of low-cost funds but you should remember that you should rebalance it regularly. If you don’t want to rebalance then pick a lifecycle fund where it is done automatically for you.

8. Easy Maintenance

This chapter gives you tips to on how to properly maintain your investments. It discusses how to rebalance your portfolio and when to sell your investments, among others.

9. A Rich Life

Here you can find many specific topics in personal finance such as student loans, wedding, salary negotiation, buying car, and buying house. It also gives you a summary of what it takes to get rich:

Getting rich isn’t about one silver bullet or secret strategy. It happens through regular, boring, disciplined action.

Conclusion

I Will Teach You To Be Rich is full of practical advice to improve your personal finance. Rather than giving you abstract ideas of what you need to do, it tells you exactly what you need to do and why. The book especially targets people in their 20s and 30s but its advice is applicable to other age brackets as well.

One differentiating characteristic of the book is its focus on the “big wins”. Instead of focusing on cutting small expenses, it focuses on cutting big expenses  like the interest you pay for major loans. The author argues that many people save three dollars on latte but forget to improve their credit and that costs them thousands of dollars.

In my case, since I don’t live in the U.S. I need to adapt some of the advice given. But I get a lot of ideas to implement.

Have you ever dreamed of getting all the topics of self improvement in one place and seeing how they relate to each other? Well, your dream might have just come true. The MasterMind Matrix Chart by Adam Sicinski covers practically all self improvement topics you can think of in one huge mind map.

Looking at the chart as a whole is like seeing the map of a city. You can see roads to multiple blocks within the city. Within each block, you can see how those roads split into small streets. Following the roads in the chart makes you feel like you are traveling in the city of Self Improvement.

For example, let’s visit the Goals block. There you can explore some small streets that teach you the process of setting goals and the characteristics of good goals. After exploring this block, you may want to continue your journey to the nearby Time Management block. Here you learn how to manage your time in order to achieve your goals. The streets in this block give you some time management tips like To Do List, Set Priorities, and Outsource. Continuing your journey from here will bring you to the Staying Motivated block that shows you how to stay motivated while pursuing your goals.

Here are some of the topics covered in the chart:

• Habits / Rituals
• Character Development
• Emotional Mastery
• Overcoming Fears
• Accelerated Learning
• Beliefs
• Attitude
• Behavior Modeling
• Visualization
• Choices & Decision
• Sleep & Energy
• Health & Wellbeing

With the number of topics covered, it could be difficult to know where to start. Fortunately, the chart gives you a clear starting point labeled “Begin Here”. That’s where you start your journey. You will then be guided to the other parts of the chart.

Here are several things I like about the chart:

1. It helps me see what topics are there in the world of self improvement
   There are some topics that I’ve never heard before and there are some that I’ve forgot. The chart brings them all to my attention.
2. It shows how the topics are related
   This is a big plus because it’s often difficult to relate one topic to the other. As a result, people tend to treat each topic separately. Seeing how they relate helps you have an integrated approach to self improvement.
3. It’s fun
   The chart is not only packed with information but also visually appealing. That makes studying it fun.

Mastering the chart will take time but it’s worth it. It could be your study guide to the world of self improvement.

Personal branding is a hot topic right now. Since competition in the job market is getting more intense, you need a way to differentiate yourself. You need a way to stand out from the crowd.

Personal branding is a good way to do that. The book Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success by Dan Schawbel aims to help you build your personal brand in this connected world. In the author’s words:

Me 2.0 describes the history of personal branding; how the Internet has revolutionized career development; and how individuals can leverage social media for personal empowerment, self-management, and networking.

Let’s look inside the book.

Inside the Book

Me 2.0 is divided into three parts with a total of ten chapters.

Part 1. The Rise of Personal Branding

1. The Brand Called YOU!

Personal branding can make you more valuable. To develop your personal brand, you need to find the unique value you can offer to the world and let everyone know about it. You also need to be authentic and increase your visibility.

2. Millennials Enter the Workforce

These days, generation Y (roughly born between 1981 to 2001) is entering the workforce. Unlike previous generations, Gen Y grows with technology and that becomes their competitive advantage.

3. Introducing Commander YOU!

You need to be a commander of your career. Social media gives you the power to build a strong presence of your own. Four qualities you need as a career commander are leadership, passion, teamwork, and confidence.

