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.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This was the sum of life until the summer of 2003 when I turned 41. Separated from my wife, emotionally distanced from my teenage son and daughter and alienated from God, my life was in emotionally and spiritually decay and my self-confidence had eroded.

He shares many of the lessons that he has learned along the way at his blog. Now he has released his first eBook, How to Finish Strong in Life.

What is it About?

This book is a compilation of the best posts from the blog, collected and reformatted into a 52 page document. The book is divided into 3 sections:

• Growth
• Love
• Faith

Most of the book features short tips with a small amount of longer, more philosophical passages to connect some of the dots. Here is one of my favorite tips from the Growth section:

Stop doing what you’ve been doing that doesn’t work.
Comfort can be your biggest obstacle to growth. When you get nestled down deep into your comfort zone you may become reluctant to break away because the fear of the unknown can be paralyzing. Sometimes your own unhappiness is not even enough to inspire you to take the leap of faith and step into the fear that surrounds your comfort zone.
Take an honest look at your own life. Are you doing things you know don’t work; but you keep doing them nonetheless because either you are too scared to try something new or you don’t know any other way?

Who Should Buy This?

Because this book is written mostly in a tips format, I would recommend it for people who are looking for a resource to keep on their desktops (or printed out and kept on their bookshelf) for a “quick hit” of inspiration. Alex’s writing style is very uplifting, but can also challenge you to achieve more and look at your life in new ways.

I’ll be honest and tell you all that the content in this book is not revolutionary. In fact, all of the content is freely available at Alex’s website. He is following in the footsteps of other high profile bloggers like Leo at Zen Habits, whose latest offering, Zen Handbook for Life, is a “best of the blog” eBook. However, at $4.95 for a .pdf download, you can’t go wrong.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

As I said in the post, I had immediate positive results with tapping as soon as I tried it. Over the past few months I have watched more of the videos at Tapping.com and lurked in the forums on its companion site, TappingForum.com. I learned that there are more ways to apply tapping than to just relieve a high level of stress or anxiety. In fact, it seemed like others have had great results using tapping to eliminate all types of negative beliefs – even some that they weren’t even conscious of until they started to explore them in more detail.

I decided to go a little deeper in my exploration of tapping, and the Tap Yourself Free E-book available at Tapping.com seemed like a great place to start.

What is It and What do you Get?
Tap Yourself Free is actually a package of three E-books that are designed to introduce you to the tapping process and give you concrete ways to apply this set of tools in your daily life. It also includes access to a private forum for ongoing support. Currently the package sells for $39 U.S. and is available as an instant download. The author of the books goes by the name Magnus and he is the same person that appears in the instructional videos on Tapping.com and is also active at TappingForum.com. Let’s dive in a little closer and look at each of the three books.

Tap Yourself Free is the main book in the package that provides the bulk of the background and instructional content. It is a 134 page book that goes into a lot of detail about the effects of emotions on happiness and well-being as well as the physiology behind tapping. It includes explanations about our bodies’ energy meridians, even going so far as to suggest that skeptics use an electronic detector pen (a common electrician’s tool used for determining if a wire is “live”) on their own tapping points to see the electric field present in those places. This book references the videos available at Tapping.com in several places and uses them as fundamental instructional material to really teach the mechanics of the tapping process. However, it goes into much more detail about the causes of specific problems and ways to resolve those problems. The main chapters in the book are:

1. Introduction
2. Emotional Literacy
3. Releasing
4. The Road Map
5. Dealing With Your Problems
6. Living the Good Life
7. Wealth
8. Finding Love and Healthy Relationships
9. Health
10. Spiritual Matters
11. Physical Healing
12. Tapping the World (Tapping for World Peace)

Tapping Guide: Manual, Exercises and Worksheets is just what is sounds like. It’s a 52 page book that includes more information on the mechanics of tapping as well as a series of worksheets to help you work through specific problem areas such as happiness, confidence, and forgiveness. Each worksheet consists of a series of questions designed to help you draw out the specific incidences and emotions that are causing you distress.

The Science of Getting Rich with Tapping Guide is a bonus book that includes the complete text of The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles accompanied by a series of tapping exercises designed to draw out negative feelings about wealth. The Wattles text is a classic personal development book dating back to the early 20th century. Magnus uses the text as the basis of an exhaustive list of questions the have the potential to clear almost every block you could have against taking the actions you need to improve your financial situation. It may seem unlikely that you have negative beliefs about making lots of money, but this book explains how we often view “rich people” as “jerks” and lots of other Very Bad Things.

