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Who Dares Wins: The Green Beret Way to Conquer Fear and Succeed

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"Who Dares Wins: The Green Beret Way to Conquer Fear and Succeed" by New York Times Bestselling Author Bob Mayer is a great book that teaches former Green Beret officer Bob Mayer's strategies for conquering fear and achieving personal and professional success. Having served with the 82nd Airborne Division and as a sniper with the 2nd Infantry Division, I had opportunities to work with Special Forces a few times, and the military concepts in this book appeal to me more than some of the other "success" related titles available. Mayer does a very good job of showing how the concepts and strategies used by the military elite can be used for personal or organizational success outside of the armed forces.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part is titled Area One: Wins. The chapters in this part teach three tools. First you must know the What. What do you want to change or achieve? The next tool focuses on knowing Why you want to change and to achieve your goals. The third tool is knowing Where will change occur.

Part two, or Area Two, is Who. The tools in this section are about understanding your character, knowing what change is and how to do it, and building the courage to change. Area Three: Dares contains the tools for communicating your change to the world, taking command of your change, and completing the circle of success and change.

The nine tools are what Mayer uses to create his Circle of Success. It is a good model to teach some very important concepts that will enable anyone to achieve more if they actually implement the strategies and tools into their own lives and businesses.

All three sections or parts have a conclusion that focuses on doing things the Green Beret Way. These summaries and experiences help relate the lessons to the real world. The book is full of quotes, stories, and lessons that will assist you with making things happen and succeeding. The book covers concepts such as defining goals, staying motivated, building mental toughness, daring to succeed, finding courage, taking risks, communicating effectively, becoming a leader, and more. There are many exercises throughout the text that if you actually take the time to do, you will undoubtedly move toward greater achievement and success in your life.

Being former military and a martial artist, I lean toward strategies that are warrior focused, and these concepts are included in my own teachings. So I especially liked Mayer's "Who Dares Wins." Also being an author, I enjoyed when Mayer shared how these principles have helped him in that arena too.

This isn't a book I'm going to put back on the shelf and forget about. I'm going to keep it out, re-read parts, and continue to work on some of the exercises outlines in the pages of the text. I'm going to use this book to continue on my journey, as well as help me teach others using warrior themes. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about success using strategies from the elite U. S. Military's Special Forces, or Green Berets.

Reviewed by Alain Burrese, J.D., author of the Lock On Joint Locking Essentials series.

I like this book. It is interspersed with stories of real American military heroes, from the revolutionary period to today, and one of the main themes of the book is to know yourself and overcome (not eliminate !) fear in your life. The main theme is that goals drive everything, as they do in the military. If you know what and why, you can then find your "how". I liked the many workbook-type exercises in the book, and I liked the Myers-Briggs (MB) in the book, which allows you to quickly determine your MB personality type, within 10 minutes, which shows you what type of person you are, what kinds of jobs fit that (if you then google your type, for instance). MB was a test originally used by the U.S. military in World War II to quickly get people into the right jobs. Good book that I can recommend. This is psychology applied in the real world, not navel gazing or "accept yourself"-type bromide. This is where the rubber hits the road.

In "Who Dares Wins: The Green Beret Way to Conquer Fear and Succeed," Bob Mayer turns his experience in the special forces, his knowledge of intriguing military anecdotes, and his time as an author to write a motivational book. He correctly observes that perhaps the main thing holding people back from changing their lives is fear, and focuses on turning this rationale around. The book is divided into three sections, according to its title. The first section is "Wins," the second is "Who," and the third is "Dares." The first section explores the goals one wants to achieve; the second section analyzes one's character traits, while the third section discusses implementing those very changes to set one on his path to success. There are nine tools overall, garnered from Mayer's time with the Green Berets, with three tools listed per section. Overall, I found this book to be a quick and engaging read. I enjoyed some of Mayer's stories, and found his three-step process towards change very helpful. Another thing I liked about this book is the personality test in the second section, as well as the practical exercises interspersed throughout the book. Mayer isn't a magician and he doesn't promise to eliminate fear altogether, but he does promise that if one utilizes all the tools in the book he will be better equipped towards dealing with it. In the current economic crisis when negativity can be found at every corner, I find this book to be a particularly helpful beacon of hope that further solidifies our president's message that change is necessary for success. As are the words of another former president, "we have nothing to fear but fear itself."

My high hopes for this book were unmet. The info about Special Forces and Green Berets was the basic stuff that is well-trod territory. The premise is the importance of goal-setting as related to military missions. Whether or not I missed the point, most of the military stories used to illustrate a point seemed roughly told or transparent. The goal setting methodology described was tedious and quite lengthy considering it was based on a military 'action-oriented' theme. I was ultimately disappointed in this book. If the author is going to use the Special Forces draw for a discussion on goal-setting I would hope for something fresher than we've seen many times before with other books live, 'Leadership Secrets of some military branch', 'Management like a Navy SEAL' etc.

