Book Review: Steve Pavlina – Personal Development for Smart People
I was privileged to receive an advanced copy of Steve Pavlina’s new book Personal Development for Smart People for review on www.positive-attitude-tips.com.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Steve Pavlina, he’s
the
author and creator of one of the web’s most popular personal
development websites: StevePavlina.com
- Personal Development for
Smart People.
Since I’ve enjoyed the articles on Steve Pavlina’s website for years, I
was excited to dig into his book as soon as it arrived.
Personal Development for Smart People is centered on three core principles and four secondary principles that can be applied to any area of your life to bring about personal growth. Pavlina developed the seven principles and wrote Personal Development for Smart People because he found that of the hundreds of other personal development books that he’s read, none of them offered a comprehensive approach to growing in all areas of life. The first half of the book is devoted to explaining in detail each of the seven principles. The second half of the book helps the reader apply the principles to each area of their life: habits, career, money, health, relationships, and spirituality.
I really enjoyed reading Personal Development for Smart People and I highly recommend it if you’re in any way interested in personal development. I found Pavlina’s writing style clear and easy to follow and he included many personal examples, which really helped me relate to and understand what he was saying. While reading through the content I had many ‘ah ha’ moments when Pavlina’s words brought clarity or new insights to current problems in my own life. I appreciate when a book can do that for me by just presenting its content. I hadn’t even gotten around to making a conscious effort to apply the principles yet.
THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES
Personal Development for Smart People devotes an entire chapter to each principle, so please don’t take this list as containing comprehensive explanations of each:The Three Core Principles of Personal Development for Smart People
Truth – It’s impossible to grow when you’re in a state of denial toward your current situation. The principle of truth states that in order to grow, you must first honestly analyze your current situation. It’s like using a map to plot a route. In order to get to a new destination, you have to know your starting point.Love – The principle of love is about what you choose to connect to in your life. Your actions always show what you’re choosing to connect to. When you’re at work, are you choosing to connect to your work, or are you choosing to connect with procrastination? When you’re not working, are you choosing to connect with family and friends, or are you choosing to connect to the television? Some connections will help you grow, others will not. If you want to grow, you need to consciously choose what connections you should make to strengthen you and which ones you need to let go.
Power – The principle of power is your ability to consciously and deliberately create the world around you. When your power is weak, you become a victim of circumstance, blaming everyone and everything except you for where you are in your life. When your power is strong, you accept complete responsibility for your life and you make conscious decisions and take action to create the results you desire.
The Four Secondary Principles of Personal Development for Smart People
The four secondary principles in Personal Development for Smart People are made up of combinations of the three primary principles.
Oneness - Oneness is a combination of Truth plus Love. Love is choosing to connect with someone or something; oneness is knowing that being connected is your natural state. Oneness is a feeling of connection to everyone and everything at the same time. It is pure, unconditional love.
Oneness can be compared to the human body. The body is the whole of the universe and each person or each thing in the universe is a cell within that body. The health, well-being, and actions of each individual cell affect the health and well-being of the whole body.
Authority – Authority is a combination of Truth plus Power. Truth without power accomplishes nothing and power without truth generates wasted action. Authority blends knowledge (truth) with action (power) to produce intelligent results. Without authority in your life you often waste time. If you have no authority and you acquire knowledge, that knowledge is rarely applied. With authority you take complete control of your life and intelligently move yourself toward what you choose to create.
Courage – Courage is a combination of Love plus Power. With love we can choose to connect with what we want in life and with power we can make the decision to achieve it. When we connect with an idea that has a positive long-term outcome, but there are also short-term negative consequences, it takes courage to take action. For example, say you’re thinking about leaving your job to start that business you’ve been dreaming about. The long- term consequences of having the business you dream of are positive. But the short-term consequences are negative, such as loss of income and the potential that your business won’t work out. This is where courage comes in. It enables you to move past your fears and choose to create what you want in life in spite of the short-term consequences.
Intelligence – Intelligence is a combination of all three of the core principles of Truth, Love, and Power. By combining truth, love, and power, we can intelligently and consciously grow in any area of life.
APPLICATION OF THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES
The second half of Personal Development for Smart People guides the reader through application of the seven principles to each area of life:Habits – Our regular habits dictate much of our level of success in any area of life. The problem with habits is that most of them are unconscious and we execute them without thinking. If we consciously evaluate our habits based on the seven principles, we can determine which habits are benefiting us, which habits are hurting us. We can also choose new, positive habits to install, which will help us grow.
