by Steve Pavlina
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Product Description
Despite promises of “fast and easy” results from slick marketers, real personal growth is neither fast nor easy. The truth is that hard work, courage, and self-discipline are required to achieve meaningful results—results that are not attained by those who cling to the fantasy of achievement without effort. Personal Development for Smart People reveals the unvarnished truth about what it takes to consciously grow as a human being. As you read, you’ll learn the seven universal principles behind all successful growth efforts (truth, love, power, oneness, authority, courage, and intelligence); as well as practical, insightful methods for improving your health, relationships, career, finances, and more. You’ll see how to become the conscious creator of your life instead of feeling hopelessly adrift, enjoy a fulfilling career that honors your unique self-expression, attract empowering relationships with loving, compatible partners, wake up early feeling motivated, energized, and enthusiastic, achieve inspiring goals with disciplined daily habits and much more! With its refreshingly honest yet highly motivating style, this fascinating book will help you courageously explore, creatively express, and consciously embrace your extraordinary human journey.
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Average Customer Review:
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 Smartly Organized, 2009-01-06
Steve Pavlina is an incredibly smart, organized, driven person who is recognized as perhaps the most successful personal development blogger on the Internet. His first book, Personal Development for Smart People, with the subtitle of The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth, reflects all of his outstanding qualities and is drawn from the enormous collection of material he created through his blog site, StevePavlina.com.
The website is a tremendous resource of free material created by Pavlina. His strategy of providing free articles that reflected his experiences, thinking and articulation of personal growth insights helped him develop an amazing readership. It is from this platform that Pavlina was able to attract the attention of the Hay House publishing company, known for its work with spiritual and personal growth material.
The book's introduction describes Pavlina's interesting life story including his Catholic upbringing, a period during his late adolescence in which he rebelled by becoming a prolific shoplifter and his subsequent meteoric college career in which, after having been kicked out of UC Berkeley, he completed a double major at California State University Northridge in just three semesters by taking a triple load. The college experience lead him to study time management techniques and set the stage for his foray into personal growth ideas and theories.
As with pretty much everything he does, Pavlina saw the unique opportunity for developing the book as a chance to organize his accumulated knowledge on the subject matter. Although the website is extremely well-organized - having the necessary technical organization of interwoven links, outline and summary presentations, archiving and a flow of fresh material - it offers an organic network of ideas and threads woven together as a rich, diverse resource. The book, on the other hand, offered the opportunity to develop a conceptual organization that could distill the material down to core principles that would facilitate a deeper understanding and an ability to apply the material across a wider spectrum of people and situations.
From the introduction of the book: "While studying personal development for many years, I learned that this field is very broad and fragmented. Any area of your life can reasonably slide under the umbrella of self-improvement, including your health, career, finances, relationships, and spiritual beliefs. Each subset of this field has its own purported experts, all of them sharing different ideas, rules, and advice..Unfortunately, these experts often disagree with each other...Some say you can achieve success through hard work and self-discipline; others advise letting go and allowing God or the universe to handle the details. Some experts encourage you to change' others say you should accept yourself as you are. If you try to incorporate all these different ideas into your life... you'll end up with a fragmented, incongruent mess."
"I soon realized that an intelligent approach to personal development would have to resolve these incongruencies somehow...It would have to make logical and intuitive sense, satisfying both head and heart."
The result of his efforts to organize the material are what Pavlina calls fundamental principles. These are core concepts that can be considered universal, complete, and basic. They are building blocks that are consistent with each other and can be practically applied to most if not all situations in everyday life.
What Pavlina did, when he set before himself this problem of finding an organizational solution to describing all of the things he had learned about life and personal growth, was organize the task of writing the book into a process of asking and answering the right question: how can I invent a model that will hold all of these things that I have learned and want to say? As with everything else he does, Pavlina set to solving the problem with his usual intensity. What he came up with is simply elegant.
The model that Pavlina put together is a triangle of three core principles - Truth, Love and Power. This is the framework of his book and his work.
The three principles are related to each other through three other 'sub' principles: Truth to Love through Oneness, Truth to Power through Authority, and Love to Power through Courage. Pavlina suggests in addition to these six principles, there is a seventh that comprises all of them. This he calls Intelligence.
The book is painstakingly organized around the model of seven principles. The first half of the book focuses on the basic principles themselves, elucidating their characteristics and inter-relationships. The second half of the book draws out the application of the model to specific areas of one's life including habits, career, money, health, relationships and spirituality.
If you want to read a passionate, thoughtful and thorough presentation of personal growth ideas, you will enjoy this book. It certainly offers those of us that want to organize 'spiritual' principles into a rather neat package a way to do so. But it provides tremendous depth as well. Pavlina believes, and lives, the idea of walking the walk. His process involves literally experimenting with different ideas, thoughtfully observing, and writing about his experiences. One interesting example from the blogsite is his work with the idea of changing his sleep pattern from a dirurnal cycle to polyphasic, meaning multiple phases. He has some 36 blog entries describing a five and half month experiment in which he slept about twenty minutes every four hours instead of going to bed (at night) like most every other human being. Constrained by conventional ideas, he is not.
