Book Review – Focus on the Good Stuff

By dougnau on Apr 7, 2009 in Book Reviews, Gratitude, Law of Attraction, Personal Growth, Positive Thinking

Background

Mike Robbins is a former collegiate baseball standout with time spent in both the major and minor leagues. After an injury ended his pitching career, Mike went into the workforce eventually following his dream of becoming a motivational speaker, life/business coach and author. Focus on the Good Stuff: The Power of Appreciation was published in August 2007 and is available in both paper and audio formats.

Book Review & Commentary

Focus on the Good Stuff is a fresh take on some very popular principles such as the Law of Attraction and the power of gratitude and appreciation. Mike uses this book to present a number of his coaching tools and techniques and wraps it around five key principles of appreciation. The real life examples provided from his baseball career and work as a speaker and coach give a meaning and relevancy to the principles discussed. In other words, Mike does a great job of presenting topics that could be considered ‘dreamy’ or ‘pie in the sky’ and simplifies it down to examples that can be applied in the real world.

One of the things I appreciate about the way this book was written is that Mike is able to present some pretty powerful spiritual/life principles without coming off as a preacher. I listened to the audio book format and this media provides an insight into the book that you don’t necessarily get in the paper version. The tone was down to earth, excited, light hearted, and demonstrated that he was living the message he was sharing.

The other aspect that I appreciated greatly about this book was the level of connection that I personally felt with Mike as I was listening to his message. If you like this blog, you are a frequent reader, and you enjoy the style of presentation found here, its likely that this would be a fantastic book for you. I do not come across many other male certified life coaches that have a background in sports, are actively coaching, are from the bay area (in fact, listening to the audio book brought back many memories of living in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Cupertino), are about my age, with a young family. We’re a unique brand and it was pretty powerful to hear another youthful person that has such a passion for personal growth and development.

Who is this book for?

This book is really written for anyone. There are special discussions and applications that could be very applicable to the work force, so if you are a manager and have noticed that the environment in the office has turned sour, this could provide some useful suggestions and examples as to how to improve your corporate culture. The principles, however, go well beyond the corporate world – acknowledgement, personal growth, gratitude, happiness and the power of positive thinking are concepts that anyone can benefit from learning more about.

I read and listen to many, many books on personal growth and development in a given year and while the underlying content of the message is very similar to the myriad of self help books available on the market today, the presentation of that material is fun and refreshing. Its my personal opinion that in today’s society which is filled with pessimism and’ ‘bad news’, its not possible read too much (or even enough) of the books which share a message of focusing on the good stuff in life. Need an escape from all the ‘bad news’? This is a great starting point.