4. The Many Aspects of Personal Branding

Personal branding has eight aspects: marketing/branding, networking, human resources, career development, search engine optimization, social media, entrepreneurship, and public relations.

Part 2. Command Your Career in Four Steps

5. Step 1 – Discover Your Brand

To discover your personal brand, you need to know who you are. Through the discovery process you should find your personal value statement, a plan to differentiate your brand, and a marketing strategy.

6. Step 2 – Create Your Brand

You need to have strong online and offline presence in order to create your brand. To do that, use relevant marketing tools that make up your personal branding toolkit. Elements of your personal branding toolkit include your resume, portfolio, and website, among others.

7. Step 3 – Communicate Your Brand

Communicating your brand is essential for your success. You should create your personal press kit to make it easy for others to understand who you are and what you do. You can also contribute to various media outlets to promote your brand.

8. Step 4 – Maintain Your Brand

It’s important that you maintain your brand reputation online. Be aware when something negative about you shows up and take the necessary steps to respond to it. Also be careful with identity theft.

Part 3. Now You Have Command

9. Your Entrepreneurial Conquest

Becoming an entrepreneur is a good career choice. There are several characteristics that entrepreneurs have: vision, creativity, tenacity, passion, problem-solving skills, and competitive drive.

10. Life-Changing Results

You need to start building your brand today. Give value to others sincerely, support your network, and see new opportunities come your way.

Conclusion

Me 2.0 clearly explains how to build your personal brand using social media technologies. If you want to be a free agent in this connected world, this book is useful because it teaches you how to increase your value and marketability.

Improving my mind has always been one of my interests. That’s because I believe that the quality of the mind has significant influence on success. But of course, improving the mind can’t be separated from knowing how the brain works. You need to know how the brain works in order to use your mind effectively.

That’s why the book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina is interesting to me. It aims to introduce you to the latest discoveries in brain science while giving you practical ways to apply them. In the author’s words:

Most of us have no idea how our brain works… Unless you have the Journal of Neuroscience sitting on your coffee table, you’re out of the loop.

This book is meant to get you into the loop.

Let’s look inside the book.

Inside Brain Rules

Brain Rules covers 12 principles of how the brain works that are called the “brain rules”. Accordingly, the book is divided into twelve chapters.

1. Exercise

Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.

Exercise can improve your cognitive performance. The exact amount of exercise you need is different from person to person, but a good rule of thumb is doing aerobic exercise two or three times a week for 30 minutes each time. If possible, integrate exercise into your workday. Take regular breaks and fill them with exercise.

2. Survival

Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too.

Human brain evolved through the ages. There are three parts of the brain: “lizard brain” that keeps you breathing, “mammalian brain” that helps you survive (by allowing you to feel fear, for instance), and “human brain” (the cortex) that gives you abilities like vision, memory, and speech.

3. Wiring

Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.

Your brain is unique and because of that you should ensure that you are doing what your brain is wired to do.  In education, it’s good to have smaller class size because the teacher can then track everybody in the class. In business, there should be “mass customization” to treat every employee as an individual.

4. Attention

Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things.

Better attention means better learning. So it’s important to grab the attention of your audience early and keep it along the way.  It’s also important to keep your attention undivided when you are learning. Using emotions (like fear or laughter) is good to grab attention.

5. Short-term Memory

Rule #5: Repeat to remember

Memories have different life spans. To increase the life span of a memory,  focus on the meaning of the information rather than just the details. You can do this by finding real-world examples that are relevant.

6. Long-term Memory

Rule #6: Remember to repeat.

To have good retrieval of a memory, you should repeat the information in timed intervals. It’s also helpful to think or talk about the information soon after you receive it.

7. Sleep

Rule #7: Sleep well, think well.

Healthy sleep can improve learning while lack of sleep can hurt learning. One good sleeping habit is napping. A NASA study showed that 26-minute nap improved pilot’s performance by more than 34 percent.

8. Stress

Rule #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.

Stress adversely affects your brain and health. That’s why it’s essential to create healthy environment at home and work. The worst kind of stress is the feeling that you have no control over the problem.

9. Sensory Integration

Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses

You can enhance learning by creating multisensory environment. Multisensory environment allows people to learn in a more elaborate fashion and therefore retain more. The two most popular senses are vision and hearing, but smell is becoming increasingly popular.

