In our post, just a few short days ago, we suggested that readers pick up a book. This is the best alternative compared to spending a 10x premium on nightlife and paying UBER surge charges that could cause a global financial crisis. The post will be much shorter in length (~500 words per review) so we avoid giving away the main concepts of each book.
Gorilla Mindset: Recall, we gave away 10 free copies of the book as we were far too busy to read and do a book review at that time. Mike’s book is the most helpful book we’ve read in terms of creating a *Mind Body Connection*. We’re not sure if that was the intention, but that is the main takeaway we received. If you are a newbie and do not have your life together, we would suggest choosing just one section every 2 weeks to incorporate into your life.
Example: Mike goes through a series of posture exercises and forces you to write down what you believe you want out of life on a daily basis. This would generally cause a person to have too many things running through his mind to execute on. Simply put? Thinking about your posture, cutting out negative people and scaling yourself all at the same time is likely an overload on your brain. We would choose one every two weeks and once it has been incorporated over the next two weeks… Move on to the next.
While we think the most important aspect is creating a mind-body connection there are numerous helpful items that we were unaware of within the book. To name a few he covers supplements that will improve your skin, your mood and even your depression! While we don’t suffer from any of those ailments at this time, it is certainly good to know you have a laundry list of items to research.
You’re essentially reading a book by a person who used himself as a patient over the past 35 years… testing every single bunk and real supplement known to man-kind. We’ll take real experience over mainstream beliefs 100 times out of 100.
Finally, an overlook portion of the book is the section on selecting people for your life. We clearly agree. If there are negative people in your life (yes this includes your family) you need to get rid of them. Importantly, we’re not saying all families or all friends are bad, however you must choose who you associate with as it will change the course of your life forever. No. That is not an exaggeration. If you decide to hang out with dead-beats, overweight people, complainers and broke people… You’ll be pulled down before you drag them up. The old adage: “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink” is a life fact.
One Negative: There is one sentence we absolutely think should be deleted from the book. Forever. “Money is neither good nor evil”. We know you’re reading this Mike! We will never agree with this statement as 1) poverty is the root of all evil, 2) by claiming money is neither good or evil you’ve tricked yourself into saying you don’t need it… YOU DO and 3) assuming you have money you’re able to do *more good* for society therefore it is an enabler of doing good things for society (we assume all of you are normal human beings with a conscious).
Finally, we strongly suggest a *print* copy as it is a *work book*, instead of a typical book where you simply take notes.
The Charisma Myth: This is unquestionably the best book we have read that has been written by a female. That is not a joke. While other people that cater to men claim they are better than “all women”, we can easily say that 99.9% of men will not become anywhere near as successful as Olivia Fox Cabane (or as important). Hopefully that got your attention. Here is an excerpt:
“By choosing what you imagine, and by learning how to adjust your mental state, you can ensure that body language projects more presence, power and warmth, and thus charisma. In terms of achieving charisma, your internal state is critical”
Does that sound dangerously familiar to the book you see above? It certainly does.
Before you learn how to improve your charisma you have to find your baseline type of charisma, there are four: Authority, Kindness, Visionary and Focus.
Lets use this blog as an example. It would take less than fifteen seconds to realize that the default charisma state is Authority and Focus while having a severe lack in Kindness (we even delete low quality comments!). While this may work for a specific targeted niche… this is certainly not the best approach for all situations. If you were to attend a new conference where you’re meeting hundreds of successful people you want to turn on the “kindness” charisma instead of your default Authority and Focus charisma.
She argues that it is not possible to mentally control your body at all times. Were are not aware of our own eyes fluttering in front of us while everyone is well aware if we even do a partial eye roll. It is a much better strategy to essentially “check-in” to each charisma type that will be most appropriate for the situation. In times of great turbulence, people would certainly prefer to flock towards an Authority Charisma leader versus a Kindness leader. Alternatively, at a cocktail party, people would prefer spending time with kindness charisma and visionary charisma.
