The Motivation Manifesto Hardcover – October 28, 2014

I was super excited about Brendon putting out a new book as I am a fan of his intelligent, practical, strategic and entertaining delivery of highly valuable information. I have read his other books and attended his seminars. So I guess I had high expectations for this book.

As an author myself in this 'self-help' arena; I think an author needs to focus on two main things. Engaging and entertaining the reader is the first part (it needs to be fun) and the second part is to impart useful and relevant information, insight, tips and tools. This way the reader is emotionally inspired plus has the tools to better their life. This is what I was hoping for with this book. But I was not really motivated by the end (more frustrated) and I found myself 'skimming' rather than reading the book to find the gems. There were definitely some great bits, but infrequently scattered throughout.

A huge portion of the book was focused on those 'idiots', 'fools', 'losers', 'naysayers', or 'bastards' that hold you back. This could have been mentioned a lot less, and the positives we needed to incorporate or focus on could have been the majority of the content. The writing also came across for me as a bit of a rant or bland (I am having some trouble clearly articulating why the delivery of the prose did not resonate with me - as I was surprised when it didn't).

This book is touted as a New York Times best seller, but I don't think it is a result of the masterful content or delivery of engaging prose or the awesome tips to crank up your motivation; but because of the expert and very strategic online marketing by Brendan and his large band of affiliates.

So my recommendation is if you have high expectations of this book you might be disappointed. If you wanted to feel motivated and inspired after this book, it might miss the mark, unless you are very new to this content. I actually feel a little bad because I recommended this book to a lot of people based on Brendan's past work, rather than reading it first. I definitely took that personal lesson away myself.

Beautifully written, especially the opening Declarations (I absolutely loved the first 1/4 of this book). But as I went deeper into the book I kept finding an underlying current of contempt, even hatred, for that which we are supposed to "overcome." That is, the weak-willed, the cowardly masses, the small-minds, the fearful. The thing is we are all that stuff at one point or another! We are all that stuff along our whole life-path. There's never a point at which we've totally "transcended" any of that. Brendan implores us to Declare War on these "negative forces" ... but these negative forces are part of us, in that they are strategies we've developed to deal with a confusing and challenging world ... if we declare war, we do so against ourselves! This leads to self-hatred, frustration, loathing and all the vicious cycle we see repeating all around us ... people trying to lose weight, make wealth, achieve some new goal, but getting burned out and giving up largely because they dont understand what's creating the resistance, and devote a huge amount of energy trying "to fight it," not realizing that you can't win when you fight yourself!!! It only ends in failure.
Ultimately, this book takes a very Ancient Greek, even Victorian, high-idealized view of humanity, thinking that simply imploring us to live to the Highest Standard Imaginable (lots of caps words are used to emphasize the Highest Form of the Word) will get us there ... or perhaps at least get those "Worthy of It" there. This is basically just the Western Approach, even the Old Testament Biblical approach, which causes a lot of pain, because it always sets the individual next to the Ideal, and against an ideal the individual must always fail.
The real danger of Burchard's work is that he presents it eloquently, emphatically and matter-of-fact-end-of-story-no-more-argument-style enough that I think many folks will be tempted to turn off their inner-critic whilst reading it. Dont buy into Burchard's sold fear that if you question the material in the book you might just be one of the "small-minded fearful ones" ... if you're going to read this book do so with an open heart and very open mind and let your critical mind stay active, watching your responses from a distance. If you feel your heart pinching or any self-loathing developing while reading the book, take note of that, and go ahead and question if it's a direct result of the language, tone and underlying attitude Burchard is using (don't immediately blame yourself!!!).
If you're looking for something very balanced, realistic, practical and effective beyond a purely theoretical and poetic level, I'd recommend Jack Canfield. I don't have any interest in his stuff byeond personal experience of it. Im promoting it here because Im impressed with it. Much moreso than Burchard's work.
Final note, wanna respond directly to a statement Burchard makes: "We can punish a selfish and callous child without becoming selfish or callous." The statement is such BS I almost don't have words to go into it. It's a quintessentially archaic view of humanity and really gives a one-sentence window into the contempt Burchard has and the pain he may be hiding/stuffing/suppressing with his idealized philosophy. A child is born the opposite of selfish/callous (a child has self-centeredness, but this is natural survival drive, and with good balanced loving parents grows into good balanced loving self-awareness) ... and if he/she has become selfish or callous it's 100% gauranteed the fault of the person in its life that thinks they need to "punish" it for being selfish/callous, state which they caused in the first place. And all that with a high-minded notiong of having "Intended Love" for the punished and chastised little brute. Man, this is such the Victorian Child Rearing view of hurting a child for it s own good, so it doesnt become a tyrant.
Burchard wants to treat his (and your) inner child in this same way, continuing to abandon and punish it, hating the pain and misery it has felt and acting as though all he, and you, need do is Choose to push it down and Overcome in order to no longer be controlled by the suffering of flawed coping mechanisms. This is no different than any other well-meaning by superficial (albeit eloquent) western philosophy. IN fact it's basically the same as what we've been getting for centuries, and are just now starting to realize has actually been the source of a lot of our pain.
We don't transcend by just transcending. If we could we would have done so already. Real transcendence comes from massive inner and external honesty and compassion and acceptance and accountability. Do the real work, feel the real feelings, revel in who you really are, all the flaws and hurts included.
Another recommendation is Internal Family Systems work ... really cool groundbreaking stuff.
So, good try Brendan, thanks for the eloquent exhortations, but please look a little deeper, and please pull this book and do a new edition with the help of some really insightful therapists.

Brendon's book is thoughtful, powerful, passionate and rings true. There is never a shortage of people around to tell you why your life's passion is nothing but fool's gold; that he catalogues the various types of nay-sayers and how they go about trying to discourage/undermine you is brilliant psychology. That he associates pursuing your life's dream with love is not something I think I've heard anyone else say before. I think one tends to think of love as a feeling state one has about other individuals; saying that pursuing your 'calling' is love is not something that's commonly done. He's saying you don't have to be a Michelangelo or a Rembrandt for your work to be an act of love; he says we've all got a streak of genius and we've all got something unique to contribute, and with the lack thereof, the world 'creaks around' with that much more difficulty. He sounds a note of dismay that so many of us so much of the time are becoming such narcissists, nevertheless he asserts a belief in peoples' basic goodness. Lastly, I like that he points out that becoming one's self takes real labor and real commitment.

Haven't completely finish reading this wonderful informative book. However, the author writes from a perspective of teaching life long lessons about living a life free of pain and anguish that we place on our selves. There are some important points that he referenced when dealing with love ones and learning how to say to say no to others. I also like how he explained how we live in a world of fear by allowing others to tell you "you can't do it" or don't do that. His points are well taken and I have purchased 3 of these books and shared the insights with others. It is not just motivational but teachable. A great buy!!!

The Prologue is going to call you out.... but read through, apply the principles, and reread periodically. You can't go wrong!