Book Blog Tour: Life on Purpose – Six Passages to an Inspired Life

As part of a campaign to raise awareness for an empowering book that was just released in June of 2007, I have been asked to take part in a "Book Blog Tour", and having just finished the book a few hours ago, I am happy to give you my thoughts while the content is still very fresh in my mind.

The book is 'Life on Purpose – Six Passages to an Inspired Life', and it was written by Dr. Brad Swift. In addition to reading this review of the book, and picking up your own copy, I encourage you to visit Dr. Swift's website where you will find a lot of additional information and value, including several blogs, free reports that you can download, and also registration for free teleclasses held by Dr. Swift and his staff.

Full Disclosure: This is not a paid review of this book. If you decide to purchase the book using the links in this post, Amazon will throw me a few cents, but my review of the book itself is based on my true feelings about the material, not financial compensation from the author or the publishing company.

My Thoughts on Life on Purpose – Six Passages to an Inspired Life

Overall, I have very positive feedback and I do recommend the book to anyone who is having trouble deciding what they "want to do with their lives".

The book is replete with several different systems and concepts that will certainly help the average lost soul to find their path in life. However, unlike other "how to" resources, Life on Purpose explains the entire process, rather than just telling the reader what to do.

The systems and concepts that Dr. Swift writes about are explained in detail, and he also discusses how the thinking behind each process works. It has been my experience that people do things much more enthusiastically when they understand why they are doing those things to begin with.

If I had anything negative to say about the book, it wouldn't be about the book itself. Rather, it would be a caution to the potential reader that although one of the strengths of the book is the detail with which everything is explained, it could also be easy to get lost in those details.

Although I personally saw value in pretty much every system or concept that Dr. Swift mentioned in the book, I do not plan to implement every single one of them into my life because – speaking for myself – I would get lost in the process.

However, that being said, there were many valuable concepts that I do plan to implement, and I urge you to also pick and choose the systems or the concepts that resonate with you personally. In fact, I doubt that Dr. Swift ever intended to overwhelm the reader with details, but rather to simply give the reader plenty of options for taking effective forward steps, and he has done so very well.

As a related aside to my review of Life on Purpose, I do want to point out that many of the concepts that were discussed in the book are certainly due much more merit than there is room for in this book review. For that reason, I will be crediting Dr. Swift's wisdom as the inspiration for several follow up posts that discuss some of his concepts in more detail. They will all be linked from the "Life on Purpose" category that you will now see over in the right-hand navigation console, and they will be coming up over the next few weeks.

My Favorite Tools

Life on Purpose includes many different tools or systems that the reader is encouraged to use in order to find their life's purpose, as well as to maintain the proper state of mind once an initial purposeful path has been determined. Of those, my favorites were:

• 3 Major Obstacles Along the Purposeful Path: The Monkey Mind, The Full Cup Syndrome, and Bias. Found in the beginning of the book, Dr. Swift discusses how each of these 3 practices will stand in your way, and he goes into brief but effective dialogue about how and why to avoid them.
• The Living on Purpose Self Test – 20 questions that you score yourself on from 1 to 10. I am not generally a fan of these types of tests because I find them to be either very general, or very biased towards a particular way of thinking. However, this self test had value and it included the questions, as well as a full explanation of what each question was designed to help you realize. That extra effort was very helpful and effective.
• 3 Different Approaches to Living a Life on Purpose: The Dynamite Approach, The Hammer and Chisel Approach, and The Polishing Cloth Approach. Again, generic concepts like this normally don't do it for me, but Dr. Swift's explanation of each of these methods from an objective point of view was informative and thought provoking for me, although brief and not over-done.
• Powerful Purpose Practices – As described in the book: Activities in which you engage on a regular basis to keep yourself present and aware of your life purpose. These concepts really resonated with me because they are inline with something that I have been saying for a long time. Just picking up good habits is not enough – you must consistently practice those good habits over the long-term. Dr. Swift's Powerful Purpose Practices are several effective methods for doing just that.

My Favorite Concepts

• The book discusses the fact that many people judge their lives based on only one part of their life, tending to define themselves by the job that they have, or the role that they play in their family or their relationships. However, the book discusses ways of finding your purpose that go far beyond just doing your part at work or in your personal life.
• Dr. Swift also gives a detailed understanding of what he calls our "Inherited Purpose". This is a part of who we are, but he points out that it should only be recognized, rather than used as a blueprint for our future or for our efforts at living a purposeful life.

Summary