How Do I Use It?
I downloaded Tap Yourself Free on January 4 and immediately read through all three of the E-books because I wanted to dive right into the tools. In retrospect, this probably wasn’t the best way to go about things. I would recommend reading through the main Tap Yourself Free book and then working through the Tapping Guide, addressing the issues most effective for you. After you’ve taken care of some of the issues lower on Maslow’s hierarchy, such as anxiety, stress and depression, then it would be more appropriate to move onto issues of accumulating wealth.

Magnus suggests that it can take a hundred rounds of tapping to clear away enough negative emotions to start really feeling different. I’m quite sure I haven’t made it through 100 rounds of tapping and I’ve already noticed a substantial difference in my emotional outlook. I expect to feel even better in the near future because of the mental shift I’m making in my use of the process.

Up until I got the E-books, I had been using tapping in a reactive way. For example, if I was feeling stressed out during the day I would close the door to my office and tap a round or two until I felt better. After reading through the E-books, I realized that I can use tapping proactively to work on issues that keep me from being as successful as I’d like. In particular, I’ve been working on confidence and procrastination. The Tapping Guide has been very helpful in these exercises and I’ve actually printed the whole thing out and take it along with me in my bag. I’ve also watched some of the videos on Tapping.com a few times to familiarize myself even more with the tapping process. When I have some free time, or I’m ready to wind down in the evening I tap a couple of rounds of questions.

Does It Work?
I give Tap Yourself Free an 8 out of 10 for effectiveness so far. In the three weeks that I’ve had the E-books, I haven’t even scratched the surface of all of the negative beliefs that I hold. In a lot of ways this process feels like peeling the layers of an onion. I may identify one negative emotion such as, “I don’t want to work on this project because it is boring,” tap on it and realize that part of why it’s “boring” is because I don’t understand part of it. Then I’ll tap on my fear of not being able to learn the skill that I need to complete the project, and so on.

One thing I need to keep in mind is that the E-book package is just part of the whole set of resources that Magnus has made available at Tapping.com and the TappingForums.com. My plan for going forward with this toolset is to continue to watch the videos that relate to my target issues and to ask questions in the forums when I get stuck. It’s a really exciting process that I think will make a great difference in my life as I work with it more.

Why Does It Work?
To be perfectly honest, I have no idea why tapping works, and neither does Magnus. As he writes in Tap Yourself Free:

There are people who would prefer to wait for scientific papers explaining how tapping works before they will try it. It’s a shame because these tend to be the sort of people who stand to benefit most from using it. Direct experience of tapping is enough to convince most people that it does something…

It’s possible that it’s just a placebo effect, although I doubt that because I’ve had consistently good results with the process. If it was purely a placebo effect, I would expect that some times it would work well at random times and not well at all for other situations. To me the most scientific explanation for the immediate physical effects of tapping is that touching those specific pressure points releases negative energy in ways similar to acupuncture, but without the needles

Who Should Buy This?
I really believe that Tap Yourself Free has been effective for me and that it will continue to be a positive addition to my personal development tool bag. I can completely understand any skepticism about the process. For people who are at least willing to give it a try, I recommend that you watch a couple of the introductory videos at Tapping.com and give it a chance. Probably the best time to try tapping is when you are feeling a particularly strong negative emotion such as fear or anxiety. If a couple of rounds of tapping has you convinced that you want to incorporate more tapping into your life, you may want to purchase Tap Yourself Free.

I specifically recommend this E-book for people who:

• Want to feel more positive about life.
• Have bad habits they would like to break.
• Struggle with procrastination and lack of motivation.
• Have tried meditation but found it too time intensive.
• Really want to take their personal and professional lives to the next level.

Share Your Story
I would love to hear from other people who have used tapping – successfully or not. Also, I’d love to know about other products that people have used and what they thought of them. If you have a story to tell, let us know about it in the comments below.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I am excited that there’s now an entire community on the Web devoted to supporting people working on their personal development.

As you can see, it’s called Personal Development Partners, and it’s a new community site dedicated solely to personal development. It just so happens that today is the last day of a huge membership drive and is a great time to join. The community has grown enormously over the past few weeks so the discussion boards are starting to see a good amount of activity.

One unique aspect to this site is a group called the Senior Thought Leaders. These include some well known personal development bloggers like Priscilla Palmer, Aaron Potts, and Dave Olson. From what I’ve seen, all of the Senior Thought Leaders are quite active in the discussion boards and more than willing to give advice and feedback.

Another great feature is the Forum dedicated to forming partnerships and Mastermind groups where members support each other in achieving goals. It’s one of the most popular forums on the site and one where I plan to participate the most.

