Self-Help Review:
Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory
1995
By Kevin Trudeau
Before reviewing this book, allow me to poison the well a little: Kevin Trudeau is a convicted con man, and nearly everything that comes out of his mouth is horseshit. I do not pretend to know as much about the guy as a lot of his critics do, but what I have learned is pretty damning. Trudeau is not, as his book claims, "The World's Foremost Authority On Memory," and he has never participated in the World Memory Championships, to the best of my knowledge. There is a large, world-wide memory community, and Trudeau is not involved in it. His fake-ass "American Memory Institute" does not have an official website and doesn't even seem to be currently operating, and it appears that he has stopped doing memory seminars and has given up promoting his memory products, with the exception of selling his books and audio programs. As it stands, and this may be simply because I've yet to review an Anthony Robbins product, Trudeau stands as the most hated person I've ever reviewed a book by. In short, the man's a fucking twat, and there is absolutely no reason for you to believe a word he says.
But does this product work?
Ugh. As much as I hate to give this little bitch any kind of business...yes, it does work. It works very, very well, which is something that his critics refuse to admit. While reading up on Trudeau I found a bunch of message boards filled with angry consumers who have purchased his products and have taken to bitching about them. One story involves a mother purchasing the audio program package and listening to it with her son in an attempt to improve his memory and grades. Apparently she felt embarrassed because it wasn't working as well as she wanted it to, and her son said "It looks like you've been had." Now, considering Trudeau's reputation and how justifiable many people's anger towards the man might be, I have a hard time believing that anyone listening to/reading this program would not be able to improve their memory. It just smacks of laziness and insane expectations on the consumer's part. Yes, Trudeau pushes this product with some ridiculous claims (claims which barred him from selling this product on infomercials), but as with any new skill, if you put in zero effort, guess what you're gonna get back? NOTHING.
What exactly is in this book? It's the same peg systems, association, location, linking, and card memorization tricks that have been around for decades...centuries, even. The difference is that this time, these old-as-dirt techniques are given a twist: Trudeau takes credit for creating them. In fact, there is a lot of recycled information in this product, and zero reference to where it came from. One idea is the Johari Window, which shows how learning goes from unconscious incompetence, to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, to unconscious competence. Trudeau takes this and calls it "The Four Steps to a Mega Memory." There is also a foreign language word learning tip that Trudeau outright steals from the classic Harry Lorayne & Jerry Lucas book, "The Memory Book." The problem is, unless you're a student of memory and are familiar with the classics in this field, you will more than likely think that Trudeau actually did create these techniques.
Now, if you are completely unfamiliar with how a book can improve your memory, there are certain ideas that all memory books seem to contain. One is that you will remember something better if you have a vivid image attached to it, and that you will remember things in a certain order if you create an action linking each vivid image together. A quick example...I recently took to memorizing some random-ass books on a shelf in order. Somewhere near the middle I linked Charles Dickens' "Hard Times" to Stendhal's "The Red and the Black" My image was a newspaper (the LA Times) with a gigantic erection. I linked it to an Indian sucking on the head of it's cock while it was being fucked in the ass by a black guy. That was my way of connecting "Hard Times" to "The Red and the Black," and even though the images in memory books aren't as disgusting, this is EXACTLY how they work. By the way, if I wanted to remember the author's names, I would just add more information to each image. For "Hard Times" it's ready-made...after all, it was written by DICKens. For "The Red and the Black," I could just imagine the two of them fucking in a puddle of water filled with garbage, sludge, etc. It would be DIRTY WATER, which happens to be a hit song by The Standells, who's name would bring to my mind Stendhal.
The next major trick is the use of locations. With this trick you take a room, pick five unique objects in it, and choose four separate rooms to do this in. Once you have the rooms and objects down, in order to memorize lists and key words for speeches, you just have to create a vivid image for each word or idea and "peg" it onto each item in the room in the order that you want. As you move through each room you will remember the order in which you listed the words or ideas. This can be done very quickly once you get the hang of it, and eventually you'll be able to just rattle the shit off without having to think of the rooms. This is very helpful with speeches and other shit where the order of ideas is key.
The hardest idea for people to wrap their brains around is the use of a phonetic number list. In order to memorize telephone numbers, credit card numbers, or just any long-ass number, you just convert each number into a specific phonetic sound, create a word with it, and then put them together as either combined images or a sentence. It works like this:
0 = s/z
1 = t/d
2 = n
3 = m
4 = r
5 = l
6 = sh/ch/j
7 = k/g
8 = f/v
9 = p/b
If you want to remember 27, for example, Trudeau suggests thinking of the word "neck." For 49, "ruby." Now, I have used this system before with some success, when I learned it from the Lorayne/Lucas book. For longer numbers, though, it might take some work, and I think that the DOMINIC system, developed by World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien might work much, better. With this system you associate look-alike images to single digit numbers, and for longer numbers you break them into two and associate a person with them. I'm not going to go into the specifics of his system, but ask me next time you see me and maybe I'll tell you. The problem with the phonetic system is that for very long numbers, it might not be as desirable as it appears. Check out the sentence I came up with last night when trying to commit the first 50 digits of pi to memory by turning them into sounds, then words:
Matt Rydell, punch Liam, love. Pukey Pam Gnome, very chonch, rim my fuming gobbles. No fever! To pug, dish bum pop. My kill, 'tis!
