Summary: “Relationship experts tell you how to maintain successful relationships, wealth experts teach you how to manage your money, and health experts help you improve your body. Unfortunately, these experts often disagree with each other…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. Such an approach would have to make logical and intuitive sense, satisfying both head and heart. It would have to appear logically correct in order to satisfy the left brain, and it would have to feel intuitively correct in order to engage the right brain.” Personal Development for Smart People, page xv I’m generally not a fan of many personal development books, but for Steve Pavlina I’m ready to make an exception. Personal Development for Smart People belongs on your bookshelf in between that copy of Linchpin by Seth Godin, and The 4-hour Work Week by Tim Feriss, because it focuses on helping readers develop a universal framework for living a more purposeful and spiritually self-aware existence in all aspects of their lives – whether it be work, health, finances or relationships. It also helps readers identify which of the ideas that enter their life are worth holding onto, and which are worth discarding – an important distinction to be learned for those who wish to live lives of simplicity, meaning, clarity and purpose. A departure from most personal development narratives, what struck me most about this book was its lack of focus on direct solutions to problems that face most people, and a greater emphasis on the process by which readers can develop a system for understanding problems, analyze them within a self-defined framework and arrive at solutions that aligns with their personal aspirations and values. Pavlina’s personal involvement in this book takes less of the form of a guru, and more of a guide. A friend and mentor who has made most of the mistakes that there are to make, and who has devoted a greater portion of his life and career to understanding how people can be spurred on to live lives of fulfillment and conscious personal growth – personal and professional growth which is self-determined, willful and congruent with one’s values and aspirations – this is a book that should always be within sight. And there’s no better way to judge a book’s credibility than to begin by examining the experiences that make its author a credible spiritual guide. Golden Egg Truth “Do you remember the exact moment you first became interested in personal development? I certainly do. It happened in January 1991 while I was sitting in a jail cell. I’d just been arrested for felony grand theft. This wasn’t my first run-in with the law, so I knew I was in trouble. I was 19 years old.” Personal Development for Smart People, page ix And so it begins. From being troubled youth with a history of shoplifting and petty crime whose luck ultimately runs out, to becoming a college student able to complete four years of university education in just three semesters and graduating with the highest distinctions just two years later, to launching a career as an entrepreneur and successful game-developer by his early twenties, Steve Pavlina’s true obsession has been to identify universal principles that can be applied in order to pursue lifelong conscious growth, and to uncover the “hidden order beneath our seemingly chaotic growth experiences” (page xiv). “The laws of physics are universal. Although their specific applications can vary tremendously, these governing laws don’t change based on our location, our culture, or our moods; the core principles are the same whether we’re dealing with rockets or submarines. Why should the field of personal development be any different? Couldn’t universal laws of consciousness exist as well?” (page xvi). And in doing so,