10. Vision

Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.

Vision is the most dominant sense that takes half of the brain’s resources. For that reason, make the information visual.

11. Gender

Rule #11: Male and female brains are different.

Men tend to remember the gist of an emotional experience while women tend to remember the details. Having both of them work together as a team will give the team complete perspective of a stressful situation.

12. Exploration

Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers.

Babies naturally explore new things and test everything in their environment. You should keep this curiosity alive. Curiosity is the fuel that keeps your intellectual engine run.

Conclusion

Brain Rules is a useful book that gives you solid understanding of how the brain works. Rather than giving you unproven myths, the book gives you scientific truth on the subject. It dispels popular myths such as “left brain is for analytical thinking” and “right brain is for creative thinking” and gives you explanation of what actually happens. In each chapter, there are ideas on how to apply the rule in business and education.

I enjoy the stories inside the book that shows the power of the brain. For example, there was a person who could read both pages of a book simultaneously (using left eye for the left page and right eye for the right page) and memorize them perfectly.

I also like the fact that many scientific explanations inside the book are explained using metaphors that make them easy to understand.

Have you ever feel overwhelmed in your life or career? Do you want to have more free time for your loved ones and still be productive? The Power of Less by Leo Babauta aims to help you do that. The goal of the book is to help you do less but achieve more. In the author’s words:

Picture a life in which you have a fairly peaceful workday, where stress levels are minimal, where you’re able to focus on your work. Imagine that you only do a few tasks, but they’re chosen so that they have the most impact. You accomplish major goals without the stress of doing everything at once.

Sounds like a great life, doesn’t it? I definitely want to do less but achieve more.

Let’s look inside the book.

Inside The Power of Less

The book has two parts with a total of eighteen chapters. Part one deals with the guiding principles and part two deals with how to implement those principles in key areas of your life.

Part I: The Principles

1. Why Less Is Powerful

If you are trying to do too much, you will feel stressed and overwhelmed. Even worse, you can be busy without accomplishing anything important. By choosing the essential, you will do less but get the most impact.

2.  The Art of Setting Limits

To help you choose the essential, you should set limits in everything you do. The limits force you to choose which are essential and which are not.

3. Choosing the Essential, and Simplifying

With the limits in place, how do you know which things are essential? This chapter has a series of questions to help you decide whether or not something is essential.

4. Simple Focus

To be effective, focus is your most important tool. Don’t spread yourself too thin. At any time, focus on just one task and focus on the present.

5. Create New Habits, and the Power of Less Challenge

You need to create new habits to make lasting improvements in your life. To successfully create new habits, focus on forming just one habit a month.

6. Start Small

One more tip for creating new habits: start small and make small increments over time. Don’t make drastic changes.

Part II: In Practice

7. Simple Goals and Projects

You should focus on just one goal at a time to increase your effectiveness. And don’t work on too many projects to achieve that goal. Choose only a few and focus on finishing them.

8. Simple Tasks

Each day, choose the three most important tasks (MITs) and work on them first before doing anything else. This way you can be sure that you will get the important tasks done.

9. Simple Time Management

Keep your time management simple by reducing your tasks and appointments. And do similar tasks at once to save time.

10. Simple E-mail

Minimize your time on e-mail so that you can spend more time on important things. To do that, you should reduce the number of e-mails that come into your inbox and have clear rules to deal with them.

11. Simple Internet

Apply limitations to your Internet usage so that you use it productively. Don’t let it become a productivity black hole. Also learn to work while disconnected to minimize distractions.

12. Simple Filing

Don’t waste your time going through stacks to find the documents you need. A simple filing system will help you find what you need quickly.

13. Simple Commitments

One thing you should do to free up time for the important is cutting back your commitments. Choose only a few essential commitments and eliminate the rest. Learn to say “no” to new requests.

14. Simple Daily Routine

Having simple daily routines can help you boost your day. A morning routine can help you prepare for the day ahead and an evening routine can help you prepare for tomorrow.

15. Declutter Your Work Space

Having a decluttered desk will help you focus on the task at hand. So get your desk down to the essentials and eliminate the rest. Have a simple system to process incoming papers and store items.

16. Slow Down

Slowing down your pace will make you not only happier, but also more effective. There are several ways to apply it: move your attention slowly, work slowly, eat slowly, and drive slowly.