=
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510
Yeah. So I either need to develop this skill better, or drop it and use a different one. Trudeau spends a ton of pages teaching you phonetic number words from 1 - 100, but the dipshit forgot entirely to give you a word for "0." Fucking jackass. I also spotted several occasions when he quizzes you on a number, and gives you the wrong fucking word as the answer. The worst part is that this retard apparently doesn't even know the system that well himself. For number 93 he gives you the word "palm." If he took care to read his own fucking book, he'd realize that "palm" actually gives you the number 953, not 93, because YOU PRONOUNCE THE "L" IN PALM.
There are techniques for remembering names, important dates, learning vocabulary by breaking it into smaller words and giving them odd associations, and how to memorize a deck of cards. His techniques on how to do all these things work great, but like I said, they aren't his methods. The only thing that I give this book credit for is clarifying for me a trick on how to tell the day of the week that a certain event happened on at any point in history. It's a long-ass series of switching months and centuries into numbers, using multiples of 7, and all this other shit, but the two times that I tried it out it worked. So numbnuts gets a brownie point for teaching me a neat trick that I had a difficult time understanding from a different memory product.
There is also a special chapter telling you how the brain works when memorizing things, or when trying to remember. He gives you page after page of medical advice, warns you of memory-damaging diseases, and tells you what kinds of vitamins you should take to sharpen your memory. This advice may or may not have any truth to it, but I obviously suggest looking into other sources for this kind of information, since getting health advice from Kevin Trudeau is like getting dating advice from a rapist.
The question most people will ask is, "By using Mega Memory, will I have a Mega Memory?" Your memory will improve, and since Trudeau talks to you in the book like you're in a special ed class, you should have no problem learning all the tricks and applying them. The problem lies in the mistakes that are scattered throughout the book, the way the later chapters are poorly organized, and the fact that by buying this product you're giving your money to a con man. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this product is that because it works so well, some people will be suckered into buying his other products because, "if this one works...maybe his other stuff works, too." Trudeau has other questionable products available, such as a math, speed reading, and weight loss plan, and I recommend that you buy none of them. I suggest also that you skip this book and read "The Memory Book" or listen to Dominic O'Brien's "Quantum Memory Power" CD set. There are a ton of memory products out there, and everything Trudeau teaches you in Mega Memory is available in these other books Furthermore, people like Harry Lorayne, Dominic O'Brien, Tony Buzan, and Scott Hagwood all are involved in the "memory community" and have a lot of worthwhile products available that give you the same advice, but from people who ALWAYS use it, and don't have it as just one "wing" in a series of products.
A warning: By using memory products, you can't just use them for a month, stop, and then a year later bitch that they didn't work. No, they did and DO work, you just didn't do the work of maintaining the skill. It's like working out for a month and stopping, and then bitching a year later that you're a fatass because exercise doesn't work. You have to create a habit of doing something constantly if you want to own the skill. If it's hard for you and you don't want to go through the effort, then you're doomed to always have a shit memory, and no book will ever help you. All memory books can offer you something, and if you must read this book, order if from your library and get it for free. You really don't want to be giving your money to this guy. Trudeau can kiss my ass.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Self-Help Review 11: The Official Guide To Success
Self-Help Review:
The Official Guide To Success
1982
By Tom Hopkins
Here's an idea: Find someone who hates Self-Help or Success literature, and take them to a bookstore. While there, ask them "Why do you hate these books so much?" and I am willing to bet that all they would have to do to state their case is grab a copy of Tom Hopkins' "The Official Guide To Success" and show you the picture on the cover, and that would explain it all. They wouldn't even need to crack it open, but if they did it would further hammer their point home. The only other title in the genre that I can think of that so epitomizes everything "bad," "dumb," and "cheesy" about these books just with the image on the cover is Wayne Dyer's "Inspiration, Your Ultimate Calling." So what's on the cover to this book that makes it so stomach-turning? It's a picture of Hopkins dressed in a suit, leaning against a shiny new car, with one hand in his pocket and the other running along the hood, flashing a smile like he just fucked your wife while you were working at your pathetic shit job and made her swallow his cum after pulling it out of her long-neglected snatch. He looks like that asshole you knew in high school, the one who you so badly wanted to fail in life, but he just kept making more money while you stuck to go-nowhere work, your only consolation being the thought, "At least I'm real. At least I'm not a money-hungry fake like he is."
How did Hopkins make his money? Here's more that will piss you off: He was a salesman. In fact, his most famous book is "How To Master The Art Of Selling," which is an essential textbook for those getting started in sales. Hopkins is all about money, and he makes no apologies for that. In a listing of priorities you should set when making goals, he unabashedly puts Money at the top of the list, followed by Health, then Family, then Personal Accomplishments, and lastly, shocking even to me, Status Symbols as the fifth. It was written in 1982, but it so perfectly encapsulates everything that people hate about the Reagan years that it's required reading for both angry, punk rock liberals as well as neo cons who would happily lick the mold out from the wrinkles in Reagan's shriveled dick if he were still alive.
