As you’ll have gathered by now I’m a passionate…

…reader of books. But particularly self help books. I guess over the years I’ve spent thousands of pounds on books, tapes and programmes of one sort or another.

And even when I’ve hit difficult times
I’ve tried to maintain a positive attitude.

Sometimes especially with American programmes it seems like they’re all Pollyannas in the face of terrible things happening. But I firmly believe that we can affect what happens to us far more than we realise.

So this month instead of my opinions I’d like to tell you about some authors who’ve helped me.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled:

I found this book at a very stressful time of my life, started to read bits of it in the bookshop at the corner of the street where I worked and eventually had to buy it. The quote I loved from the book was at the beginning.

“Life is difficult. But when you accept that life is difficult it becomes easy.”

This idea that we should all have an easy life is an illusion. We will always face challenges. Having as much money as we want, living in the house of our dreams with the love of our life doesn’t exclude us from facing challenges. It may alter the type of challenges we face but they will still exist.

Even if the challenge is which Ferrari shall I use today!

Maxwell Maltz Psychocybernetics:

Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon who worked with many cases of facial disfigurement. He found that merely making people look better from the outside didn’t help with their internal self image. His researches into this led him to create PsychoCybernetics at the age of 61. His wife Anne and business partner Dan Kennedy have worked in recent years to keep his ideas flowing. www.psychocybernetics.com

Michael Masterson:

Micahel Masterson is not your typical self help guru. He doesn’t believe too much in abundance theories, but he’s proved over and over that his practical wealth creation ideas work. He was the founder of the American Writers and Artists Institute which was set up specifically to train direct response writers for the American market.

You may not like his style which can be abrasive but his ideas are grounded in reality. I’ve heard him speak a couple of times and he takes no prisoners. He’s obsessive and determined and you can bet that anything he takes on he’ll make a success of.

And if you want tips on how to structure a book note carefully how he does it with any of his. (Automatic Wealth and Ready Fire Aim).