17. Simple Health and Fitness

By eating healthily and exercise regularly, you will have greater energy and productivity. So form the habit of exercise and healthy eating. Start small and increase it gradually.

18. On Motivation

Making the all the changes suggested in this book requires motivation. This chapter gives you a lot of tips on how to find and sustain the motivation you need to make lasting changes in your life.

Conclusion

The Power of Less is a useful book that helps you do less but achieve more. Trying to do a lot could make you feel stressed and unhappy. This book advocates doing less but doing the right things and doing them well. The Power of Less is the right book for those who feel overwhelmed in any area of their life or feel like they can’t achieve anything important although they are busy. This book can also help you maintain your life balance.

What I like about the book is instead of just talking about the theory, it is full of practical tips in each chapter. You can apply them right away and start feeling the difference in your life.

Jonathan Mead from Iluminated Mind just released an e-book entitled Reclaim Your Dreams: An Uncommon Guide to Living On Your Own Terms. I don’t know about you, but I believe that dreams are important part of our lives. Your dreams can energize, inspire, and motivate you. They can take you to new heights in your life. Most importantly, living your dreams makes you live your own life. You no longer live according to what other people are telling you. Instead, you follow your heart and do what matters to you.

Of course, doing that is not easy and that’s why this 84-page e-book comes to help. As its title says, Reclaim Your Dreams helps you reclaim your dreams. It does that in two steps:

1. It shows you how to overcome the obstacles to living your dreams.
2. It shows you the tools you need and practical solutions to living your dreams.

Here are some things I love about the e-book:

• It has useful tips on finding your dreams and connecting them with your value and life purpose. This way your dreams, value, and purpose are synchronized.
• It has tips to keep your dreams alive. I sometimes forget to follow my dreams when I’m busy with my activities. There are some good ways here to constantly remind yourself about your dreams.
• It identifies both the mental and practical obstacles to living your dreams and gives you the tips to overcome them.

In my opinion, this e-book is like a prequel to Career Renegade (my review). Reclaim Your Dreams deals more with finding your dreams and the motivation to follow them. Career Renegade deals more with how to make a living from it. Both can help you live a fulfilling life.

You can find more information about the e-book on the e-book’s web site.

Do you want to make a great living doing what you love? I certainly do. The book Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields aims to help you achieve exactly that:

The simple truth is you can turn nearly any passion into a big, fat heap of money. However, it often requires mining aspects of those passions you never knew existed or bringing them to life in markets and ways that defy the mainstream.

I often write about the importance of passion for career (example), so I was excited when I received a review copy of the book.

Let’s look inside it.

Inside Career Renegade

There are four parts inside the book with a total of twenty one chapters.

Part 1. What Makes You Come Alive?

1. You Don’t Have to Be World Class to Make a World-Class Living

If you think creatively and work hard, you can make a great living from your passion without being a world class.

2. What’s Your Secret Passion?

To find your passion, you should look at your experiences. Then, select the ones that put you in the state of flow and allows you to be around the people and culture you like.

Part 2. What Kind of Renegade Will You Be?

3. Introducing the Career Renegade Paths

There are seven career paths you can choose to live your dream career which will be explored in chapter 4 to 9. The first two (in chapter 4) deals with finding opportunities in alternative markets or niche markets. The last five (chapter 5 to 9) deals with exploiting unsatisfied needs.

4. Turn Your Passion Loose in Unexpected Places

It may be difficult to earn a living if you just apply your passion in the common places. Instead, you should find different (often unexpected) markets where your passion is highly valued. Alternatively, you can narrow the existing market to find a promising submarket.

5. Got Information? Sell It!

One of the gaps you can exploit is information gap. What information do people want that you can provide?

6. Want to Teach? Expand Your Reach

Is there an educational gap regarding your passion? If there is, you can exploit the opportunity by teaching. With technologies you can reach much wider audience and leverage your time.

7. Exploit the Need for Stuff

Another gap you can exploit is the need of stuff. What stuff or gear do people need?

8. Exploit the Need for Community

People want to connect with like-minded people but perhaps the community doesn’t exist. You can become a community creator and bring people together.

9. Make It Easier for People to Do What You Love

You can also exploit access gap. Can you give people better access to the resources they need?