The book is called "The Official Guide To Success," and one has to wonder how the fuck this is "official" since the only qualifications Hopkins has for writing it is that he has a lot of money and owns a fancy new car. That said, there is a lot of good advice in this book, as long as you have an open mind to it and are willing to overlook some of the blatantly money hungry and coldhearted aspects of it. While his tips on goal setting are valuable and eye-opening (his advice on planning your life twenty years into the future is a nice twist that I haven't read before), his social advice is downright frightening. I understand his point in dropping negative friends who are exceedingly pessimistic, but it doesn't seem right to me because anyone you become friends with is going to have moments of sadness, moments of depression, and moments of pessimism, and "dropping" them when they hit those low points is going to really fuck with your conscience later on. Answering a cry for help from someone you love might actually prevent a suicide, and while being with frowny people does bring you down, you can deal with that by limiting contact and trying to "catch them at their best" instead of cutting the contact entirely. Plus, if they ever tell you that you'll fail in your endeavors or that you shouldn't waste your time shooting for a goal, you can easily tell them to "fuck off" and just not talk about that aspect of your life with them. There's a reason why people become friends, and if talking about certain topics brings up ugly sides to the friendship, then stop talking about them.
Hopkins' hero is Norman Vincent Peale, the author of "The Power Of Positive Thinking," and there is a ton of positive thinking tips in this book. According to Hopkins, if you aren't thinking positive thoughts, then you're thinking negative thoughts, and there is no middle ground. I would assume that there are "neutral" thoughts, but Hopkins swears that there aren't. The book is composed of 82 tips, with nearly all of them ending in "Self-Instructions," which are merely affirmations that you are recommended to write on a 3 x 5 card and repeat to yourself three times a day. Some of these affirmations will not work, since they are in the negative, an example being "I don't let negative ideas enter my head." By the way, it just occurred to me that I should mention the book on affirmations, "What To Say When You Talk To Yourself," but instead of constantly mentioning it I should just re-read the fucker and review it this month.
Probably the most valuable information in this book is Hopkins' observation that we can't help but achieve certain goals, but our thoughts determine what it is exactly that we achieve. Hopkins uses two examples; one of a temporarily broke tycoon trying to acquire another fortune, and an alcoholic. A drunk, for example, will set a specific goal: To obtain more liquor and get fucked up. He goes out and makes that goal a reality. The same is true of all fuck-ups and failures. Why does this happen? According to Hopkins, "They'll both (alcoholics and temporarily-broke tycoons) reach their goals. Why? Because their self-instructions not only allow them to, they require them to." This means that the messages that they constantly send themselves in their minds ("I gotta get another bottle or I'll die," "If I don't get some pussy tonight I'm gonna go nuts," "I'll fail if I try that") create a drive towards the realization of their goal. To fix defective thinking, we need to constantly send our minds the correct messages in order to achieve a better goal, by means of using those 3 x 5 cards that I mentioned earlier. If affirmations aren't your thing, go fuck yourself. He also says that you should never complete one goal without having another in mind, because there is a phenomenon where people who work their entire lives to achieve a goal finally do and afterwards feel that they have nothing to live for. Very interesting. My own goal is to have a billion dollars, then to create and own a city. As you can see, I'll be busy for a long, long time, and it'll be a while before I need to come up with newer goals.
Hopkins also has something he calls "The Golden Dozen," and he ain't talkin' 'bout eggs here. It's twelve words which he says will change your life forever, as long as you keep them posted in places where you'll constantly see them. What are these words?
"I Must Do The Most Productive Thing Possible At Every Given Moment."
He follows that with these four steps, which made me laugh my ass off for some reason:
1) Tell yourself "I must do the most productive thing possible at every given moment."
2) Decide what the most productive thing is.
3) Do it.
4) When you've pushed that thing as far forward as you can right now, go back to step 1 and start over.
Possibly because he realizes how ridiculous this idea will seem to the reader, he mentions that sometimes the most productive thing you can do is to rest, or to leave something alone for awhile. For some reason I have a hard time seeing a guy like Hopkins being content to just "kick it," unless he was showing off his car, of course.
More good advice offered in this book is Hopkins' "Simple Method," which means taking time every night to make a list of the six most important things that you'll need to do the following day. You rank them 1 - 6 in order of importance, and if you don't know what the most important thing you'll need to do will be, Hopkins suggests that it's probably the thing that you least want to do. Instead of avoiding doing things, Hopkins says you should do them immediately, and the more uncomfortable or irritating it is, the sooner you should do it. It's such an obvious tip, but I think that that's the value in it. Sometimes something can be so obvious and so blatantly right in front of us that we look past it. Anything on your list that you are unable to do that day you should carry over to the next day and make it a priority when you put together your next list. It's an ongoing habit, and a damn good one I think.
There are a lot of good ideas in this book, but my favorite tip is on how to deal with anger. It's no surprise that exercise will help you sweat away stress, anger, sadness, and other negative emotions, but Hopkins puts a neat spin on it. He recommends not playing a competitive sport with someone, because your anger will probably throw off your game, you'll get stressed out, and you'll be in even worse shape if you end up losing, so all the benefits from the exercise will be lost. Instead of doing that, exercise by yourself. There's a paragraph in this section that is so good, that I'm going to quote the majority of it:
"If you're not in good physical condition, be careful while you're sweating your anger away. Instead of running your anger off, walk it off, pound a pillow, or kick something (not someone) that's soft. If you're in great shape, let your anger out with impact exercise. Have a practice session by yourself in a handball or racquetball court and slam the ball around until whatever is bothering you has lost it's sharp edge."