Without question, this is a really great book. It gives an approach to change that is proven, and has been proven time and again by these military specialists. The author puts his point across without making things complicated. One just has to not be afraid of trying. Even with failures in life, the book is a blueprint for success. Live and learn from life. Keep trying!!

This is a great book.

It's a no-nonsense, nuff said type that explains the 'real deal' of changing your life to: -focus on what you really want -develop a plan to get it -develop yourself to do it. You don't read through a bunch of fluff with this book.

The concepts in this book are not airy fairy. As you read you get the picture that the Special Forces instructor turned author not only knows what he's talking about, he's also used the skills he recommends in changing from a SF instructor to an author. (I don't want to give away too much, buy the book.)

It is not a one time read that you look at once and have digested and assimilated into your life. I keep this book quite close at hand because the concepts are what I'd like more of in my life and it takes time to build.

As a former Marine (4 years in, early 90's) I find the description of Special Forces that can be gleaned through this book very interesting.

Previous reviews highlight the 3 sections of the book well. I've found many big concepts and parts of this book to be fantastic and show you how to change your life. These concepts are not before seen in other book (in my experience), and they are laid out clearly and concisely here. I recommend this book wholeheartedly.

Who Dares Wins: The Green Beret Way to Conquer Fear and Succeed by Bob Mayer is a motivational book that provides you with a specific and detailed game plan to achieve your goals without letting fear inhibit your aspirations. Mayer is a former special forces warrior, motivational speaker and author. The book is broken down into three sections which Mayer calls "Areas."

Area One: Wins

-This section covers the "What", "Why" and "Where" as it pertains to your goals. "Wins" discusses defining your goal stressing that the goal statement is to be written in one sentence.

Area Two: Who

-This section discusses character, true change, fear and courage.

Area Three: Dares

-This section reviews your mastery of personal communication and command.

Who Dares Wins: The Green Beret Way to Conquer Fear and Succeed contains 40 exercises designed for you to complete to maximize usefulness of this book. Failure to complete the exercises will result in a lack of progress with the ideas and strategies that are presented in this book. Who Dares Wins is more than a book to be read it is to be completed. This requires time, energy, honesty, clarity, patience, an open mind and reflection. If you take the time to read the book and complete all of the excerces at the end of the book you will realize that your Circle of Success will be complete. You will have a detailed and specific roadmap to your success where you don't eliminate fear but learn to control and harness it as a part of your success.

Each area of the book is interspersed with military stories that relate to the subject being reviewed. At times I felt the process was more complicated than it needed to be but Mayer has a very specific methodology to get his point across. The book is well written and provides a host of skills to conquer fear so that you can succeed. Mayer sums it up when he succinctly states:

"The successful don't do "buts." The successful are not wannabes. They learn. They decide. They act. They sustain the action."

I recommend this book especially for anyone who is looking to join Special Forces as it provides good insights as to what will be expected of you in order to be an elite warrior.

This is a self-help book for guys! Bob Mayer is a former member of the US Army Special Forces, who used what he learned while in the "Green Berets" to become a successful author. The core premise of this book is that people are inhibited to succeed by their own fear. That only by overcoming fear can one be truly successful, in writing, or in any endeavor. To drive this point home, the author uses examples of brave men in combat in the face of overwhelming odds. Unfortunately, not every battle fought by our special operations forces resulted in victory. Often, it is through failure, the author points out, that we learn our most valuable lessons. The book also contains numerous self-analysis exercises to determine your character, what forms of stress you're most sensitive to and what goal(s) you should establish in order for you to overcome your own fear.

This is a bunch of overwritten basic common sense that no one on earth needs to read books about to be aware of and use. Belabouring commonplace is one way of producing "advice" books: they feel agreeable, but that is because, um, well -- because you already know all that, so their pleasantness is due to having your own views confirmed, not learning anything new. To embroider these useless babblings even further the author tricks them out in "Special Services" this and that (quite gratuitously). As far as writing, well, I've seen worse, but overall, it is imprecise and sometimes disconnected, illogical.

Bottomline: yet another useless "advice" book sucked out of a thumb so as to cover a bunch of pages with text so as to pretend it's a book to pretend you give something to people in exchange for their money (outright robbery would be more honest, but it's illegal). The author wrote thirty eight (38!) other books. One hopes they're better than this one, but uou get the idea. Thanks to Amazon for their generous return policy: this moderately-sized crock of manure goes back.

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The author, Mr Mayer, despite purportedly being a best-selling author of thirty-eight books, seems unable to handle criticism -- see his comment below. Btw, in his rebuttal he commits one of the sins richly represented in this book:
> Robert J. Mayer says [among other things]:
> The book must have really affected you to react
> so strongly. It's a sign of reading a truth and
> rejecting it.

Really? The logic of this evades me somehow. How about it's a lousy book that cost me time and money? Seems like a simpler explanation.