There’s hardly any time at all left now until the Beijing 2008 Olympics – and there is no doubt that the Beijing Games are going to perhaps be the most controversial every staged. But will they be the “best Games ever”? Traditionally, it seems every Games is better than the last, at least according to the closing speach from the President of the International Olympic Committee
With so much excitment, interest and controversy over these Olympic Games, I thought it would be worth finding out more about previous Games and the history of the Olympics in general, so came across The Complete Book of the Olympics by David Wallechinsky & Jaime Loucky. Ah, the complete Book – this seemed like the perfect place to start my “Olympics readiness”!!
I will be honest and say that I haven’t yet finished reading the book, not all of it anyway – it is not really the kind of book you are going to sit and read cover to cover – but it’s kind of an ideal companion to have with you on sofa as you while away the hours of the Olympics! If there is a false start in the 100 metres, you might find a spare moment to look up an interesting Olympic fact, or if the Beach Volleyball is rained off, or cancelled due to malicious sea Algae or pollution, you could do your research into just when Beach Volleyball got into the Olympics for the first time! This book is huge – at 1200 pages to call it Encyclopedic would not be an overstatement, and that’s essentially part of what it is. I say partly because it is much more than a dry Encyclopdia filled with dry and unexciting facts; it is more a hybrid, a mix between encyclopedia and anecdote, substantiated fact and speculative lore, sharp analysis and lovingly told story. This tome will definitely be sitting on my coffee table throughout the Olympics so I can check on interesting factoids (the book provides a complete statistical record from 1896, from medals won to times, distances or scores recorded by the top eight competitors in all events, whether they be Olympic regulars such as the marathon or long-discontinued competitions such as Olympic croquet or even the tug of war!) and perhaps spend a bit of time reading some of the more expansive and unusual information – such as the story of a long-forgotten boy who was plucked from the streets of Paris to act as cox for two Dutch oarsmen in the paired-oar event in 1900 and, after steering them to victory and a Gold Medal, returned to obscurity, his name unknown to this day!
The time difference doesn’t look so bad – not as bad as the Sydney Olympics at any rate, with everything happening in the middle of my night – although I did stay up for some of it! In any case, I will be interested to see if the venues are built on time, and if China actually does manage to do something about the dreadful pollution.
It would be horrible to bring politics into my book review blog, but I will just say it is unfortunate that Beijing was even awarded the Olympics with its human rights record and its terrible behaviour in Tibet, as well as its dreadful unchecked contribution to global pollution problems. However one must hope that with the spotlight on them, this can at least be some kind of start to reform – and in the meantime, The Complete Book of The Olympics goes to show that this is by no means the first controversial staging of the Games!
The Complete Book of the Olympics – essential reading during the 17 days of the Beijing Olympic Games 2008
I’ve said it before, many times – and I’ll say it again – the phrase “this book could change your life” is VERY MUCH over used in Publishers’ press releases and on book cover blurbs, but but here is a book claiming not only to change your life, but to do it in a mere 7 days! But then, this is Paul McKenna, a very successful person indeed, so let’s find out what kind of weight we should lend these bold claims!
In a world where people have been in therapy for many years, and are still no nearer a cure, or at least not appearing to be, it might at first seem totally and completely absurd for Paul McKenna to claim either he or you or anything you can change your life in 7 days. Then again, people thought the world was flat for 1000′s of years, it didn’t mean that a rounded earth was an impossibility – it just meant that the correct information/approach hadn’t come along yet! Those who have been reading this book reviews blog for a while now, will know that I have dipped into a fair number of self help books and also indulged in the odd hynosis self help recording too! When a new friend of mine told me she had been trained in hypnosis and NLP by Paul McKenna personally in London, it inspired me to try out a few Paul McKenna books, as she seemed very positive about Paul and his work. And despite all the self help books I have read – there are still times when I need help, even if it’s just a little boost, so I thought it would interesting to read Paul McKenna’s Change Your Life in Seven Days and see what it could offer me! I should note that I did read the book just like a book at first; however it contains plenty of active exercises which you need to work through if you are hoping for that big change – just reading is not enough, you have got to help yourself! However, now I have got an overview of the book, I am going to go back and work through the exercises, as I do believe there is some mileage in what McKenna has to offer.
Firstly, if you’re looking for an easy read, and not mountains of text to wade through, and also look for good value in a purchase, then this could be well be a factor consider, as you not only get the book, but also a FREE mind programming CD (although I am not too keen on the marketing of it as FREE in capitals – you are in effect buying a book and CD!). So you get a book and a “mind programming” CD. Paul Mckenna makes much of the idea that you can re-program your brain, using the image of “installing” new software. This is not as revolutionary or crazy as it may sound – advertisers spend billions of pounds/dollars seeking to re-programme people’s minds, and it works very well – or they wouldn’t continue to invest so much in advertising programs! How refreshing it could be, then, to spend a little time re-programming your own mind in order to some of the results YOU want!