Ah fuck it...here's some more:
"The best impact exercise of all is the heavy punching bag. Many gyms have both heavy and light punching bags. Avoid the light bag when you're working off anger--it'll only add to your frustration. Keep smacking the heavy bag--you can't miss it--and very soon your anger will vanish. One word of caution--don't imagine that you're punching whoever made you angry as you work on the bag--you might throw a punch at that person the next time you see him."
The book ends with a rather long list of recommended books which have helped Hopkins achieve his success. His own book, "How To Master The Art Of Selling" is obviously on the list, but hey, this self-promotion didn't seem nearly as cheap to me as what I saw in "Who Moved My Cheese?," and there are a lot of titles here that I've been meaning to read, and will read, for future reviews.
So, is "The Official Guide To Success" another damn fine read? It isn't nearly as good as "The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People" or "Feeling Good," but it does give you a lot of information that can be useful if you've already taken care of your emotional issues and are ready to start gettin' paid. I'm sure that there are better books out there written with more flair than this one, but I have to give it up for someone who doesn't pussyfoot around their own drive for cash and success. One thing though...this book probably has more typos than any other Self-Help book I've read so far. I have no idea why that is, since this came after he had already released a best selling book, and I imagine he should have been able to afford a halfway decent editor to smooth it out. Also, it's a rather dull listing of tips, without the grandiose proclamations that usually start off Self-Help books, and it ends with a whimper instead of busting an inspirational nut all over your face. Whereas most Self-Help books end with final words that encourage you to get moving, this book just kinda...ends. That said, if you can't get over the idea of that smirking, chubby fuck on the cover giving you advice, you probably won't lose anything by not reading it. I liked it though, and I suppose I can recommend it to a few people. However, if you're not all about getting paid, proceed with caution.
The Official Guide To Success
1982
By Tom Hopkins
Here's an idea: Find someone who hates Self-Help or Success literature, and take them to a bookstore. While there, ask them "Why do you hate these books so much?" and I am willing to bet that all they would have to do to state their case is grab a copy of Tom Hopkins' "The Official Guide To Success" and show you the picture on the cover, and that would explain it all. They wouldn't even need to crack it open, but if they did it would further hammer their point home. The only other title in the genre that I can think of that so epitomizes everything "bad," "dumb," and "cheesy" about these books just with the image on the cover is Wayne Dyer's "Inspiration, Your Ultimate Calling." So what's on the cover to this book that makes it so stomach-turning? It's a picture of Hopkins dressed in a suit, leaning against a shiny new car, with one hand in his pocket and the other running along the hood, flashing a smile like he just fucked your wife while you were working at your pathetic shit job and made her swallow his cum after pulling it out of her long-neglected snatch. He looks like that asshole you knew in high school, the one who you so badly wanted to fail in life, but he just kept making more money while you stuck to go-nowhere work, your only consolation being the thought, "At least I'm real. At least I'm not a money-hungry fake like he is."
How did Hopkins make his money? Here's more that will piss you off: He was a salesman. In fact, his most famous book is "How To Master The Art Of Selling," which is an essential textbook for those getting started in sales. Hopkins is all about money, and he makes no apologies for that. In a listing of priorities you should set when making goals, he unabashedly puts Money at the top of the list, followed by Health, then Family, then Personal Accomplishments, and lastly, shocking even to me, Status Symbols as the fifth. It was written in 1982, but it so perfectly encapsulates everything that people hate about the Reagan years that it's required reading for both angry, punk rock liberals as well as neo cons who would happily lick the mold out from the wrinkles in Reagan's shriveled dick if he were still alive.
The book is called "The Official Guide To Success," and one has to wonder how the fuck this is "official" since the only qualifications Hopkins has for writing it is that he has a lot of money and owns a fancy new car. That said, there is a lot of good advice in this book, as long as you have an open mind to it and are willing to overlook some of the blatantly money hungry and coldhearted aspects of it. While his tips on goal setting are valuable and eye-opening (his advice on planning your life twenty years into the future is a nice twist that I haven't read before), his social advice is downright frightening. I understand his point in dropping negative friends who are exceedingly pessimistic, but it doesn't seem right to me because anyone you become friends with is going to have moments of sadness, moments of depression, and moments of pessimism, and "dropping" them when they hit those low points is going to really fuck with your conscience later on. Answering a cry for help from someone you love might actually prevent a suicide, and while being with frowny people does bring you down, you can deal with that by limiting contact and trying to "catch them at their best" instead of cutting the contact entirely. Plus, if they ever tell you that you'll fail in your endeavors or that you shouldn't waste your time shooting for a goal, you can easily tell them to "fuck off" and just not talk about that aspect of your life with them. There's a reason why people become friends, and if talking about certain topics brings up ugly sides to the friendship, then stop talking about them.
