Customer Reviews

More Balls Than Hands: Juggling Your Way to Success by Learning to Love Your Mistakes

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This important book by the best-selling author of "How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci" has many virtues, but its shining achievement is to introduce the reader to a "mistake-positive" way of life and being. In the time since reading it, I am finding myself transforming, in very positive ways, how I approach life, and how I interpret and experience myself and others. Increasing energy, enthusiasm, openness, and resilience to the challenges of life are a few of the benefits it inspires.

Michael Gelb is a pioneer in the fields of accelerated learning, creative thinking, and leadership development, and President of High Performance Learning, which he founded thirty years ago. In "More Balls Than Hands" (This title often generates laughs when I mention it to women!) Michael masterfully brings to life five principles of high performance learning and living:

1. Create a clear vision of what you want, and then keep comparing your vision with reality, thus stimulating your brain's natural success mechanism to bring reality in line with your vision.
2. Transform your attitude toward mistakes and failure, thereby liberating tremendous energy and enthusiasm for learning and growth.
3. Unleash your natural genius through the power of play.
4. Achieve more with less effort by cultivating relaxed concentration.
5. Develop your coaching skills so you can bring out the best in people at work and at home.

Throughout the book he ties all these themes together with the powerful metaphor of juggling. As he says at the end of the book:
"The juggling metaphor can serve as an inspiring reminder of the secret of life. Is there one word that expresses that secret? Yes. The word is *balance*."

This book is about much more than learning and juggling the demands of today's world. It is about how to live well and wisely, how to create the lives and world we want, written by someone who lives what he speaks. The book is a treasure trove of wisdom, rich with colorful, compelling examples and illustrations. A sheer pleasure to read!

Every time I read one of Michael's books, I feel inspired for greatness, and this book is no exception. Michael has a gift of taking things that are familiar and looking at and applying them in unique ways. In this book, Michael talks about the importance of creating mistakes in a safe environment and using them to accelerate learning to become a better leader, coach, parent, or person. He makes it feel safe to venture out into new territory by teaching that success means pursuing your goals and dreams with much childlike passion that success and failure become irrelevant. I especially love how he frames examples throughout the book with expert quotes that provide meaningful and often thought-provoking context. The quote by Dr. Glenn Doman, Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential, provoked a great family discussion about how important it is for a child to view learning as fun and the positive impact a person can have to help inspire that belief. In the last section of the book, Michael takes a unique approach to teaching juggling, in which he applies all the principles in the book. I never would have thought that dropping balls on purpose would help me learn to juggle, but it did. And it gave me a new confidence that I can do anything!

Michael Gelb has captured the metaphor of the millennium in juggling. It is something that jugglers and non-jugglers alike can relate to at a gut level, because most of us have anything but time on our hands. A single issue of the New York Times is said to contain more information than the average person in the Middle Ages was exposed to in a lifetime. And it just starts there. MORE BALLS THAN HANDS gives you more than just the metaphor, but stories and testimonials from the workplace, as well as practical coaching on how to juggle. The book is readable and doable, and can be enjoyed on many levels. The only thing that could make it even better would be illustrations for the tips on the advanced juggling beyond 3 balls. ...

This book, which I'm told is now out of print, is probably one of the more influential works on leadership that I've read. It's not the standard read, but Gelb has a lot more fun as he intertwines the analogy of juggling with quotes, poetry and his themes (like letting your work play, and embracing your mistakes). This book was recommended to me by one of the best motivators in DI sports (his entire team reads it) and it quickly became one of my favorites.

The best and most useful part of this book comes near the end, where author Michael J. Gelb gets down to basics and offers instructions on how to juggle. The first part of the book consists of a series of exhortations and homilies about the advisability of relaxing, letting yourself make mistakes, practicing to be perfect and other personal attitude guidance. Those who thirst for such encouragement will find the first part of this book a godsend. It includes quotations from Lao Tse, Vince Lombardi and Leonardo da Vinci. All of the advice is highly meritorious, even the advice that you ought to take a break or two every day to juggle. That looks like fun whether you favor New Age nostrums or not. We recommend this book to anyone who must multi-task. Even if juggling doesn't smooth out your work life, at least it will help you relax.