112 of 112 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Daily Disciplines to Keep You on the Path to Success, May 6, 2004
Can you expect to win a gold medal in the Olympics if you start preparing the day of the try outs for your country's team? Probably not.
In the same way, each of us needs to develop ourselves spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, physically, intellectually, and socially if we want to accomplish more in the future. Many books take one aspect of life and suggest daily activities to strengthen that part of one's life. Dr. John C. Maxwell has taken that important idea further in this book and suggested what you need to do each day in 12 different areas.
The 12 areas are:
Choose and display the right attitude
Determine and act on important priorities
Know and follow healthy guidelines
Communicate with and care for your family
Practice and develop good thinking
Make and keep proper commitments
Make and properly manage your money
Deepen and live out your spiritual faith
Initiate and invest in solid personal relationships
Plan for and model being generosity
Embrace and practice good values
Seek out and embrace personal improvements.
Each section comes with negative and positive examples so you understand the point Dr. Maxwell is trying to make. I often found the negative examples to be more instructive than the positive ones. I don't want to be like those people!
At the end of each section are a series of questions to help you make the decisions and take the actions you need to do to accomplish what you want to in life. So, you're not modeling on what Dr. Maxwell does specifically . . . but rather turning a spotlight into areas he's found to be valuable in his own, very successful life.
I often marvel at how much Dr. Maxwell accomplishes. He writes lots of books. He gives many speeches. He trains enormous numbers of leaders. He inspires millions more. For a long time, I've wondered what the discipline was like that he uses. Now that I have read this book, I know. And I'm very impressed. This is a level of self-discipline and focus that I had never considered before.
Mid-way through the book, I found myself becoming intimidated by all that needs to be done . . . and began to despair if I was up to the challenge. It was with a great sense of relief that I found this problem addressed in the conclusion to the book. Rather than attacking the whole Mount Everest of opportunity for daily self-discipline all at once, he suggests starting with two areas where you are doing well and one where you are not. Then, switch focus as you get one of the areas you have been working on where you want to get it. I think that's a reasonable plan, and only wish he had suggested that approach in the beginning of the book.
Personally, the book would have worked better for me if I had read it in this order: faith, values, attitude, thinking, growth, health, family, relationships, commitment, generosity, finances and priorities. I suspect that the right order for you will be different from either Dr. Maxwell's or mine. The book is modular enough that you can reorder your reading of the chapters after the first two to provide a focus that fits with the way you like to organize your thinking and actions. I encourage you to do so.
Although this book will make a tremendous difference in your life, it will make even more difference if you share and discuss it with those you love and care about. So be generous in sharing this remarkable volume.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Practical Material to Effect Change in the Reader, September 17, 2004
"Today Matters" may be the most effective and practical John Maxwell book for personal development to date. Taken together with his recent work "Thinking for a Change," this is a poignant manual for managing the decisions of life.
The central theme in "Today Matters" is making and then managing the core decisions that define who we are. He has done an excellent job of partitioning the major practical themes of life in to 12 major categories. You could probably add to the list if you really wanted to, but the set he offers are sufficient to capture 90+ percent of the essential themes in life. Personally, I was stricken by how important each of them is to determining the course our lives travel. In my own reflections while reading this book, I could see how my decisions, or indecision, in each of these areas has shaped my life.
This book is an excellent microscope for self-examination. But more than that, it is an excellent instruction guide to aide the reader in making these critical decisions. There are practical exercises that conclude each chapter that tie up each topic. Fortunately, Maxwell does not try to tell the reader what these decisions should be. Rather he leads the reader to pursue individual answers.
If a person were to implement the tools from "Thinking for a Change" with the process from "Today Matters" they would have a blueprint, irrespective of their personal or professional goals, for making the most of their lives. Maxwell presents universal concepts that will aid in the ultimate pursuit of a life well lived.
As an aside: I have read a lot of Maxwell, enjoy most of it, learned something from all of it. However, I find that his books have tended to overlap, sometimes a lot! For example, when I read "Developing the Leader Within You" there were times when I felt like I was re-reading "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership". His last two books seem to mark a decisive change for the better. I really enjoyed the way the two books dovetail together in a very complimentary fashion rather than overlapping and becoming redundant.
Kudos to Maxwell on continuing to improve his craft. This strikes me as someone who is living out the example he is teaching. That is "do as I do, not just as I say".
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Today Really Does Matter!, April 8, 2006
This review is from: Today Matters: 12 Daily Practices to Guarantee Tomorrow's Success (Maxwell, John C.) (Paperback)
This book is inspiring. The author explains twelve principles that he believes will improve every aspect of the reader's daily life if he or she commits to working on those principles each and every day. Of course, some of the ideas are not new - they have been included in self-help books for years. The difference in this book is that Maxwell makes it easy to understand how to implement each principle in the reader's life. It's one thing to read a self-help book and another to follow its guidance.
Maxwell uses inspirational stories, quotes, and his own personal experiences to share his joy for today and to explain how we can become our best. He also poses some questions at the end of each chapter and provides space to allow the reader to think about their life now and ways they can improve it. One chapter is fairly religious (as should be expected, given that Maxwell is prominent Christian leader), but I enjoyed it because I share his same beliefs. All in all, this is a quick read that deserves to be read more than once. It is a great book and I am going to try to read it (or at least parts of it) once a year to keep me focused on my goals and my attitude positive.
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