Hopkins' hero is Norman Vincent Peale, the author of "The Power Of Positive Thinking," and there is a ton of positive thinking tips in this book. According to Hopkins, if you aren't thinking positive thoughts, then you're thinking negative thoughts, and there is no middle ground. I would assume that there are "neutral" thoughts, but Hopkins swears that there aren't. The book is composed of 82 tips, with nearly all of them ending in "Self-Instructions," which are merely affirmations that you are recommended to write on a 3 x 5 card and repeat to yourself three times a day. Some of these affirmations will not work, since they are in the negative, an example being "I don't let negative ideas enter my head." By the way, it just occurred to me that I should mention the book on affirmations, "What To Say When You Talk To Yourself," but instead of constantly mentioning it I should just re-read the fucker and review it this month.
Probably the most valuable information in this book is Hopkins' observation that we can't help but achieve certain goals, but our thoughts determine what it is exactly that we achieve. Hopkins uses two examples; one of a temporarily broke tycoon trying to acquire another fortune, and an alcoholic. A drunk, for example, will set a specific goal: To obtain more liquor and get fucked up. He goes out and makes that goal a reality. The same is true of all fuck-ups and failures. Why does this happen? According to Hopkins, "They'll both (alcoholics and temporarily-broke tycoons) reach their goals. Why? Because their self-instructions not only allow them to, they require them to." This means that the messages that they constantly send themselves in their minds ("I gotta get another bottle or I'll die," "If I don't get some pussy tonight I'm gonna go nuts," "I'll fail if I try that") create a drive towards the realization of their goal. To fix defective thinking, we need to constantly send our minds the correct messages in order to achieve a better goal, by means of using those 3 x 5 cards that I mentioned earlier. If affirmations aren't your thing, go fuck yourself. He also says that you should never complete one goal without having another in mind, because there is a phenomenon where people who work their entire lives to achieve a goal finally do and afterwards feel that they have nothing to live for. Very interesting. My own goal is to have a billion dollars, then to create and own a city. As you can see, I'll be busy for a long, long time, and it'll be a while before I need to come up with newer goals.
Hopkins also has something he calls "The Golden Dozen," and he ain't talkin' 'bout eggs here. It's twelve words which he says will change your life forever, as long as you keep them posted in places where you'll constantly see them. What are these words?
"I Must Do The Most Productive Thing Possible At Every Given Moment."
He follows that with these four steps, which made me laugh my ass off for some reason:
1) Tell yourself "I must do the most productive thing possible at every given moment."
2) Decide what the most productive thing is.
3) Do it.
4) When you've pushed that thing as far forward as you can right now, go back to step 1 and start over.
Possibly because he realizes how ridiculous this idea will seem to the reader, he mentions that sometimes the most productive thing you can do is to rest, or to leave something alone for awhile. For some reason I have a hard time seeing a guy like Hopkins being content to just "kick it," unless he was showing off his car, of course.
More good advice offered in this book is Hopkins' "Simple Method," which means taking time every night to make a list of the six most important things that you'll need to do the following day. You rank them 1 - 6 in order of importance, and if you don't know what the most important thing you'll need to do will be, Hopkins suggests that it's probably the thing that you least want to do. Instead of avoiding doing things, Hopkins says you should do them immediately, and the more uncomfortable or irritating it is, the sooner you should do it. It's such an obvious tip, but I think that that's the value in it. Sometimes something can be so obvious and so blatantly right in front of us that we look past it. Anything on your list that you are unable to do that day you should carry over to the next day and make it a priority when you put together your next list. It's an ongoing habit, and a damn good one I think.
There are a lot of good ideas in this book, but my favorite tip is on how to deal with anger. It's no surprise that exercise will help you sweat away stress, anger, sadness, and other negative emotions, but Hopkins puts a neat spin on it. He recommends not playing a competitive sport with someone, because your anger will probably throw off your game, you'll get stressed out, and you'll be in even worse shape if you end up losing, so all the benefits from the exercise will be lost. Instead of doing that, exercise by yourself. There's a paragraph in this section that is so good, that I'm going to quote the majority of it:
"If you're not in good physical condition, be careful while you're sweating your anger away. Instead of running your anger off, walk it off, pound a pillow, or kick something (not someone) that's soft. If you're in great shape, let your anger out with impact exercise. Have a practice session by yourself in a handball or racquetball court and slam the ball around until whatever is bothering you has lost it's sharp edge."
Ah fuck it...here's some more:
"The best impact exercise of all is the heavy punching bag. Many gyms have both heavy and light punching bags. Avoid the light bag when you're working off anger--it'll only add to your frustration. Keep smacking the heavy bag--you can't miss it--and very soon your anger will vanish. One word of caution--don't imagine that you're punching whoever made you angry as you work on the bag--you might throw a punch at that person the next time you see him."
The book ends with a rather long list of recommended books which have helped Hopkins achieve his success. His own book, "How To Master The Art Of Selling" is obviously on the list, but hey, this self-promotion didn't seem nearly as cheap to me as what I saw in "Who Moved My Cheese?," and there are a lot of titles here that I've been meaning to read, and will read, for future reviews.