We’ve simplified this quite a bit, however she includes several techniques to help you understand where your baseline charisma is, how to improve it and which ones to *use* in which situation. You’ll find that your charisma type will also explain why you feel more comfortable in situation X versus situation Y.
One Negative: The one hole we find is that we do *not* believe she is entirely correct when stating you cannot control your body. For example, if you are reading this post right now… you can simply place the palm of your hand on your forehead. Boom. You had a partial smile for no apparent reason (perhaps a full smile). If we learn to be aware of our body language and *practice healthy body language*, your body will mentally remember it and *default* to the correct body language over time.
How to Fail At Everything and Still Win Big: The book covers a wide range of topics, our primary takeaway is that affirmations are real, passions/goals are nonsense and being selfish is generally beneficial in the long-run. We are certainly avoiding many many other topics that are covered in the book but we’ll focus on those three.
Affirmations: The background story for the book deals with a health problem Scott had and tied back to a new affirmation he used while dealing with the issue. You can guess how it ends after the first chapter of course. However. The long story along with thousands of words makes you wonder if there is a pattern behind writing something down… and the ability to make it happen. Yes it sounds cheesy but is true. If you 1) continuously write down what you intend to achieve, 2) mean it and 3) set your life up to go down that path… eventually you will get there. Importantly, if you don’t believe it and don’t tell yourself mentally (everyday) then they simply won’t work.
Passions and Goals are Nonsense: We laughed when reading this on page two of the book. As it is exactly what we said about New Years Resolutions or “goals”. He expands the word goals into passions and explains that making money has absolutely nothing to do with getting rich. This is certainly true as our own business has nothing to do with any passion of ours, we do it for the money just as many Wall Street people work here for… the money. You don’t give a loan to a guy who has “passion” you give a loan to a guy who is going to eat Ramen noodles for 1 year straight to turn a profit.
Think Long-Term: Scott makes an interesting note on taxes and benefiting society. We agree that people are generally net producers or net burdens on society. By definition, if you are paying more in taxes than you even spend in a year, there is no way you’re a burden on society. Why? You’re giving more money back to the government (and your country) than you are spending on yourself. Therefore, there is a surplus. We agree. While others will call you selfish, if you think long-term, becoming successful will generate the most benefit for the greatest number of people and there is absolutely no debate.
Finally, the most important piece of the book surrounds two topics: 1) creating a “system for success” and 2) the notion that we are “moist robots”. Since that is the focal point, we’ll avoid it so we don’t give away the book.
One Negative: While we 100% agree that diet and fitness is paramount to success, we didn’t agree with a lot of the beliefs in the book. He hints at becoming a vegetarian and the overall take simply didn’t jive with us. We’ll leave it at that.
Skill With People: We picked this one up last second this weekend due to a comment from a reader (Recent Graduate). The good news? It was absolutely great for a short read. The more important news? You must buy it in paperback form.
If you buy this book, it is essentially a 50 page cliff note version of people skills. You’ll find that some of the tactics come second nature to you while others you continuously mess up. We would recommend ordering a paper back copy to carry around and highlight the mistakes you continuously make. Once you’ve fixed the mistake, remove the highlight and move onto the next one. Wash, rinse, repeat.
To reiterate, this is more of a quick reference book such as a pocket dictionary, but for people skills.
Fun Side Notes
1) Many of you are quite bright. You remember we gave away 10 copies of Gorilla Mindset for *free*. Well the most important lesson is today. When you give something away for free most people will not return a favor to you. Of the 10 copies we gave away a total of 3 reviews came back (that was the only request to leave a review). That is not a joke! If anyone you know believes that people will treat a free book in the same regard as a book they paid for… Well now you have crystal clear proof that they are wrong.
2) “Book” or Books” was one of the most frequent searches on our search bar this year. If there is significant interest in book updates we may make a page for it and continuously update the page. Before voicing an opinion however, remember that we read well over 100+ pages a day which would create quite a few books. Maybe we’ll do 1 book every quarter.