10. Planning and Protecting Your Vision

Depending on what you do, you might need to form a business entity and protect your creation with patents, copyrights, or trademarks. You also need to create a business plan.

11. Is the World Ready for You?

It’s not enough to have passion. You should be sure that there is a hungry market for it. In this chapter, there are a lot of specific techniques you can use to assess the market demand.

Part 3.How to Master Your Passion and Build a Worldwide Following

12. Are You Ready for the Renegade World?

You need to master your passion to be successful. Fortunately, there are a lot of free resources available on the Internet to help you learn. For better results, you should also invest money on your learning.

13. Launching Your Quest for Authority

Next to acquiring mastery, you need to demonstrate your mastery and thereby build your authority. Blogging and micro-blogging are two creative ways to do that.

14. Getting Social Online

You can also build authority using social media. Social media sites help you connect with other people and providing value through these interactions builds your authority.

15. Building on Blogging and Social Media

Besides blogging, micro-blogging, and social media, there are other tools that can help you build your authority. Two of them are podcasting and online press releases. Traditional media is also a good option.

16. Marketing that Won’t Break the Bank

Rather than relying on advertising for marketing, you should find ways to be remarkable and become a source of conversation.

Part 4. Let the Revolution Begin

17. Cultivate the Renegade Mind-Set

Having the right mind-set is essential because it fuels your actions. To cultivate the right mind-set, focus on success and not failure.

18. How to Be a Renegade without Ending Up Divorced and Penniless

When you decide that you want to switch career, you need to rally the support of the key people around you.

19. Don’t Do It Alone

Things will be much easier for you if you have the right people as your mentors. Invest your time in finding and nurturing relationships with them.

20. Hold On to Your Life Preserver Until You Can Swim

To make the transition smooth, you may need to live a double life for some time. Stay with your old career while building a new one.

21. Be Your Own Guru

Take the career that makes you come alive and be the person that you want to become.

Conclusion

Career Renegade is a powerful book on having a meaningful career. It covers every parts of the equation from finding your passion, finding the gap to make money, building your expertise, building your authority, cultivating the right mindset, and making the transition.

Furthermore, there are a lot of specific tips and techniques in each chapter to apply the principles. Chapter 11 for example, teaches you how to use tools like SEOBook, Google Trends, and Clickbank to assess market demand. Such tips help you take action directly rather than just reading.

Reading this book has been a rich learning experience for me. Having a career you love requires persistence and hard work, but a guide like this can save you a lot of time.

As you might know, I’m passionate about personal growth. That’s why I was excited when I heard about a new book entitled Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth by Steve Pavlina. It’s a book that aims to find universal patterns and principles behind personal growth that can be applied to all aspects of our life. As the author put it:

I set out to find the common pattern behind all successful growth efforts, to identify a complete set of core principles that would be universally applicable.

The principles must be something that can be applied to your health as well as your relationships, your career as well as your finance.

Does the book succeed? Let’s see.

Inside Personal Development for Smart People

The book begins with an explanation of the universal principles:

It took me almost two and a half years, but I eventually found the solution I was looking for. It consists of just three core principles: truth, love, and power. Four secondary principles are directly derived from the first three: oneness, authority, courage, and intelligence. Oneness is truth plus love. Authority is truth plus power. Courage is love plus power. And intelligence is the total combination of truth, love, and power.

These principles form the foundation for the rest of the book.

The book is divided into two parts with a total of 13 chapters. The first part explains the seven principles one by one, while the second part explains practical applications of those principles in several areas of life.

Part I. Fundamental Principles

1. Truth

Truth is the first core principle of personal growth. If you want to grow, you must first recognize where you are and accept it as it is. Only then can you take action to take your life to a better position.

Some of the things that may block you from truth are media conditioning, false beliefs, and addictions. You can become more truthful through exercises like self assessment, journaling, and media fasting.

2. Love

The essence of love is connecting. To become more loving, you should be willing to connect with others. To connect here means to think about them and to give them your attention.

It’s a simple but nice way to describe love. Just try it yourself. Give someone else your genuine attention and you’ll feel the existence of love there.

3. Power

Power is your ability to create the world around you. It’s your ability to make things happen. Some components of power are responsibility, focus, effort, and self-discipline.

There are a lot of good ideas in this chapter to help you make things happen. For example, the point of goal setting is to improve the quality of your present moment. It’s useless to create goals that doesn’t help you do better in the present.

