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Book Review : Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina
October 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I was introduced to Erin’s (Steve’s wife) website by a close friend at the end of 2006 while searching for information that relates to lucid dreaming. From there I got to know Steve as the most courageous, disciplined, smart, crazy and funny guy! It has been almost 2 years since I started reading his blog. His contents are filled with enormous inspiration that will put you in motion towards self development. One of my improvements includes creating selfmod.net that has the objective of contributing to the community to promote self development.
Perhaps you can call it Law Of Attraction that lead me to have the review copy of this book. I did not plan to buy it, I just knew that somehow I will end up having a copy of his book. A week after announcing that his books are in the printing process, he gave out an opportunity for bloggers to get his free review copy of Personal Development for Smart People. I sent in a request and to my surprise I got it. That was totally unbelievable! This will be the rare opportunity for me to repay Steve for his relentless effort towards self development.
The Universal Principle To Conscious Growth
Steve’s book will explain the three core principles that defines a conscious effort towards self development which are Truth, Love and Power, and their extensions Oneness, Authority, Courage and Intelligence.
Truth – All forms of expressions and communications must be rooted in truth. To start of your growth you must first accept who you truly are, even if you do not have enough strength to overcome your weaknesses at that moment.
Love – Is the strength of the connections that we have towards other human beings, animals, places or even things. The stronger it is, the more you are aligned with conscious growth.
Power – Refers to your ability to alter reality. This includes your ability to create your unique personality, successful career, wonderful relationships and anything that you desire.
Oneness – Is the combination of truth and love. Love is knowing that you can connect by choice. Oneness is knowing that you are already connected. Oneness is pure unconditional love.
Authority – Is the combination of truth and power. Truth without power accomplishes nothing. Power without truth generates wasted action. The principle of authority teaches you to purposefully blend knowledge and action to produce intelligent results.
Courage – Is the combination of love and power. Courage allows us to see through short-term challenges to achieve a long-term goal.
Intelligence – Is alignment with truth, love, and power. Every step we take in the direction of truth, love, and power is a step toward greater intelligence.
Once you understand them (or even if you haven’t), Steve provide substantial practical application of his principles in areas such as habits, career, money, health, relationships and spirituality.
Habits – With the proper alignment with truth, love and power, you will gradually drop those habits that no longer empowers you, for example, cursing, smoking, drinking and speeding. You will then pick up empowering habits such as being punctual, organized, like helping others and reading.
Career – Your career has two components: your medium and your message. Your medium is how you express yourself, but your message is what you express. For example, a doctor’s message could be about healing, compassion, scientific discovery, education, vitality, or a variety of other possibilities.
Money – Money is the primary social resource. Money is essentially social credit. It’s an IOU from society, enabling you to extract a certain amount of social value whenever you spend it. The more money you have, the more society owes you, and the more value you can extract.
Health – Your body is your avatar (the image that represents you) in the physical universe. It’s the character you control, and you’re the consciousness that controls it. All of your experiences in the physical universe come through your physical body. It’s your primary vehicle of interaction here, so it makes sense to take proper care of it.
Relationships – Human relationships are a tremendous source of learning and growth. Sharing your life with others is one of the best parts of being human, but it doesn’t come without risk. Unlike other aspects of personal development, the stakes are higher with relationships because your mistakes could potentially hurt someone deeply. There’s no getting around that risk completely, but the decision to align yourself with truth, love, and power will help guide you through the major stumbling blocks. When you make mistakes, do your best to forgive yourself, forgive others, and move on.
Spirituality – Spirituality refers to your collection of beliefs about reality. As you use the power of conscious choice to bring your life into greater alignment with truth, love, and power, the long-term result is spiritual wisdom and peace. Your life reaches a new level of clarity where all the parts begin working harmoniously together.
My Personal Thoughts
Honestly, Steve helped me achieve self development to some degree even before I read this book. It includes :-
- Reducing coffee
- Reignite my passion in developing lucid dreams (more to Erin on this one)
- Being a vegetarian (not completely yet due to social conditioning)
- Quitting alcohol (I still drink socially, again due to social conditioning)
- Started blogging
Personally, I’m not a fan of forms or structures, I prefer to go formless and be free of fixed rules. However, Steve did a great job aligning them to a point that it makes great sense. I felt a tingling sensation after finishing reading the book, a feeling that’s always there when I discover something insightful, and I smiled. I’m elevated by Steve again!
Personal Development for Smart People is a great package that includes a very structured approach and also filled with very practical exercises that you can start working on to create a more conscious world to live in. I really would recommend it to anyone who wishes to enhance themselves, to find their purpose in life and even those who need just that little motivation to start improving.
(Click here to download his free Intro & Chapter 1 of Personal Development for Smart People)
Coupled with his online contributions/articles in www.stevepavlina.com , the value that you are getting far outweighs the money that you are paying for this book. This guy is really devoted to raising the world’s collective consciousness to a higher level. Let us join him to create Oneness World!
Improvements are contagious. Modify yourself!
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