86 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Use Setbacks to Overcome Your Stalled Thinking, April 25, 2000
Failing Forward is one of the best stallbusting books I have ever read! It focuses on how to handle our emotions when things aren't matching up to our expectations. Dr. Maxwell identifies dozens of stalls that delay progress for those who are experiencing setbacks in their lives.
While most people see setbacks as a negative, Dr. Maxwell points out that there is an important lesson that we can use to accomplish more in the future. Building on that appropriate and valuable perspective, Failing Forward postulates 15 principles that can help you apply the lesson.
Each chapter covers a separate principle and is filled with self-diagnostic questions, as well as heart-warming examples of how people went from apparent failure towards great success.
The work is very consistent with the philosophy of Anthony Robbins. If you are a Robbins fan, you will find this book to be a good complement to Unleash the Power Within.
I strongly recommend that you read this book, and reread it the next time you are feeling sorry for yourself or have a setback. If you care about others, be prepared to loan your copy to the next person who looks morose after having a problem.
Dr. Maxwell also offers a self-diagnostic test on the book's Web site (www.failingforward.com). I took that test and found it helpful to cement my understanding of the book. I recommend that you do this as well.
Unlike most books about self-improvement that are scaled to a level of sophistication, this book should appeal both to those with lots of experience and education as well as those who have yet to develop those perspectives.
The only people who will be confused will be those who have yet to experience any significant setbacks. They will wonder what all the fuss is about. To fill in that point, progress is seldom smooth. It usually looks more like 1 or 2 steps forward, and them some backward. In essence, we are talking about a zig-zag, even when things go well. At other times, the zig-zag can be downward.
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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important nook about an important life issue, November 14, 2003
By A Customer
John Maxwell does a marvellous job of helping people to work through failure and move on. I am 53 years old and was recently laid off by an employer who told me that I was the best employee he had. I felt betrayed and would wake up every morning thinking of ways to get even (even though I knew I wouldn't act on them.) I was really hurt and couldn't get over it. A friend of mine suggested I read two books. The first one she recommended was this one and it really helped me to put things into perspective. Instead of moping around the house, I started looking through the papers and making calls to get job interviews. Yes, it got me going! The other book my friend recommended was Optimal Thinking: How To Be Your Best Self which helped me to understand that every situation (even a a situation I don't like) is an opportunity to be my best, and it showed me how to make the most of any situation. With books like these in the world, we never have to be stuck and we can really make the most of our lives.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
decent stuff here, January 9, 2001
Maxwell is a former minister and the founder of a company that offers support services to religious organizations. As such, his book's upbeat, you can do it tone may be off-putting to some. But there's some interesting stuff here and the real life examples he uses of people of have learned from failure provide some good hands-on advice. The book is organized into 15 steps that will help us make the most out of a failure. These are designed to help us 'fail forward.' Some of them include: find the benefit in every bad experience; work on the weaknesses that weaken you; change your response to failure by accepting responsibility. There's not a lot of analysis or depth to Maxwell's observations, but there's enough here in the way of examples to ground his practical observations to make this a useful motivational book.
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