Also, it’s important to build your self-discipline. You need motivation to start, but self discipline is what you need to finish.

4. Oneness

Oneness is a secondary principle that comes from combining truth and love. Oneness is the awareness that you’re connected with everybody else. While love is about choosing to connect, oneness is about knowing that you’re already connected.

When you look from the point of view of oneness, what is good for others is also good for you and vice versa. Consequently, things like honesty and compassion will naturally flow out of you.

5. Authority

Authority is a secondary principle that comes from combining truth and power. Having authority means having the clarity of how you want your life to be and having the power to make it happen.

To exercise authority, you must take responsibility for your life. You need to do what matters to you and measure the effectiveness of your effort. You can then use the feedback to adjust your actions.

6. Courage

Courage is a secondary principle that comes from combining love and power. To be courageous is to confront fear with the power that comes from your deepest connections.

A major part of being courageous is to follow your heart. Whenever you feel that you’re no longer connected with your heart, stop and  ask yourself: Where is the path with a heart? Then have the courage to follow the path.

7. Intelligence

Intelligence is a secondary principle that comes from combining the three core principles: truth, power, and love. Consequently, the definition of intelligence is alignment with truth, love, and power.

An important of part of being intelligent is to master the art of creative self-expression. You should be able to share what is most important to you (your message) in the right way for you (your medium). The medium here, for instance, could be writing, speaking, or painting.

Part II. Practical Applications

This part applies the seven principles covered in Part I to several areas of your life: habits, career, money, health, relationships, and spirituality. There are plenty of specific techniques in each chapter that I can’t possibly cover here.

Conclusion

Personal Development for Smart People is a thought-provoking book. While the principles in the book are not new, the book arranges and connects the principles in a clear and concise way. I especially like the way the four secondary principles are derived from the three primary ones.

Honestly, there are some views in the book that I disagree. That being said, Personal Development for Smart People contains a lot of ideas that are useful for personal growth. I plan to apply many of them to my life. It also has a creative way of looking at some issues (like goal setting in chapter 3) that makes me rethink my approach on them.

This article is part of October 2008 theme: Winning Attitude

My friend Andrew Rondeau – who wrote a guest post here last week – just launched a new product called Get Applause Now. This is a package designed to improve your public speaking skill which is co-authored by Andrew and Darren LaCroix, the World Champion of Public Speaking in 2001.

I’ve personally been thinking about improving my speaking skills for a while. As you all know, communication skill is essential for success. Since I’ve been working on my writing skill for some time now (thanks mainly to this blog), the next thing to work on would be my speaking skill.

The funny thing is just a few days before Andrew gave me a review copy, someone I trust advised me to improve my speaking skill. What a coincidence! I got a package on public speaking right when I was thinking about it.

The package comes with a free 28-page PDF you can download entitled The Simple Steps to Deliver A Dazzling Presentation.

The package itself consists of four parts (three MP3s and one PDF):

1. How to Write and Deliver a Winning Speech
   This is the first MP3 I listened to. Here Darren LaCroix explained in detail what you need to have to make a good speech. As an outsider to public speaking world, it gives me an insight on the kind of preparation that goes into a good speech. A good speech requires you to understand your listeners so that you can capture their attention and get your message across.
2. Humor 101: Comedy Secrets for Professional Presentations
   Here Darren discussed the situations that make people laugh and how to create such situations yourself. There’s a clear process behind making people laugh that professional speakers know and follow. You can see that stand-up comedians actually use it in their performances.
3. Free to Fee: How to Start Getting Paid to Speak
   In it, Darren explained what you need to do if you want to become a professional speaker.  He discussed the mental and technical difficulties you will face along with tips on how to overcome them. It helps me understand how speaking business works and how to be part of it.
4. Get Applause Now: Make Your Presentations Come Alive
   This is a 64-page PDF by Andrew that helps you make good presentations. It covers multiple aspects of presentation including preparation, using visual aids, structuring content, and delivery. Each section has a Personal Action Plan to help you apply it.

All in all, I think it’s a solid package for its price ($39.95). For someone new to speaking like me, it’s  eye-opening and gives me a foundation to understand the world of public speaking.

You can go to Get Applause Now web site for more information.

Note:
In the first three days of the launch you will get three additional e-books and two additional MP3s as bonus.