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46 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
10% Gold and 90% Infomercials, March 27, 2007
This review is from: Life's Missing Instruction Manual : The Guidebook You Should Have Been Given at Birth (Hardcover)
If you can skip past the hundreds of advertisements for the self-help products being peddled by Joe's friends and colleagues, there is actually some very useful stuff in here. But the presentation of the material is very disjointed. This is really just a collection of infomercials. Not bad but there are many better books out there that are actually written by one person and flow coherently.
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62 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book delivers what it promises, April 5, 2006
This review is from: Life's Missing Instruction Manual : The Guidebook You Should Have Been Given at Birth (Hardcover)
This book features numerous vignettes grouped into several themes:
* You: Congratulations on Your Life
* Internal Capabilities: Understanding Your Life's Potential
* External Connections: Caring for Others in Your Life
* Troubleshooting: Taking Care of Yourself
* Optimum Performance: Getting the Best Out of Your Life
* Specifications: What You Need to Know About Others
* Proper Usage: Defining Your Life's Purpose
* Assembly Required: Creating Your Future
You Create Your Future with a Pen (pp. 23-24)
I love this concept, because it involves imaging yourself at some future point in time and establishing goals for yourself under that pretext. We must visualize the future success and remained dedicated, for dedication means keeping a promise to oneself.
Indian Wisdom: Two Wolves (p. 91)
This is a concise and vivid example of controlling one's internal struggles. It reminds us that we are the ones who control the outcome by "feeding" the metaphorical wolf that represents one of two opposing forces.
People Only Act for Self-Serving Reasons, No Matter What They Say or What You Think (p. 112)
This insight is spot-on, and as Joe says, everyone still disagrees with this truism...but it is true. And it's not as if this is inherently a bad thing, but rather just the way we humans act. The sooner we accept this concept, the sooner we'll be able to interact with people more effectively.
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102 of 129 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
How to write a best-seller: the missing instruction manual, March 9, 2006
This review is from: Life's Missing Instruction Manual : The Guidebook You Should Have Been Given at Birth (Hardcover)
It's hard to resist the notion that Vitale conceived his latest best-seller by applying the following formula: Take the marketing hook of a book that already published to wild success (You: The Owner's Manual), add some of the pointed religiosity of two other recent bestsellers (Your Best Life Now and The Purpose-Driven Life), throw in some generic cosmic blather (inspired, perhaps, by Sylvia Browne or Marianne Williamson) and VOILA!--another perfect entry in the burgeoning self-help sub-category of "holistic/successful/spiritually enriched living."
This approach is nothing new for Vitale, a master of so-called "stealth" or "viral" marketing who unashamedly admits to being president of a company called Hypnotic Marketing, Inc. His previous best-seller, The Attraction Factor (which owns the distinction of once having knocked a Harry Potter book out of Amazon's No. 1 slot) echoed several other books and/or programs that involved such concepts as "laws of attraction" or "rules of attraction." Here, Vitale proposes to offer "big wisdom and little-known secrets for living a better life." I'll give him this: The book is clever in some spots and pretty funny in others--but its ability to help you "overcome any obstacle" and "find fulfillment...wealth and happiness," as his publicity material promises, is highly debatable. Like so many of the gurus in this self-help category, Vitale subscribes to the Promise Readers Everything--Even Things That Clash--And Hope They Don't Notice school of motivational enlightenment. Examples: He vows to teach readers, simultaneously, how to "create their own blueprint for success" and to "work as a team." Granted, those two goals are not, strictly speaking, incompatible. But the degree of finesse required to embrace and, especially, implement both goals is not something you could hope to find in a book like Vitale's. Similarly, he says, readers will learn to "be themselves and like it" as well as "lead a good and moral life"--but for that matter, and for good measure, let's throw in two other objectives: "take chances that lead to success" and "accept their mistakes and move on." I defy anyone short of Socrates or Kant to resolve ALL FOUR of those stated benefits into the same action plan without endlessly qualifying, parsing language, or backtracking on something you said earlier.
I've said it a hundred times and I say it again here: If you're just looking for a quick jolt of formless inspiration that fades as fast as the winter sun, then what the heck, order the book. But if you actually expect life-transforming wisdom--come on, now. You know better than that already, don't you? The person most likely to profit off this "guidebook" is Vitale himself.
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