So, is "The Official Guide To Success" another damn fine read? It isn't nearly as good as "The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People" or "Feeling Good," but it does give you a lot of information that can be useful if you've already taken care of your emotional issues and are ready to start gettin' paid. I'm sure that there are better books out there written with more flair than this one, but I have to give it up for someone who doesn't pussyfoot around their own drive for cash and success. One thing though...this book probably has more typos than any other Self-Help book I've read so far. I have no idea why that is, since this came after he had already released a best selling book, and I imagine he should have been able to afford a halfway decent editor to smooth it out. Also, it's a rather dull listing of tips, without the grandiose proclamations that usually start off Self-Help books, and it ends with a whimper instead of busting an inspirational nut all over your face. Whereas most Self-Help books end with final words that encourage you to get moving, this book just kinda...ends. That said, if you can't get over the idea of that smirking, chubby fuck on the cover giving you advice, you probably won't lose anything by not reading it. I liked it though, and I suppose I can recommend it to a few people. However, if you're not all about getting paid, proceed with caution.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Self-Help Review 10: Who Moved My Cheese?
Self-Help Review:
Who Moved My Cheese?
1998
By Spencer Johnson, M.D.
I have noticed during the past couple of months that Self-Help and Success literature tend to follow certain formulas. One thing that nearly every Self-Help book I've ever read has done is tell little stories, usually from the lives of great or successful people, pick out the specifics of how these people succeeded, then give you the distilled wisdom from these stories. Even the highly technical "Feeling Good" is loaded with stories, and I am going to state right here that I understand the value in them. A dry tip is completely worthless unless you spice it up with an example, and the better a story is the more valuable the book is to your own success. However, as the final blurb in the first Spiderman comic once said, "With great power comes great responsibility," and if you're going to make a point with a story, it better damn well be a GOOD story. The trap that a lot of Self-Help books fall into is that they are written by people who are unable to tell a halfway decent story, and you can almost hear their ligaments tear from how far they have to stretch a metaphor.
I mention this because there is some great advice in Spencer Johnson's book, "Who Moved My Cheese?" The problem lies in the fact that this advice is dressed up in one of the lamest stories I have ever read in my entire life, and as my friends know, I do A LOT of reading. The story is all about dealing with change, and it involves four characters, two of them are mice and two are "littlepeople." The mice are named "Sniff" and "Scurry," and one of them sniffs out changes and the other scurries without hesitation. The littlepeople are named "Hem" and "Haw," and one of them hates change and wants things to stay as they are, and the other, um, laughs. The live in a maze, and everyday they go through it, trying to find cheese. One day they all somehow stumble into "Cheese Station C," which contains a shitload of cheese. Both the mice and the littlepeople eat the cheese, but the littlepeople decide to move their homes closer to the cheese, and begin to see it as their cheese. They start slowing down, and go about life assuming that the cheese is going to be there forever.
All this time they ignore the fact that the cheese is getting smaller, and one day, when they go to Cheese Station C, they discover that the cheese is gone. The mice take off into the maze and begin a search for new cheese, but the littlepeople stay in Cheese Station C and bitch about how shitty their life is, because some inconsiderate prick moved their cheese. They sit and wait for it to come back, and after awhile Haw begins to wonder if maybe they should go back into the maze to look for more cheese. Hem argues violently with Haw, because he is sure that the cheese will come back. After several pages of the littlepeople feeling hungry and sad, Haw starts to laugh at their misfortune, and decides "It's MAZE time!" and goes back into the maze to search for new cheese.
To make a short story shorter, he finds Cheese Station N, which is where the mice have been kicking it for awhile now. The cheese at this station is even bigger than they had at Cheese Station C, and Haw says "Hooray for change!" Will Hem ever get off his ass and find Cheese Station N??? The book leaves us wondering about that, but I assume that Hem stayed at the station and ended up writhing on the floor, his stomach shriveling up into a hardened ball until he died in snarling fits of dry, bloody vomiting.
I was unsatisfied with the conclusion of this short story, and I wondered what happened next. From the evidence I got in this story, I assume that Hem and Haw were gay lovers, and that Haw quickly got over the loss of his long-time romantic partner, since change was now his "thing". Eventually a woman named "Hee" stumbles into the station, and Haw decides to take her as a replacement, since he is now addicted to change. He tries to fuck Hee in the ass, since he is used to having anal with Hem, but Hee guides Haw's prick into her vagina, and after ejaculating inside of her she becomes pregnant. They have a baby boy and name him "Hum." Eventually the cheese runs out and the mice leave again. Haw, in love with change, leaves Hee and Hum abandoned at Cheese Station N. Years pass, and since they have no food Hee begins to slice off pieces of her own flesh to feed Hum a little while longer until Haw comes home. After Hee dies of starvation Hum cannibalizes her, then dies two months later.
Haw finds Cheese Station Q along with the mice, and because change is now his driving passion in life he decides to give up human pussy and takes it upon himself to start fucking the mice. The mice happen to be girl mice, and they give birth to mutant micepeople, who scream a garbled combination of English and mouse-talk. Horrified with his offspring, Haw murders the two micepeople and then takes his own life after realizing what he has done. The mice, being mice, are indifferent.
