The one sentence summary

Life will always throw you curveballs but it’s how you respond that counts.

Can’t be bothered to read it? Too much screen time lately? Listen to the 5-minute podcast in 2 parts.

 

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • At some point we all face the unexpected, but if you understand your own psychology and deploy the right strategy, you can turn any setback into something better.
  • Most difficulties are less to do with other people and more to do with the way you react. This is linked to your colour type based on the DISC model: Dominance = red, Inspiration = yellow, Stability = green, Compliance = blue (see summaries of his other books). You need to see the warning signs and stop making excuses.
  • We all have a tendency to focus on the negative because of our innate survival instinct, and we can escalate a minor problem into a serious crisis in just a few minutes.
  • Self-awareness will lead you down the right path. You need to dare to notice what doesn’t work, make changes, and adapt with a new attitude.
  • Knowledge is not power – it is potential power. What you are capable of is irrelevant, and so is what you know. The only thing that matters is what you actually do. You have three basic responsibilities:
  1. Everything you do: your decisions, your actions and how you do them
  2. Everything you don’t do: what you refrain from, willpower and resisting temptation
  3. Your reaction to everything that happens: your attitude to events that you can’t influence, and using restraint when you would rather react (possibly inappropriately)
  • Being grumpy and constantly complaining is referred to by lecturer Jorgen Oom as sawing sawdust – there’s nothing left to saw. Ironically, what we complain about is usually something that we have the power to change, and yet we don’t do anything.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • Hersey and Blanchard looked at how someone progresses from being a happy amateur to a full-blown professional. They go through four stages:
  1. High will, low skill: full of energy without really knowing what you are doing
  2. Low will, low skill: nothing works and you’re about to give up
  3. Low will, high skill: you start seeing light at the end of the tunnel but still hesitate

4: High will, high skill: it finally looks like you are going to manage and go the distance

  • To cope with setbacks, try the 5+5 rule: if something won’t make a difference in 5 years’ time, then don’t spend more than 5 minutes being upset about it.
  • Next time you experience a setback, pause to think about the potential possibility that it creates.
  • Laterville is inside every person. It’s the comfortable place where you haven’t changed anything or got on with an improvement in your life.
  • The universe couldn’t care less who intends to do what. All that counts is what you actually do.
  • People have many defence mechanisms to avoid responsibility or action, which include repression, intellectualization, disassociation, rationalization, projection, displacement, humour and denial.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • Not much. There are now four books on these themes and there is some overlap, but the advice is sound.