Maximum Achievement - Book Review

Brian Tracy has studied self-help books for the last 30 years. He hasn't just read the modern classics from America - he's read everything from the classical authors of ancient Greece and Rome to the mystical writings of Asian spirituality to the psychological scientists of the twentieth century. I believe he knows more about self-help than any other writer in the world today.

As a result, he includes in this book just about everything you will ever find in any other self-help manual. Everything that's any use, that is. Most of it is common sense, and you will have come across it somewhere before. Some of it is controversial, some of it original, much of it inspiring, and all of it practical. But its true value lies in the fact that his system is a COMPLETE one, one that you can use to solve just about any problem in your life; I know that I personally will want to refer to this book for the rest of my life to help with problems large and small and to help me keep growing and learning.

Tracy's book reminds me of something by Aristotle. It's a comprehensive, logical system that's deceptively simple but has a lot of thought behind it. As I read it for the first time I felt like I was learning skills and ideas that I should have known since childhood. It's like growing up all over again, and getting to be the adult you always wanted to be at the end of it all.

I have no idea why Brian Tracy is not better-known, especially in the UK, where he has a somewhat low profile. It is frankly crazy that authors like Covey and Gray are selling more books than him. Whatever it is you want in a self-help book, this one will almost certainly deliver. And maybe the best news of all is that you'll never want to buy another self-help book again!

Date : 10-05-2004