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Most people think success comes from good luck or enormous talent, but many successful people achieve their accomplishments in a simpler way: through self-discipline. Brian Tracy knows this firsthand: He didn't graduate from high school, and after working for a few years as a laborer, he realized he had limited skills and a limited future. But through the power of self-discipline, he changed his life, achieving success in sales and marketing, investing, real estate development, and management consulting. He has consulted to more than 1,000 companies, given motivational speeches and seminars to more than 4 million people in 40 countries, and written 45 books. No Excuses! shows you how you can achieve success in all three major areas of your life: 1. Your personal goals: self-discipline can help you realize that you are responsible for your success and shows you how persistence really does pay off. 2. Your business and money goals: self-discipline can make you a better leader and a better manager, help you close more sales and make more money, improve your time-management and problem- solving abilities, and make you more effective and successful at work. 3. Your overall happiness: self-discipline can help you be happier, healthier, and more physically fit, and it can help you in your marriage and your relationships with your children and friends. Each of the 21 chapters in this audio book shows you how to be more disciplined in one aspect of your life, with end- of-chapter exercises to help you apply the "no excuses" approach to your own life. With these guidelines, you can learn how to be more successful in everything you do-instead of wistfully envying others who you think are just "luckier" than you. A little self-discipline goes a long way...so stop making excuses and listen to this audio book!.… (more)
User reviews
It started off great. The section, titled Self-Discipline and Personal Success, had a lot of good ideas on motivating myself to better discipline. I looked forward to hearing more on the areas of character, responsibility, goals and persistence. The only thing that bothered me was the book was read by the author. His voice drove me nuts. He didn't use much, if any expression. What really struck me, though, was the lack of conviction behind the words. It didn't sound as if it meant anything to him. He wrote it, so it must have. The director of the book should have pulled the passion out of him or gotten another reader. It didn't take long before I was forgetting what I heard because the of the voice droning on.
The next section really started to get to me, though. That section, Discipline in Business, Sales and Finance, is when he really stepped up on his soapbox. He writing style is so overly confident, it lost credibility. He explained, for example, how to be truly successful in life, one must own their own business. He continued by saying that if one is just disciplined, the business will be not just successful, but wildly successful. The treasures of the Earth will flow to your door if you are just disciplined enough. There I had heartburn. I know enough disciplined entrepreneurs that have had their businesses fail to know there is more to it than what Tracy writes. He made it sound insultingly simple. If a business fails, the owner just wasn't disciplined enough. Shame on them for not being disciplined.
Then I got to the next section, Discipline and the Good Life. Tracy weighs in on topics such as Personal Health, Fitness, Marriage, Children and Friendship. The advice because short, trite and even more insulting. I couldn't stand it. I nearly turned off the book several times. However, in the interest of studying discipline for this blog and my personal benefit, I slogged on. To him, it is all so easy. Just fix everything. No excuses. And life will be a bed of roses. Sorry, my life is a little more complicated than that. Perhaps I am just that undisciplined. I don't think that it is, though.
My recommendation is to ready the first 120 pages and stop. The exercises he puts at the end of each chapter are valid and worthwhile to use in this section. A little introspection is a good thing. Pushing to improve one's discipline is also a good thing.
Skip the last two sections of the book. Trust me. Have the discipline to do it. Don't waste your life.