Strength-For-Life by Shawn Phillips: my thoughts

A friend suggested this book. It's brilliant, she said, and it is talking about physical transformation based on principles that are exactly what you seem to be looking for: a holistic, goal oriented approach targeting both mind and body, unlike many other "get fit quick" books.

First thing I did, what I always do in situations like that, I Googled it. Often I find myself looking not just at readers' average rating (like the one you find at Amazon.com) but also critical feedback - usually those will be reviews from readers who gave the book 1 or 2 stars. Not always objective they, nevertheless, often give the gist of what the book is not. I often find that 5-star reviews can be excessively enthusiastic, sometimes to obsession point and therefore even more misleading.

So I googled author's name and the first book that popped up was one of his other ones - something about getting fabulous abs quick. Negative reviews on that one were REALLY negative, blasting the book for excessive narcissism and it being nothing but a re-hashed collection of those same age-old training ideas that have been around for decades glamoured up by photo images of the author sporting his perfect six-pack along with attractive models. There were also comments of the author being a less lucky shadow of his more successful brother Bill - creator of Body-For-Life program (I'll publish my thoughts on it later). Not a good image.

Despite the negative feedback on that other book I still decided to give this one a try. Plus I found it in the library so I figured - what do I have to lose? And I'm glad I did. I found it may be lacking some philosophical depth and scientific backup but it doesn't matter. It has good intentions and honest attitude. I had a feeling that Shawn truly believes in what he preaches. And like with almost any book I've read in the last year or two I discovered certain points that I do not agree with but it also gave me a lot of good hints and plenty of food for my inquisitive mind.

A couple of things that really got me thinking. One thing that really struck me was an excellent metaphor in the goal setting section of the book. He used Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation to illistrate why we sometimes fail to reach the goal. He compared the magnitude (importance, desirability) of the goal to the mass of the object and its remoteness (how far away this goal is) to distance in a physical sense. So, he concedes, if the goal is too far away in the future (distance) the gravitational pull may just not be strong enough to bring the goal to you even if it very desirable and important (mass)! Isn't that brilliant? I think it is.

The second point has nothing to do with the book per se but, like I said, it fed my mind with some valuable pointers. For instance, he suggests that goals should be ambitious but realistic. For a long time - since I was first exposed to ideas of the Law of Attraction - I was developing a tendency to scorn this whole "setting a realistic goal" thingy. Ha! - I was thinking - "realistic goals" are for those unenlightened souls who do not dare to dream big, aim high enough. It's simply selling themselves cheap - my Ego was arrogant and quick to judge. And when I was just reading that section of the book all of a sudden I heard this voice in my head. It quietly said literally this: "Vlad, it's all a matter of interpetation. Setting realistic goals doesn't have to mean short-changing yourself. It may simply mean making sure that the goals you are setting are deemed achievable by you! What good would it do you if you set a goal you don't believe you could achieve?" This is where the light flashed in my head. But of course!! It's so simple. It's not about how big the goal is it's about what YOU believe you can or cannot achieve within a certain timeframe!! It's about FAITH! So limitations are in what you believe is and isn't possible - not in the magnitude of the goal! If you - in full conviction and unshakeable faith - can concieve that 10 pounds of fat can be lost overnight - you will be able to wake up 10 pounds lighter the very next morning! The thing is not that it's impossible - it's that you believe it is!! A typical self-talk would probably go like this: "10 pounds overnight? No way! Totally impossible! How about - in a week? Nahh, I don't think so! Ok, do you think you could do it in three months? Well, I guess I could; I think it's possible." That's it!!!

(...to be continued... haven't finished the book yet)