Inspirational 'Ripple'  Columns
Book - Time Out

If you think this is about booking time out to regroup or to de-stress you are perfectly …. wrong!!

I have noticed that the shelves in places like Exclusive Books and Wordsworth are overflowing nowadays with motivational and self-help books. 
Almost every man and his dog has written a book about ‘seven some - things’ that will change your life forever. 
If this were true then why are there so many books that seem to say the same things?  Best-seller after best-seller is published and everyone talks about them.  The same group of people will talk about the next one out and the one thereafter and potentially continue to buy and to read these books until the day the shelf, where they are all stored, collapses on them and kills them. 
Yes, too much reading can be the cause of your or someone else’s downfall!!

Make a list of everything you have ever read in an attempt to solve something that you were battling with, where you went looking for answers and even where you may have found them.  Then set this list up along the following lines:

Why not pick one book?  Not one that did not feel right but a book that spoke to you.  A book that made sense; that felt good, helping you to see things in a new light and most of all challenged you. 
Work with the book over and over again.  Read it over and over again, underline things, make notes, discuss it, and even buy the CD version of the book and listen to it in your car - again and again. 
Then write a summary and prepare a talk that you can deliver to your colleagues or even to your friends.
Practice the skills suggested in the book until you master them.  Even ask someone to hold you accountable if necessary, for the things the book recommends you do and practice. 

Scanning the bookshelves in book shops is potentially another way of saying “I am not good enough”.  “I still lack.”  “I will be OK when I have read …….”

You are OK!!  Reading ‘feel good’ is no substitute for feeling good!! 
Another book? – Time Out!!    

There may be people who don’t have any such books and would still like to find one – please let me know by way of a quick email which book is the one for YOU.

LouisG