I joined a couple of weeks ago at the free level which gives you access to most of the discussion boards and a MySpace-esque user profile page with lots of customization and social media options. A couple of days ago, I decided to upgrade to the Premium level (for the bargain price of $10 for 6 months!) to gain access to the electronic resources contributed by the Senior Thought Leaders. To see what’s available have a look a this list. I’ve downloaded a couple of the ebooks and audio selections and am enjoying those as well. You’ll have to hurry is you want to get in at the $10 price, because it’s going up to $20 for 6 months tomorrow!

If you have any interest in working with others to achieve your personal development goals, I encourage you to check out Personal Development Partners. When you sign up, be sure to introduce yourself!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

What Is It?
In brief, Quantum Mind Power is a package of recordings that incorporates brainwave entrainment as well as other audio neural technologies. Its goal is to help the listener increase his or her concentration and enthusiasm while reducing stress and anxiety. This is accomplished by listening to the package of recordings according to a prescribed schedule that is designed for maximum benefit.

What do you Get?
At the present time, Quantum Mind Power is an entirely digital product (despite the snazzy picture that depicts actual CDs and a printed manual). Update: The producers tell me that CDs and a printed manual are available now.

The package consists of six .mp3 files (as well two free sample files, Digital Coffee and Alpha Flight), a .pdf User’s Manual, access to a support forum, an audio interview describing the product and its benefits, and several follow up emails. The six .mp3s are:

• Neural Synergy. This is the backbone of the program. The User’s Manual recommends listening to Neural Synergy every day.
• Eden Energy Wave Dynamics. This recording is designed to overcome negative emotions that keep people from working toward their goals. The User’s Manual recommends using it when you are feeling run-down or unmotivated. It can replace Neural Synergy in the daily listening schedule.
• Whole Brain Gratitude Meditation. This is the first of 2 recordings with audible voice tracks taking the listener through a guided meditation. The meditation itself asks the listener to focus on family, friends, coworkers, and the like and experience deep feelings of gratitude. The User’s Manual says that, “Gratitude is considered to be the key to unlocking the ability of people to be happy and content.”
• Emotive Brainwave Hypnosis. This recording also features a guided meditation. The focus of this recording seems to be to entrain the mind to believe that success and happiness can be easy to achieve. The User’s Manual says, “The hypnosis will help you ‘rewire’ some of your old thinking patterns that aren’t serving you well.”
• Subliminal Wealth and Prosperity Support. This recording actually features subliminal messages (is anyone else thinking of Judas Priest right now?). The messages are designed to help the listener overcome unconscious negative feelings about wealth, such as “Rich people are all jerks.” It is also designed to help the listener notice wealth generating opportunities in everyday life.
• Subliminal Health Support. This recording also features subliminal messages which are designed to help the listener think positively about health.

How Do I Use It?
I downloaded Quantum Mind Power on August 28 and immediately started to follow an (almost) daily listening schedule, very close to what the User’s Manual recommends. One nice feature of the program is that both Neural Synergy and Eden Energy Wave Dynamics are each available in 12 different combinations of pattern and tone. The program suggests that you listen to the provided samples of each and choose the one you find most pleasing. (I ended up selecting the deepest tone of the monaural pattern for both recordings.)

I’ve had a fairly regular meditation practice for well over a year now, which I typically do in the morning when I first wake up. It was an easy adaptation for me to put Neural Synergy and Eden Energy Wave Dynamics on my .mp3 player and listen to one of those instead of doing breath meditation. In fact, it is quite a nice change because all I have to do is turn my alarm off, put on my headphones, and lay in bed for another 30 minutes while the track plays! As recommended, I have listened to Neural Synergy most often – probably 5 out of 7 days – but on those days when I’m feeling unfocused or low on energy, I listen to Eden Energy.

At night before I go to sleep, I alternate listening to Whole Brain Gratitude Meditation and Emotive Brainwave Hypnosis. These are both very relaxing recordings, and I haven’t had any problem going to sleep immediately after them. In fact, some nights I didn’t quite make it through the program before nodding off!

I logged into the forum a couple of times and read through some of the posts. It isn’t the most active forum, but I was very impressed that Morry Zelcovitch, the program’s creator, answered nearly every question that users asked. Some of the users have developed different ways of using the program and shared their experiences. Others asked for help with problems and forum members or Morry himself were generally able to help.

The one part of the program that I find difficult to use are the subliminal recordings. The User’s Manual specifically says to NOT use headphones when listening to these two recordings, but to listen to them as you go about your daily activities. This is problematic to me for a couple of reasons:

1. I share an office nearly all the time I’m at work, and I don’t want to bug my office mates with recordings of raindrops and wind.
2. I don’t have a CD player that can play .mp3 tracks. My reading of the manual suggests that it’s not a good idea to convert the tracks to .cda format.