If you have not read any of Paul McKenna’s serious books before, you might still retain the rather less serious image of him as a TV personality and comedy stage hypnotist – he is in fact a highly educated (with a doctorate) person and has spent many years researching into what makes people tick, and how to make them tick better – covering fields such as hypnosis and NLP (neuro linguistic programming). He draws much of the advice contained in Change Your Life in Seven Days from his knowledge of NLP. If you’re not familiar with NLP, it is basically a system of psychotherapy which, instead of looking into what’s wrong with people, actually looks at what works well and seeks to replicate this. So for example, McKenna has studied the behaviour patterns of 100′s of successful and confident people in order to find out just what makes them successful and confident, and he brings this knowledge to his self development systems. There is more information about NLP on the net, try this WIKI NLP entry for a little taster. In any case, although Neuro Linguistic Programming is a relatively new concept, it does seem to have a huge number of benefits, one of which is it can work very quickly where other forms of psychological conditioning can take years!
So, Change Your Life In Seven Days uses McKenna’s knowledge of NLP, the power of suggestion, and other knowledge and research he has picked up during his illustrious career (there is much more to him than the stage hypnotism he is so well known for – he has trained 1000′s of people in NLP and hypnosis techniques and helped many rich and famous people through fears, phobias and addictions). It should be noted that unlike some of his other titles, he does not say “I can change your life in 7 days”, instead the title is more of an istruction that “YOU are going to change your own life, and indeed this is the format the book takes.
It is structured to be easily manageable, to be read in 7 chunks over the week. Depending on your lifestyle, you may or may not be able to read it in the 7 days, but there is nothing magic about the 7 days – you will not suddenly “fail” if you go over. Of course the title is a bit misleading, book titles so often are. You MAY find your life instantly and irrevocably changed once day 7 ticks over (indeed I have read books in a day which have profoundly changed some aspect of me or my life) – but this is a very bold claim/aim, and is not really what the book intends to do, I think. 7 days is a good benchmark to aim for though for actually reading the book – and I would say if you are fairly new to self help concepts, then if you spend 7 days reading, and really getting into the techniques described in the book, then it will be a 7 days that sees you at the start of a journey which, if you take on the challenges and persevere, really will be the start of a life changing experience that will take you forward to new heights, new challanges, and levels you never would have thought possible before.
Self Help books ought always to come with caveats, however – and it would be irresponsible of me if I didn’t mention a few negatives. By and large the reviews on Amazon are very positive, with 5 stars from the majority of independent reviewers – but this doesn’t mean that the negative reviewers don’t have valid points. One serious point is that many NLP enthusiasts claim that their techniques work for everyone, and this is a claim McKenna makes early in the book. To claim that one particular system will work for everyone is actually quite silly – even pharmeceutical mega companies recognise that pills they pump millions of research dollars into, may only end up working for 50% or less of patients. I don’t think the claim is dangerous in anyway – but there are people in our society who suffer significantly from mental illness, and help for them needs to come from a professional, rather and a self help source. Another criticism that could be levelled, is that McKenna makes a lot of use of quotes and examples of famous people who have endured adversity only to go on to be big successes – the idea being that you have to fail 100 times in order to get the 1 success that will take you places. Of course you have all the people who not only failed the first 100 times but also the 500th as well – while it is true that you make your own luck, we are not all going to wind up millionaires by adopting an optimistic frame of mind! And there are no doubt people who do everything right, and who still fail miserably… But of course this would have no place in any self help book whose purpose was to make you live more positively! But I just thought I would thrown in a cynical paragraph, as I’m sure it crosses most people’s minds when they come across self help books with bold claims!
All that said, having read through the book, I do believe it has some very valid and very significant information, laid out in a simple and accessible format, which, if followed through and practised enthusiastically, coupled with the mind-programming CD, will lead to very significant, even profound changes in people who use the techniques. Change Your Life in Seven Days is a brilliant book for most people stuck in rut, who want to work with accessible NLP and self hypnosis to make improvements in their lives. The real message of the book is actually the opposite to what is suggested in the title (and this is probably a clever bit of suggestion deliberately thrown in there by Dr McKenna!) – Changing your life in 7 days is a grandiose, even absurd claim – but it is by following the often very tiny steps in the book, changing our behaviour in what would at first seem not very significant ways, that major and profound changes CAN ultimately be achieved in the way we live, work and run our lives