I strongly recommend this book! It is fresh, thorough and insightful. It offers a framework for thinking about and living your life that reflects Pavlina's motto of 'living consciously'. In fact, that is perhaps its most powerful attribute - on the simplest level. Buy offering an elegant framework into which we can put the challenges, disappointments, successes, highs and lows from any area of our life, with out even trying, we take a huge step towards mindful living that is the essence of a rich, satisfying experience.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Like the author, insightful and unique, 2008-12-15
I'm a long-time reader of the author's blog, StevePavlina.com. There is so much great content there. In fact, I almost wish he'd slow down with the blog posts so I can catch-up.
This is a valuable book. It's not just a re-hash of what's on the blog, though for someone like me -- who has read so much of Pavlina's work, listened to interviews, etc. -- there was some redudant material. The book doesn't inspire the kind of can't-put-it-down reading, but I'm looking forward to going back and re-reading much of it -- it definitely warrants further study. I'm planning to dwell more on his seven universal principles (love, power, etc.) to see first-hand how I can consciously apply them.
Pavlina conveys a wholistic approach to personal development, and his worldview is so consistent that this material compliments and never contradicts the stuff I've taken from his blog. So far, the chapter about wealth has been most influential. I especially like his discussion on the connection between wealth and making a societal contribution. Certainly it's been said before in other ways, but there is something about the way he frames it that makes it stick.
So besides the stuff that feels repetitive to me (I've heard about the shop-lifting story so many times that I practically lived it), I have one gripe: It's full of an impossible number of "should"'s. That is, the amount of instructions telling the reader to do something is immense. If you actually did everything the author instructed, this book would take a year to complete, after all the self-examination, new behaviors, etc.
This is a pattern of many personal development books -- be they about diet, relationships, etc. -- and it's a pet-peeve of mine. Not all personal development books succumb to this, but this one does (though no worse than is typical). Each page gives you multiple instructions, and for all practical purposes they are too numerous to apply.
Let me pick up this book on a random page here... Ok, p. 141 -- here are the "should"'s:
"Consider joining a group of like-minded people..."
"Learn from others who are farther along..."
"Find someone has already overcome your addiction, and ask..."
"...ask yourself if there are any incompatible connections..."
"Make a habit of intentionally reaching out..."
"Break the limiting pattern of trying to do..."
"Join a club or attend social events..."
"...focus on your desired outcome..."
Many of the above are similarly themed, but you get the idea. It annoys me when an author throws out instructions so casually -- are we supposed to really do the multiple instructions in each paragraph, or are they just fluff. Obviously, I can decide for myself, but when an author writes like this, I feel like he is phoning it in -- in many cases, it's not the best way to persuade to action. That was truly a random page -- by my calculations, there are...many many instructions in this book.
It's OK if you're going to do that, but then distill the really important "should"'s" at the end -- this book lacks any re-cap or summary beyond a short afterword. Don't get me wrong -- it's a great book, and I hope Pavlina (ok, "Steve" -- I feel like I know the guy) writes multiple follow-ups. I ordered it from Border's and paid significantly more than it's offered here, but it was definitely worth the price and then some.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Pavlina offers his personal story and new insights, 2008-11-26
Steve Pavlina has taken the ideas of others and made them his own. Don't get me wrong, that isn't a criticism. There is a central, inarguable truth in the messages of personal responsibility, the power of thought and action and giving to receive. Pavlina does offer his personal story as evidence these theories work. He has gone from felon to published author, helping others while finding fulfillment. Unfortunately we only get brief glimpses of the man behind the curtain.
The first half of the book introduces and explains Pavlina's seven principles, much like a textbook, it is very structured and analytical. The second part is devoted to the application of these principles and seeing these principles applied to everyday life, in areas of career, relationships, money and health was enlightening. It seemed as though Pavlina sighed a breath of relief, took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves for this section of the book. I found several fresh and thought provoking exercises, such as the 30 day trials, triage projects giving attention to those that will only survive if you take action and approaching habits with a strategy for victory, much like a game of chess.
Whether this is the first book you've read on Personal Development or the hundredth, you'll find value.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Really makes you think !, 2008-11-24
I don't review books very often, but occasionally one comes along that I'm sure others would really appreciate.... and Steve Pavlina's new book titled Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth definitely falls in that category !
Attitude is # 1
Steve has one of the best attitudes toward personal development and growth that I've ever seen. In fact, he has devoted his business (and a good chunk of his life) to the subject of Personal Development.