I actually tried to listen to them with headphones, but they sounded like muddy noise – completely different from the nature sounds that you hear when playing them through speakers. What I ended up doing was listening to each recording once or twice a week in my car. This goes against all of the warnings in the manual, but I’ve managed to get myself home safe every day so far. I would like to put in a request to Morry that these subliminal recordings be redesigned so that they can be listened to with headphones effectively.

The manual and the forum indicate that some people feel strange physical effects when listening to the recordings. Some people reported feeling dizzy or nauseous. Others just felt disconnected, like they were floating. I haven’t had any of those sensations when listening to Neural Synergy, Eden Energy, or the guided meditations. I listen to them with headphones as recommended at the highest volume that is comfortable for me. However, I have had some physical reactions when listening to the subliminal recordings. Subliminal Wealth in particular seems to cause me to feel a lot of sinus pressure. It’s not anything I would describe as painful, I’m just very aware of pressure right behind the bridge of my nose. I haven’t yet asked about this in the forums, but I may investigate this further.

Does It Work?
I give Quantum Mind Power a 6 out of 10 for effectiveness so far. The User’s Manual says that it can take as long as 30 days of listening for some people to notice effects, so I wanted to give this product at a least a month in my test. Now, to be truthful, I’ve missed a few listening sessions, especially on weekends, so I probably haven’t done 30 actual days of listening, but I have noticed some effects.

Neural Synergy does seem to help me focus more effectively, which is really important to me right now because I have many, many things going on at my day job. I’ve listened to both Neural Synergy and Eden Energy more than once at work and they do help me calm down and focus on the task at hand more effectively.

Because of the previously mentioned logistical problems, I haven’t listened to the subliminal recordings very much – maybe 5 or six times each, so I haven’t noticed my health or wealth improving in a logarithmic manner so far! However, I did notice something kind of odd when driving while listening to Subliminal Wealth – I drive better. Normally I’m a pretty laid back driver, content to pull over when faster moving cars want to pass me. This often results in me getting stuck behind a slow-moving semi, which is a little annoying. When listening to Subliminal Wealth, I’m much more defensive and precise in my driving. I’ll look ahead, see opportunities for passing and being passed and act more decisively. If Morry can explain that one, I’m happy to listen!

The follow-up emails that I mentioned above are somewhat typical back-end sales types of emails. They come from Morry Zelcovitch’s partner, Song Chengxiang, and contain part information/part sales pitch. However, I haven’t unsubscribed from the list because I find the informational content quite interesting. Song is an expert in intentions, manifestations,and positive thinking and his emails often have exercises to help improve skills in those areas. I certainly need to improve my positive thinking skills, so I’ve done a few exercises and found them useful.

The one recording I’ve had the most immediate positive results from is the Whole Brain Gratitude Meditation. For one thing, it’s a very relaxing recording and helps me get to sleep very easily, but that’s just a bonus. The real benefit of this recording is that it the guided imagery floods my body with positive emotions. It makes me feel happy to be alive, and it inspires me to show my appreciation to people much more often than I typically would. This has a very powerful impact on my daily life, and I want to express my gratitude to Morry for this great recording

Who Should Buy This?
First of all, I want to let you know that this product costs $147, or $197 for the premium version (which includes a couple of extra tracks that I haven’t discussed.) I think it is well worth the price, especially considering how much money I have spent over the years on classes, books and tapes to learn effective meditation techniques.

This product isn’t a miracle cure for all that ails you, but I do think certain people will find it helpful:

• People who have a hard time meditating. If you can’t make yourself sit still and focus on your breath for 10 or 15 minutes, Quantum Mind Power is a good substitute. I find that Neural Synergy brings about the same level of focus as 10 minutes of breath concentration.
• People who are mildly depressed. I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to forgo medical treatment for serious depression, but I think that this product and especially the Whole Brain Gratitude Meditation can elevate the mood of a mildly depressed person. I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder and have been using this product at just the time of year that I generally start to feel those effects. I can definitely say that I’ve felt better this Fall than I have in several years.
• People that already enjoy Brainwave Entrainment products. If you are currently a user of any brainwave entrainment products, whether they are free or not, you will definitely like Quantum Mind Power. It does sound a little different from the entrainment recordings I’ve listened to, and I’ve found it even more effective in increasing focus and evoking positive feelings.

If you fit any of these criteria, I encourage you to try one of the free recordings or sign up for a no risk trial of Quantum Mind Power.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.