The "Cheese" story is wrapped around another story, this one involving a High School Reunion. The reunion story serves two purposes: One, it has characters talking about how profound the Cheese story is and how much it has changed their lives, and Two, it adds more pages to this book so you don't feel completely gypped by paying $20 for a book that you can read in half an hour. The reunion story is so obviously a second thought by the author that I honestly feel like my time was completely wasted by it, and I wish that I could find Johnson so I could demand back the time that I pissed away reading it.
What are the lessons of this book? Here they are:
Change Happens: They Keep Moving The Cheese.
Anticipate Change: Get Ready For The Cheese To Move.
Monitor Change: Smell The Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old.
Adapt To Change Quickly: The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese.
Change: Move With The Cheese.
Enjoy Change!: Savor The Adventure And Enjoy The Taste Of New Cheese!
Be Ready To Change Quickly And Enjoy It Again & Again: They Keep Moving The Cheese.
By the way, every single one of the above lessons appear here exactly as they appeared in the book. There is no possible way that I could make them any more ridiculous or absurd than they already are.
Books like this are why people hate the Self-Help and Success genres. I could sit here for months and try to come up with the lamest Self-Help parody imaginable, and it still couldn't top this book. It's a fucking parody of itself, yet it tells you with a straight face how life-changing it is. The worst thing about it is that the advice in this book is actually good and should be taken to heart. You should be prepared to face change, and you should keep an optimistic view about it. There are sections in the story where it succeeds in sending that point across, but it doesn't change the fact that THIS IS A STUPID STORY, made worse by the way the author continuously pats himself on the back for delivering such powerful lessons to you. It also contains the most shameless marketing I've seen in a book. The characters in the story talk about how everyone needs to hear this story, the writer of the foreword to the book talks about how he gave copies of it to everyone in his business and how you should too, and in the back there's a handy order form so you can easily send away for as many copies of the book as you'd like, so you can give them away as gifts. I guess it worked, though, since this piece of shit was a NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER.
I'd also like to say that the title of this book is possibly the worst part of it. Yes, a character (Hem) actually yells "Who Moved My Cheese?," and both Hem and Haw think that the cheese was actually moved. The reason why the idea of "moving cheese" doesn't work is because the cheese was never moved...it was eaten. The cheese was devoured, and you can't "move with the cheese" if it is being eaten, digested, and shit out. "They" don't keep "moving the cheese," because the other cheese is different, and when you find it, it gets eaten, digested, and shit out, too. It's not the same cheese at all, so it wasn't moved, and if something isn't moved, YOU CAN'T FUCKING MOVE WITH IT.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good fable just as much as the next person. I have heard the "Acres Of Diamonds" story and found it just delightful. I have read many different inspirational stories, and a lot of them are cute, entertaining, and profound. What I don't like is cheap marketing, inflated self-importance, and shitty storytelling, especially if it's all wrapped up in the same package. Johnson knew what he was doing with this book, and some of the characters in his "reunion" story even poke fun at how corny the story is. But some things are unforgivable. Fuck this book, fuck Johnson, and fuck the assholes who made it a bestseller. I'll take The Poky Little Puppy over this steaming pile of rat-shit any day.
Who Moved My Cheese?
1998
By Spencer Johnson, M.D.
I have noticed during the past couple of months that Self-Help and Success literature tend to follow certain formulas. One thing that nearly every Self-Help book I've ever read has done is tell little stories, usually from the lives of great or successful people, pick out the specifics of how these people succeeded, then give you the distilled wisdom from these stories. Even the highly technical "Feeling Good" is loaded with stories, and I am going to state right here that I understand the value in them. A dry tip is completely worthless unless you spice it up with an example, and the better a story is the more valuable the book is to your own success. However, as the final blurb in the first Spiderman comic once said, "With great power comes great responsibility," and if you're going to make a point with a story, it better damn well be a GOOD story. The trap that a lot of Self-Help books fall into is that they are written by people who are unable to tell a halfway decent story, and you can almost hear their ligaments tear from how far they have to stretch a metaphor.
I mention this because there is some great advice in Spencer Johnson's book, "Who Moved My Cheese?" The problem lies in the fact that this advice is dressed up in one of the lamest stories I have ever read in my entire life, and as my friends know, I do A LOT of reading. The story is all about dealing with change, and it involves four characters, two of them are mice and two are "littlepeople." The mice are named "Sniff" and "Scurry," and one of them sniffs out changes and the other scurries without hesitation. The littlepeople are named "Hem" and "Haw," and one of them hates change and wants things to stay as they are, and the other, um, laughs. The live in a maze, and everyday they go through it, trying to find cheese. One day they all somehow stumble into "Cheese Station C," which contains a shitload of cheese. Both the mice and the littlepeople eat the cheese, but the littlepeople decide to move their homes closer to the cheese, and begin to see it as their cheese. They start slowing down, and go about life assuming that the cheese is going to be there forever.
All this time they ignore the fact that the cheese is getting smaller, and one day, when they go to Cheese Station C, they discover that the cheese is gone. The mice take off into the maze and begin a search for new cheese, but the littlepeople stay in Cheese Station C and bitch about how shitty their life is, because some inconsiderate prick moved their cheese. They sit and wait for it to come back, and after awhile Haw begins to wonder if maybe they should go back into the maze to look for more cheese. Hem argues violently with Haw, because he is sure that the cheese will come back. After several pages of the littlepeople feeling hungry and sad, Haw starts to laugh at their misfortune, and decides "It's MAZE time!" and goes back into the maze to search for new cheese.
