Personal Development for Smart People is uber-blogger Steve Pavlina’s first (and probably not last) book. It is the result of his many years of study of personal development and over four years of running the single most popular personal development blog on the web. Unlike some other books by bloggers, this book is much more than a dressed-up compilation of blog posts.

Note: Be sure to read through to the end for my book giveaway contest!

In this book, Steve takes on the daunting task of creating what I would call a unified theory of personal development. (You know, kind of like what Stephen Hawking tried to do for physics!).

The book is divided into two parts: Fundamental Principles and Practical Application. In my opinion, the practical application section of the book is very similar to Steve’s blog. There are sections on establishing positive habits, finding a meaningful career, health (veganism is strongly featured), and the other areas you can find in the blog. I wouldn’t buy the book for this section. What makes it worth $16 is…

The Fundamental Principles

The foundation of personal development advanced in this book is based on seven fundamental principles. The diagram you see here is used throughout the book to illustrate the seven principles. In Steve’s theory, not all seven are created equal. He sees Truth, Love and Power are core principles and stand on their own. You can think of them as primary colors.

The three sides of the triangle, Oneness, Authority and Courage combine two of the core principles, the way yellow and blue make green. Courage=Power+Love. Oneness=Love+Truth. Authority=Truth+Power. Finally, Intelligence is the combination of all the rest of the principles.

Steve explains all of these principles in great detail. I selected a short excerpt from his chapter on Truth to illustrate:

Reality is the ultimate arbiter of truth. If you thoughts, beliefs, and actions aren’t aligned with truth, your results will suffer. Positioning yourself in this way isn’t enough to guarantee success, but siding with falsehood is enough to guarantee failure. When you align yourself with truth, your troubles won’t fix themselves overnight, but you’ll be taking an important step in the right direction.

This goes on for several pages.

All of the chapters in Part 1 feature exercises intended to help you develop your capacity to live each of these principles. Some of them have been featured on the blog, but others are new. Steve is careful to point out that all of the principles have to be applied equally, or you will end up with an imbalance which could lead to less than optimal behavior. For example, if you overdevelop your capacity for Power and don’t develop Love, you could end up as the CEO of the next Enron. In an ideal path of personal development, you will become well rounded (or should I say an Equilateral Triangle!)

To Buy or Not to Buy?

Personal Development for Smart People is the best book written by a blogger that I have ever read. Steve Pavlina is a masterful writer who has developed his own, unique theory of personal development. This book is much more than a compilation of blog posts. However, the writing style is very accessible to someone accustomed to reading blogs. The text is broken up into short sections which are easy to read. Part 1 needs to be read sequentially, but Part 2 can be read in any order depending on which area interests you at the moment. Overall, the book is blog-like in the best possible way.

Steve is a computer programmer and mathematician by training and he is definitely a left-brained thinker. The theory behind his principles is quite mathematical feeling. It’s a strong contrast to a lot of the touchy-feely stuff that tends to be featured in personal development books.

If you follow Steve’s blog and enjoy it, I know that you will enjoy the book and take away many powerful insights. If you don’t know Steve’s work, but you are interested in personal development in general and especially the theories behind personal development, you will find this book delightful. If you are just looking for practical application and don’t have an interest in theoretical models, you are probably best served by reading through the hundreds of pages of Steve’s archives.

Of course, if you do decide to purchase the book, I would love it if you use the link from this post. I get a (very) small percentage of all sales, which goes to support the operating costs for this site.

Want a Copy?

Hay House was kind enough to send me a free copy of this book for review purposes. I would like to pass it on to someone who will enjoy it. If you would like my marked up, written in copy, leave a comment below describing one issue related to personal development and/or personal change that you would like to learn more about on this site. The winner will be chosen randomly using Post-its and a baseball hat by Friday, October 17.

Update: I’ve conducted a highly unscientific drawing and the lucky winner is JoAnn! Thanks to everyone who left comments. I’ll be covering some of the suggested topics in upcoming posts. – MG

My thanks to Hay House for allowing me to use the triangle graphic from the book.

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