Career – Using the seven principles to evaluate which career or business will best serve you as well as others.
Money – A review of two different approaches to making money as well as how you can increase your income by application of the seven principles.
Health – Using the principles to be honest about what in your life is currently benefiting your health and what is not. Also, how to use the principles to sift through all of the often conflicting health information available to us and determine what really will grow our health.
Relationships – How to overcome personal roadblocks to develop strong connections with yourself and others.
Spirituality
– Understanding and analyzing your beliefs about reality and why we’re
here. You will consciously be able to choose your beliefs instead of
simply accepting what you’re told.
MY EXPERIENCE OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR SMART PEOPLE
As I mentioned earlier, at many points throughout Personal Development for Smart People, I found Pavlina’s words brought a lot of clarity to my life, which I really appreciated. I found that I personally really needed to better understand the principle of truth. I’m sure you can tell by the theme of this website that I believe a positive attitude can make a big difference in your life. In fact, I’ve seen it work many times in my own life. However, after reading through Personal Development for Smart People, I found that I had fallen prey to something I warn my readers about — sticking your head in the sand and ignoring reality. This ignorance wasn’t based on a conscious decision. I simply wasn’t even aware of the truth because it was something I didn’t stop to look at or think about.I agree with Pavlina that you need to understand and acknowledge where you are now before you can start moving toward what you want. Moving toward what you want is where a positive attitude comes in. However, if you’re completely oblivious to obstacles, you’re not even noticing that something is wrong in the first place.
A Personal Example of Using the Principles
Reading Personal Development for Smart People brought me an ‘ah ha’ moment in terms of my health. I had a belief that because I’m a vegetarian, my diet was healthy. I spent my days rather oblivious to the fact that even though I was vegetarian, I was still eating a lot of processed and nutrient deficient foods. As a result, I had been feeling sluggish and foggy headed, but I was so focused on other areas of my life that I didn’t even really notice what was happening to my health. But as I was reading through the book, I was prompted to consciously evaluate my health and habits as they relate to health. This is when I realized that I wasn’t really living in the truth of my current situation.
I decided to try applying the seven principles to my diet to see how they would work in this particular situation. Here are the results.
Truth – I’m currently eating a lot of processed and nutrient deficient foods that will have short- and long-term detrimental effects on my health and wellness. If I choose to improve my diet, I will see improved health over the course of my life.
Love – With my current diet, I am choosing to connect with the short-term benefit of taste vs. the long term benefit of eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. I’m also limiting my ability to connect well in my relationships and my work because without optimal health, I cannot give as much of myself. In order to grow my health, I can also choose to connect with people that are healthier than me.
Power – I can exercise my power to create the level of health that I want in my life by consciously choosing to eat healthier foods.
Oneness – by improving my own level of health, I am contributing to the health of the whole body. By making healthier choices in what I consume, I serve as an example for others. By becoming healthier, I’m also able to better contribute more positively in the world.
Authority – By acknowledging the truth about my current diet, and by applying what I know to be true about what is included in a healthy diet, I am now in a position to take action. I can now exercise my authority in life and take intelligent action to create the results I want: more energy, more focus, and better overall health.
Courage – The long-term benefit of improving my diet is better overall health, more energy, and more focus. The short-term consequences of changing my diet are things like cravings for processed foods. By applying the principle of love and choosing to connect with the long-term benefits, I can now exercise my power and choose to focus on and take action toward what I want in life as opposed to giving up in the face of the short-term obstacles. I can use courage and act in spite of the short-term consequences.
Intelligence – By applying all the principles, I am now consciously growing in my health. With improved health, I’ll be more effective in all areas of my life.
CONCLUSION
Again, I highly recommend Steve Pavlina’s book Personal Development for Smart People if you are at all interested in making positive change in your life. By understanding and applying the principles outlined in the book, you will get several results. You will gain a deeper understanding of why you’re getting your current results in every area of your life. You will gain clarity on what results you want to generate. And you’ll have the tools to get you there.Click here to order your own copy of Personal Development for Smart People.To learn more about this topic, please check out the related articles listed at the bottom of the page.If you enjoyed this article please subscribe to our ezine and receive 2 free gifts
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