Self-Improvement 101
Book Title: Self Improvement 101
Book Author: John C. Maxwell
ISBN: 978-1-4002-8024-7
Page Count: 117
Publisher: Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Year: 2009
Book Reviewer: David Oletu
John Maxwell makes me realize there is always room for growth and improvement, no matter how difficult life gets.
In a constantly busy and highly demanding world, our daily affairs, and activities to meet specific goals may get difficult.
However, continual improvement and growth are what is needed to achieve any of our dreams.
And, if we want to grow and become the best person we can be, we’ve got to be intentional about it—learning as much as we can to improve ourselves for growth in life.
John Maxwell’s ‘Self-Improvement 101’ offers clear guides on how we can improve.
It is instrumental in helping us on our way to significant growth in any area of our lives.
The book is divided into two parts. The first part, with its first four chapters, lays a foundation for self-improvement, while the second part, with its last four chapters, delves into the ongoing process of improvement.
In Chapter 1, –Self-Improvement 101, Maxwell helps us identify what it will take for us to improve. He makes us understand that growth is a choice, a decision that can make a difference in a person’s life.
And nothing is more effective when it comes to reaching potential than a commitment to personal growth. In this chapter, he goes on to discuss eight principles for self-improvement that will help us develop into people dedicated to personal growth.
In Chapter 2, John Maxwell tells us how we can grow in our careers.
He emphasizes the need for us to keep getting better at what we do and highlights the good results that come with our striving for daily improvement in our careers.
We should never think we have arrived when we get to a certain level in our careers, but we should keep striving to improve.
John Maxwell states that if we keep learning, we will be better tomorrow than we are today, and that can do many things for us. In addition, he shares three ways we can become better tomorrow.
John Maxwell isn’t far from the truth when he says, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
This brings us to Chapter 3 of Self-Improvement 101, where he discusses how we can maintain a teachable attitude.
Maxwell observes that highly talented people may have a tough time being teachable, thinking they know it all. Maxwell, however, points out that talented individuals with teachable attitudes become talent-plus people.
He goes on to uncover four teachable truths that will make us make the most of our talent and remain teachable.
Conclusively and extensively, he suggests five practical ways we can take our talent to the next level as we pursue teachability.
In Chapter 4, John Maxwell helps us acknowledge and identify the role others play in our growth.
Maxwell states that if we have a teachable attitude or are willing to adopt one, we will be positioned to learn from others.
He further gives five steps on how we can learn from others, helping us see reasons why we should make learning our passion, value people, develop relationships with growth potential, identify people’s uniqueness and strengths, and ask questions.
Additionally, John Maxwell addresses the subject of “mentorship.”
He cautions that we should give careful thought to the kind of people we follow because they will impact the course of our lives.
He goes on to share six thoughtful questions we should ask ourselves before picking a model to follow, and he was kind enough to provide us with seven guidelines that will help us develop positive mentoring relationships with our mentors.
Many young people are faced with situations where they get themselves involved in too many things, trying to figure out their areas of strength and capability.
And to add to the dilemma, some are faced with people’s high expectations of them, which don’t match up with their strengths.
All of these pose the problem of not knowing where to focus their time and energy.
In Chapter 5, having identified this problem, John Maxwell suggests possible ways we can find our strength zone to discover and develop who we are.
Furthermore, in Chapter 6, John Maxwell recognizes that there will be obstacles on our way to self-improvement.
However, he firmly states that it doesn’t matter whether our objectives are in the area of art, business, ministry, sports, or relationships. The only way we can get ahead is to fail early, fail often, and fail forward.
In addition, John Maxwell asserts that we must embrace adversity to achieve our dreams and make failure a regular part of our lives.
Maxwell posits that if we are not failing, we are probably not moving forward.
He goes further to discuss the seven benefits of adversity in the remaining parts of this chapter, claiming that adversity and the failure that often results from it should be expected in the process of succeeding, and they should be viewed as a critical part of it.
In Chapter 7, John Maxwell reminds us of the role our experiences play in our lives, not neglecting it.
He asserts that we all begin our lives as empty notebooks.
Every day, we have the opportunity to record new experiences on our pages. With the turning of each page, we gain more knowledge and understanding.
Ideally, as we progress, our notebooks become filled with notations and observations.
But, according to Maxwell’s observation, the problem is that not all people make the best use of their notebooks.
John Maxwell believes that experience plus honest self-examination leads to wisdom.
Maxwell describes ‘Experience’ as a learning tool and gives insights on some other important things we need to know about the experience if we want to gain from it to become wiser and more effective leaders.
In chapter 8, John Maxwell leaves us with the thought-provoking remark that for everything we gain, we must give up something.
We can’t avoid paying the price for every level we get to in life. Either we pay now to play later, or we play now to pay later. John Maxwell states that a successful life is a series of trade-offs.
He goes on to share his story of how he had traded off so many things to grow as a leader and make greater impacts.
In the course of his experience, he wrote a lesson called ‘Ten Trade-offs Worth Making’ and discusses it extensively in this chapter of his book, believing that the lessons he learned that have served him well may also serve us as we read through to learn.
Having read the whole of John Maxwell’s ‘Self-Improvement 101′, I realize there is always room for growth and improvement, no matter how difficult life gets.
Ultimately, we have no excuse to remain stagnant or unfortunate in life, except we don’t want to grow intentionally.
Self-Improvement 101
