The author of Personal Development for Smart People, Steve Pavlina, is the owner of one of the most popular personal development websites with over 2 million visitors per month.  He has read hundreds of books and written hundreds of free articles on his blog within the field of personal development.  I’ve been a long time reader of his blog, so when he announced he was having a book published, there was no question I’d be purchasing it.  His blog has helped me so much that it would be hard to see me not having this book in my collection.

Summary

The subtitle is “The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth” meaning for us to grow as human beings we could have our lives force us to grow through different experiences that would naturally occur, or we can consciously pursue personal growth and align ourselves with these 7 fundamental principles.

Truth – What is reality, accuracy, accepting what is
Love – Connecting with and focusing on what you want i.e. people, emotions, physical things
Power – The ability to take action towards consciously creating the life you want

The combining of any two of the primary principals listed above form the 3 secondary universal principles – Oneness (Truth + Love), Authority (Truth+ Power), and Courage (Truth + Power).

Finally, Truth, Love, and Power come together to form Intelligence.

Part I of the book explains all the principles in detail.   Part II and shows you how to apply each of the principles to the different areas of your life such as your career, money, relationships etc.

If you need a more detailed explanation of the book you can go here.

My Personal Experience

In the beginning, he explains to readers that

This is a very content rich book packed with fresh ideas.  Take as much time as you need to read it, and don’t feel you have to race to the end.

I didn’t take his advice and I raced to the end, reading the book as fast as I could.  I read this book about 2 months ago, and after I read it I immediately went on to another book.  The only thing that stuck with me was Truth, Love and Power.  Now, I find myself using those three words everyday, and I often go back to the book to find out where I’m going wrong.

This model is genius.  It’s so simple to use, but at the same time it serves the complete purpose of highlighting strengths and weaknesses so you can easily recognize where you need to grow.  For instance, right now it feels like I’m a Truth freak and that’s definitely the area I’m strongest in.  I’ve always loved reading and learning all kinds of things from books and directly from other people because I have such a desire to find out what the truth is.  I’d say I’m definitely strong in the Power principle as well.  Once I develop clarity on the truth, taking action hasn’t been a problem for me, although I could use some help with the self-discipline component of Power.  Love is definitely where I’m the weakest, but I have no doubt that’s going to change because I’ve made a decision to consciously pursue growth in all areas.

If you’re weak in one of the principles it affects overall growth tremendously.  For example, it would be impossible for me to reach any goals I have with this website if I payed no attention to the Love principle.  To create valuable content and to market that content as effectively as possible I would have to be aligned with Love to connect with what I want – visitors.

On one hand, since I’m a long time reader of his blog, I had extremely high expectations for this book.  However, since I knew he had such a wealth of information on his blog, it made me kind of skeptical.  How could he write a whole book that would be different from what was already on his website yet still add substantial value to the field?  Well, I got my answer when I bought the book.  He satisfied everything.  He met my expectations, it’s different from his website, and it’s definitely something that wasn’t in the field before as far as I know.  Amazing.

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