Product Description

Success and happiness are not accidents that happen to some people and not to others. They are created by specific ways of thinking and acting in the world. Paul McKenna has made a study of highly successful and effective people, and distilled core strategies and techniques that will help the reader to begin to think in the same way as a super-achiever. Learn how to master your emotions and run your own brain, how to have supreme self-confidence and become the person you really want to be. Paul McKenna's simple seven-day plan really will change your life for ever. Brilliantly effective self-improvement, in the bestselling tradition of "Unlimited Power and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #556 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
Self-improvement book by the world famous hypnotist and guru to the stars (Robbie Williams, Ronan Keating, Daryl Hannah). It's all in the mind, apparently, and all you need to do is change how you think to lead a better life. Think better, live better, is the simple message: patient, heal thyself. And results are attainable in a week. Sceptics groan at this sort of thing but the originality of McKenna lies less in the insights than in the methods. The insights are banal, but the methods clearly work, or at least they have worked for a great many athletes and senior business managers where a positive mind-set is a necessity in daily life. There are lots of other books like this, but McKenna is the leading brand and he is a brilliant self-publicist as well as self-improver.

Synopsis
Success and happiness are not accidents that happen to some people and not to others. They are created by specific ways of thinking and acting in the world. Paul McKenna has made a study of highly successful and effective people, and distilled core strategies and techniques that will help the reader to begin to think in the same way as a super-achiever. Learn how to master your emotions and run your own brain, how to have supreme self-confidence and become the person you really want to be. Paul McKenna's simple seven-day plan really will change your life for ever. Brilliantly effective self-improvement, in the bestselling tradition of "Unlimited Power and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People".

From the Publisher
This book includes a free CD : CHANGE YOUR LIFE IN SEVEN DAYS MIND PROGRAMMING CD

Customer Reviews

A waste of time and money
Don't bother with this book. One must suspect that it's all a clever trick which will contribute to Paul McKenna's success in life but definitely not to yours. I followed the book and listened to the CD exactly as directed. It's hard to believe the generally platitudinous advice but for a week it seems worth a try.

Of course absolutely nothing changed and I question my naivety in ever thinking that reading a simplistic book and listening to a frankly very boring CD could make any difference in the real world. There are many people who seem to feel that this book helped them but my suggestion would be to attend instead to your own problems and not to look for simple solutions.

It certainly wasted my time and money.

Too much of nothing in too little time...
I am on the 7th day of this book having read it every day for the last week.

Of course, on day 1 I was very excited about the week ahead and getting to grips with life and taking on a more positive attitude. Although I still feel this is my intention, I found the book overall to be disappointing.

For one, there is too much to read each day! I have not been working this week - I have been on holiday and had a few other things to do but not much and it has taken the best part of all day to read each chapter and do the exercises. I mean it takes an hour to listen to the CD alone. (Half hour in morning, half hour in evening) If I had been doing an 8 hour working day, plus travel time, plus dinner and every other thing life needs, there is no way I could have got through all this in a week!

The exercises become very repetitive after a while. I found myself feeling angry every time I read the next exercise, they all read EXACTLY the same way!

i.e. "Think of a time when you felt really..." (confident, positive, happy) Now, make the colours brighter and richer, the sounds louder, allow your feelings to intensify", "times that feeling by 10" and "step into it now, feel those great feelings" Voila! You are now programming your mind to feel... (confident, positive, happy)

Pick any day - it is the same formula. What's more, it becomes overwhelming. Each day, you have more and more exercises to do before starting the day and as they are so similar it becomes irritating to say the least, that along with the dumbed-down tone of the book.

Yes, the advice is so superficial, written in a catch all style, aimed at mass markets. Paul McKenna makes no secret about loving wealth which is fair enough but it makes the more discerning reader feel like a bit of a mug.

I have not found this CD to be as good as the Confidence CD that was recommended to me by a friend (and that wasn't great)and they are both very similar. The Confidence one seems a little bit more polished. Is Paul McKenna just a one trick pony? Also, I feel he doesn't give you enough time during the trance to get into those feelings.

I personally find it difficult to bring up great feelings on cue, especially if I am feeling down, unmotivated etc... if I didn't, I probably wouldn't be reading books like these, I would just remember a happy time and be done with it! This is true of the exercises and of the CD.

I like what I have seen of Paul McKenna on the television. He has done some miraculous things and I believe them all to be genuine. But I guess that's the power of a one-on-one session with a hypnotherapist; there is feedback.

Felt this all needed saying as the question I emailed to the Paul McKenna website was not answered by any of the team - again, just makes you feel like the sucker who bought the book and was moved on from!

I do aim to have a great life and a lot of simple advice in this book is true and may be useful to some, even a lot but 90% of the book was 'gash' and only 10% was enlightening for me.

Having said all that though, I suppose the week has been good. After a year of not being sure what to do career-wise, I have decided upon a career change and have set aside the next 6 months to learn the new skills and become qualified. Wondering how to get the £500 needed to get the materials and exam entries, I was contacted by my credit-card company saying they refunded all the money on it that was taken off fraudulently and there is an extra £1000 on there which they say I can keep as they don't know where it came from! Law Of Attraction maybe?!

This book tells you how to do it. But you must do it yourself.
I'll start by saying, I have all Paul's books, and I'm a massive admirer of his work and ethos.

There's one massive flaw with this book though. Reading the synopsis, the reviews and even the introductory chapter, you get the impression reading the book will change your life in seven days. If you just read it, you won't. I do feel if I was to knock one mark out of one hundred for this book, it would be that Paul doesn't make it clear enough, you can't just read the book. It's a manual you have to learn from and apply to your life.

Practise, and execution is the key. Paul will show you how to do it, but really you have to do it. I would consider needing 15 mins a day (best in the morning) to go through the exercises.

And when the going gets tough, don't give up. Go back to the methods.

I say this, because I've twice "failed" on the book. I'll go for up to a week, before falling back in bad habits.

Having just split up with my girlfriend, I'm taking on the book again (and Paul's other title 'I Can Mend Your Broken Heart'). And this time I'm going to take on the suggestions, and the life changes religiously. Life I breath air!

And when you do this with the book, its fully worth 5 stars.