In his blog, you can get a feeling for his attitude by how he has documented a wide range of his own personal "30 Day Trials". This is where he tries out things like "PolyPhasic Sleep Schedule", "Raw Food Diet" and most recently, "Juice Feasting Diet" to see if they work for him (and we all get to live vicariously through his experiences). For an introduction to his blog, check out his website's home page at http://www.stevepavlina.com/.
Great [but slow] Book
Of course, his book is outstanding. I got it over a month and a half ago and it has taken me that long to read all of it. To put that in perspective, I can usually I can get through a book in about a week by finding spare minutes in my daily schedule. The "problem" with Steve's book is that it is TOO GOOD !
There were so many concepts and ideas in the book that I would read for a few pages and then stop to think about how it relates to my life. It was like driving through a beautiful neighborhood... with plenty of speed bumps!
Speed Bumps
Some of the "speed bumps" are by Steve's design. He inserts "Exercises" for you to try that help you stretch your thinking and, sometimes, learn more about yourself. Other times it is just the way he phrases or explains a particular concepts that makes you stop and think.
For example...
One of the ideas that got me thinking was when he wrote about "taking an hour for yourself every day". I had been looking for a "way of thinking" that would help get me motivated to jump out of bed and really "hit the ground running". Steve's suggestions allowed me to change my thinking (and my habits) so that I've been waking up like a kid at Christmas.... ready to jump out of bed and really enjoy that first hour of the day!
As you can imagine, with ideas like these that call for immediate action, it took quite a while to read Steve's book... but I certainly enjoyed the process!
Constructive Suggestions
An evaluation would not be complete without some ideas for improvement.... so here you go, Steve:
1) The hardcover book needs a companion audiobook. If I could have listened to the book while I was driving to/from work... I'm sure I could have gotten through it more quickly. (I was also distracted by other audiobooks I DID listen to during the time I was reading Steve's book.)
2) The next product should be a workshop DVD where Steve takes people through the concepts in the book and it follows them through the changes they make in their life.
I would definitely recommend Steve Pavlina's book, "Personal Development for Smart People"!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
These Are The Fundamentals... everything else stems from this book, 2008-11-22
Have you ever found a book that you like so much that you read it, highlighted it, wrote in the margins, put flags on your favorite passages, and reread it over and over? Well, that's how I feel about Steve Pavlina's new book Personal Development for Smart People.
It's been over a month since I've received my copy of this book, and to tell you the truth I haven't been able to put it down. Half way through the book I promised myself that I would reread the whole thing every 3-6 months, but I already lost track of how many times I've read it.
The book itself is much different from the hundreds of personal development books that I've read to date. What makes it unique, and worth taking a look at, is that it doesn't try to force feed you the author's idea on how you should be living your life.
Personal Development for Smart People gently guides you on a path to your own core, by making three very brilliant distinctions on Truth, Love, and Power. These three values prove to be fundamental in living the most fulfilling life that is most suited for you.
I feel like a lot of other self-help books give you fish. They give you a specific idea, or specific tool, that can help you solve one specific problem. This book is different, because it doesn't just give you tools, but it teaches you how to make tools -- it trains your mind for problem solving, and that's a skill you could take anywhere in life.
Honesty With Yourself
In the very first chapter of this book, there is a small self-assessment that asks the reader to honestly evaluate the area of their life. This evaluation isn't based on where you currently stand, but on the path that you're heading on.
After doing the evaluation, I decided that I needed to jump start my personal health and fitness goals. I'm 23, and I'm pretty healthy, but looking at my path I was just gaining weight by under exercising and overeating on empty calories. I ended up with a 1 rating for my health, and began to take action. Only three weeks into this month and I've already lost 13 pounds, noticeably improved my diet, and ran two official races with New York Road Runners.
I read personal development books all the time, and I write about it on my site, and despite of this I'm just as capable of getting into a slump as the next guy. Steve Pavlina's book not only motivated me, but refreshed what I already know about commitment to goals, progressive improvement, and persistence.
While going through this past month, with the knowledge of Steve Pavlina's book stirring inside my mind and my soul, I've noticed several synchronicities. The first thing I've already mentioned is the marked improvement to my overall health. The second thing I noticed is more income opportunities that I'm able to cash in on, such as getting extra work, making more from internet marketing, and disabling certain money spending habits that were not constructive.
Lastly, I noticed a huge markup in my networking opportunities. I've met several people that are going to be invaluable in my career, and others that will be very instrumental for my friends and inner circle. I've also connected with really interesting people, both online and off, that are going to make tremendous contributions to the flourishing future of this website.
The Core Message of the Book
Seek truth with open eyes. Courageously accept your discoveries and their consequences. Rid your life of falsehood, denial, and fear of what is. Make truth your ally, not your enemy. This isn't easy, but it is correct.
Share your love openly. Connect with yourself and others by tuning in to the connection that already exists. The risk of rejection is overshadowed by the rewards of loving connections. Whenever you feel disconnected, reach out and connect with another human being. Remember that you're always loved.
Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon website at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.
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