Sunday, August 05, 2007

Dr. Wayne Dyer - 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace

I just finished reading Dr. Wayne Dyer's 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace. It's a good book to read - like most books on elusive concepts that human beings hanker after. If Dr. Dyer's success in his chosen field is any indication, it's evident that these secrets work. Here are his 10 secrets:

1. Have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing.

2. Don't die with your music still in you.
3. You can't give away what you don't have.
4. Embrace silence.
5. Give up your personal history.
6. You can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it.
7. There are no justified resentments.
8. Treat yourself as if you already are what you'd like to be.
9. Treasure your divinity.
10. Wisdom is avoiding all thoughts that weaken you.

I enjoyed reading the book - Dr. Dyer has devouted a chapter to each of his secrets, but I'm not sure I came away feeling peaceful. If anything, I felt more restless than before I picked up this book because I can't really follow most of these; either I'm a real McCoy rotten apple of the human race or these formulas are hopelessly simplistic. I'm sure I don't want to die with my music still in me but that's hardly a secret; Thoreau said in the 19th century that most of us "lead lives of quiet desperation" which translates to the same thing. "There are no justified resentments"? Really? That's a hard one to swallow. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but this book threw up more questions for me than it answered. I think I should take the safe way out and "embrace silence."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

wonder if selfhelp books r any help?

implementing anything in real life is real tough.

jest one small eg: our ancients said and our national slogan (?) still says satym eva jayate?

can we really implement this in our lives?

how many white lies do we tell without even flinching?

parijata said...

Self help books help those who really want to help themselves. When I was reading Dale Carnegie or Stephen Covey, I was really surprised to see that in many of their inspiring examples, there were people who had changed for the better, because of just a line they read or heard. I am sure many other people read them, without effecting any significant change in their lives. It affected these people because they allowed it to.

Aparna Muralidhar said...

Iznogoud
I've always found that even though the intent is very much there, the practice is tough but like Parijata says below I guess that's our own making...I guess you just need a strong will to change and if you have that kind of will, you won't need a self-help book.

Parijata
I agree with what you say - ultimately, one can only take the horse to the water....