Review

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  The Success Method
  by Amy Scott Grant

Not just an ebook - a complete coaching process. This book should appeal not just to self-helpers but to coaches looking for a good process and some nice tools to use in their practice.
 

The Success Method is essentially a 9 week coaching process. It doesn't use EFT or any other energy psychology techniques - just plain and simple coaching methods: asking questions, getting the reader/client to take actions in a logical progression towards their goals. So you may wonder why I'm bothering to review this one book out of many hundreds of self-coaching books on the market. Basically, it hooked me!

My first impression on Chapter 1 is that the author knows her audience. She doesn't write from a point of idealism. She anticipates the likely reactions of readers and caters for them in her writing. She particularly understands the problem of getting a reader to actually follow a program the way its intended. And she has an arresting way of making you want to. For instance, when she's appealing to the reader to read one chapter per week only, she says "Keep in mind that your way of doing things has brought you to this point in your life, and here you are, seeking help." A good point, even for a coach and jaded self-help reader like me.

It's very clear from the way it's written that The Success Method has been used over and over with hundreds of personal clients and workshop attendees. It shows when she lists the common questions and objections that come up at particular points in the process - and again when she gives cold hard answers which the most slippery of clients would find it hard to wriggle out of. This may make the book sound rather stern - but it's completely the opposite. The feel is light and humourous - yet deadly serious about getting you to the end of the method and making progress with your goals.

There's much in the Success Method which you may find familiar - like goal setting, action plans and so on, but as a reader of more self-help and coaching books than you can imagine, and as a trained coach myself, I oddly found myself not being at all bored at any stage. It took me till well over half way through the book to work out why. Partly it's the engaging writing style. But I think what makes this book so fresh is Amy's ability to make you look at the "same old stuff" but in totally new ways. From logging and categorising how you spend your time to working out what your leisure hours are worth in dollars and cents, she manages to make you see your whole life differently. Without you really noticing, your values shift subtly away from the "shoulds" and the "musts" and the "cants" and towards what truly matters to you and what you want for your life. Of course, turning the fabric of your life into numbers on a page is a close-to-genius way of making the task of changing your life a lot more objective and rational - and therefore a lot easier think about and then go and implement.

Another plus for me was the "anit-macho" approach taken throughout. Describing herself disarmingly as "the laziest woman alive", Amy's goal is to get you a life with less stress and more time spent on your priorities. Pleasingly she's come to the same conclusion I did about Stress and Fulfilment in my own Stress model (newsletter, March 2003) in which I relate Stress to Self-alignment. Amy says the same thing but this is her take on it:  "Searching for the most definitive way to eliminate stress? Do what really matters."
I really liked this as a simple way of cutting through indecision and helping to get laser-focussed on your true priorities.

Having said that, Chapter 7 (Stop Creating Your Own Stress) provides a fantastic list of habits and issues which the EFT user will be itching to start work on. - although Amy does a fine job of demonstrating how illogical, wasteful or simply ridiculous most of our stress-making behaviour actually is. Letting go of these things is often easier said than done though (e.g. Perfectionism? Inherited beliefs? Improving Personal Power?) and apart from the undoubtedly valuable job of pointing them out and getting the reader to start noticing them, this book doesn't do much to help - you'd certainly want to seek out more in depth coaching or use something like EFT to address these.

Perhaps the ultimate accolade I can give this book is this: as a coach, I'm already thinking of ways of incorporating elements of The Success Method into my own practice with clients! And those who like more ongoing contact and support will undoubtedly enjoy the blog and ezine associated with the book.

If you're looking for a book to help you focus on what you want and start getting it, with a clear, step by step approach in a light, easy-to-read style, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
 

Overall rating:  Solid, no-nonsense, motivating  

Where to buy:  Ebook $47        www.thesuccessmethod.com

 

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