To make a short story shorter, he finds Cheese Station N, which is where the mice have been kicking it for awhile now. The cheese at this station is even bigger than they had at Cheese Station C, and Haw says "Hooray for change!" Will Hem ever get off his ass and find Cheese Station N??? The book leaves us wondering about that, but I assume that Hem stayed at the station and ended up writhing on the floor, his stomach shriveling up into a hardened ball until he died in snarling fits of dry, bloody vomiting.
I was unsatisfied with the conclusion of this short story, and I wondered what happened next. From the evidence I got in this story, I assume that Hem and Haw were gay lovers, and that Haw quickly got over the loss of his long-time romantic partner, since change was now his "thing". Eventually a woman named "Hee" stumbles into the station, and Haw decides to take her as a replacement, since he is now addicted to change. He tries to fuck Hee in the ass, since he is used to having anal with Hem, but Hee guides Haw's prick into her vagina, and after ejaculating inside of her she becomes pregnant. They have a baby boy and name him "Hum." Eventually the cheese runs out and the mice leave again. Haw, in love with change, leaves Hee and Hum abandoned at Cheese Station N. Years pass, and since they have no food Hee begins to slice off pieces of her own flesh to feed Hum a little while longer until Haw comes home. After Hee dies of starvation Hum cannibalizes her, then dies two months later.
Haw finds Cheese Station Q along with the mice, and because change is now his driving passion in life he decides to give up human pussy and takes it upon himself to start fucking the mice. The mice happen to be girl mice, and they give birth to mutant micepeople, who scream a garbled combination of English and mouse-talk. Horrified with his offspring, Haw murders the two micepeople and then takes his own life after realizing what he has done. The mice, being mice, are indifferent.
The "Cheese" story is wrapped around another story, this one involving a High School Reunion. The reunion story serves two purposes: One, it has characters talking about how profound the Cheese story is and how much it has changed their lives, and Two, it adds more pages to this book so you don't feel completely gypped by paying $20 for a book that you can read in half an hour. The reunion story is so obviously a second thought by the author that I honestly feel like my time was completely wasted by it, and I wish that I could find Johnson so I could demand back the time that I pissed away reading it.
What are the lessons of this book? Here they are:
Change Happens: They Keep Moving The Cheese.
Anticipate Change: Get Ready For The Cheese To Move.
Monitor Change: Smell The Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old.
Adapt To Change Quickly: The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese.
Change: Move With The Cheese.
Enjoy Change!: Savor The Adventure And Enjoy The Taste Of New Cheese!
Be Ready To Change Quickly And Enjoy It Again & Again: They Keep Moving The Cheese.
By the way, every single one of the above lessons appear here exactly as they appeared in the book. There is no possible way that I could make them any more ridiculous or absurd than they already are.
Books like this are why people hate the Self-Help and Success genres. I could sit here for months and try to come up with the lamest Self-Help parody imaginable, and it still couldn't top this book. It's a fucking parody of itself, yet it tells you with a straight face how life-changing it is. The worst thing about it is that the advice in this book is actually good and should be taken to heart. You should be prepared to face change, and you should keep an optimistic view about it. There are sections in the story where it succeeds in sending that point across, but it doesn't change the fact that THIS IS A STUPID STORY, made worse by the way the author continuously pats himself on the back for delivering such powerful lessons to you. It also contains the most shameless marketing I've seen in a book. The characters in the story talk about how everyone needs to hear this story, the writer of the foreword to the book talks about how he gave copies of it to everyone in his business and how you should too, and in the back there's a handy order form so you can easily send away for as many copies of the book as you'd like, so you can give them away as gifts. I guess it worked, though, since this piece of shit was a NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER.
I'd also like to say that the title of this book is possibly the worst part of it. Yes, a character (Hem) actually yells "Who Moved My Cheese?," and both Hem and Haw think that the cheese was actually moved. The reason why the idea of "moving cheese" doesn't work is because the cheese was never moved...it was eaten. The cheese was devoured, and you can't "move with the cheese" if it is being eaten, digested, and shit out. "They" don't keep "moving the cheese," because the other cheese is different, and when you find it, it gets eaten, digested, and shit out, too. It's not the same cheese at all, so it wasn't moved, and if something isn't moved, YOU CAN'T FUCKING MOVE WITH IT.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good fable just as much as the next person. I have heard the "Acres Of Diamonds" story and found it just delightful. I have read many different inspirational stories, and a lot of them are cute, entertaining, and profound. What I don't like is cheap marketing, inflated self-importance, and shitty storytelling, especially if it's all wrapped up in the same package. Johnson knew what he was doing with this book, and some of the characters in his "reunion" story even poke fun at how corny the story is. But some things are unforgivable. Fuck this book, fuck Johnson, and fuck the assholes who made it a bestseller. I'll take The Poky Little Puppy over this steaming pile of rat-shit any day.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Self-Help Review 9: The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People
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