Friday, February 25, 2011

Green book of the week - Unleash Your Full Potential by James Rick

Today we review a great book that is dealing with a common problem - wasting resources. But this time it's not about mother nature, but our own human resources. Still, just like with our relationship with mother nature, author James Rick wants us to make the most of the resources we have and in his unique book he shows us how it can be done.

Our book is:


Unleash Your Full Potential
: The Secret For Revealing Your Hidden Power

Author
: James Rick

At the age of 4 James had a knack for entrepreneurship, selling finger paintings in the drive way, of their small Florida home. His best (and only) customer was his mother who bought them all. His first profitable business would open up a year later in the form of a lemonade stand near their home, which raked in $5 a day.

Fast forward some years later, James Rick Stinson was awarded Young Entrepreneur of the Year by Southern Utah Chamber of Commerce in 2001, for starting his first major venture with less than $1,000 at the age of 17. By age 18 he had gotten into as much as $30,000 in credit card and personal debt but somehow managed to get out of it. Over the next 3 years he grew that business to half a million dollars in sales and expanded to build an office in Noida, India where he lived and worked for 3 months before returning to the US. James learned the hard way that you can’t do it all yourself. He had been the top sales person at his company and when he stopped selling to focus on building out the office, things took a turn for the worse. He ended up closing the business a few months later due to losses. “It crashed and burned but I was still alive”.

Undeterred and excited after getting his first taste of Asia, James started his second major enterprise a call center outsourcing business in Manila, Philippines, where he would live and work for the next five years. He was interviewed by Fox News Business for his role in outsourcing, starting his company Global Sky in the Philippines at the age of 20, and growing it to more than 200 employees, and $2 million in revenue annually.

Publisher: Full Potential

Published on:
February 2010

What this book is about?
"Unleash Your Full Potential" is the newest book in the "Full Potential" book series, which is the product of James Rick's quest to take thousands of hours of research and distill it into clear, concise, immediately useful information. What began as a desire to have more good days than bad days, and a curiosity about dreams and meditation, evolved into thousands of hours of research and experimentation in the areas of personal development, philosophy, biology, physics, psychology, evolution, religion and spirituality, naturally altered states of consciousness, entrepreneurship, economics, and politics. The broad scope of James' experience and study gives him a unique perspective not usually found in other forms of literature or presentation.

What we think about it?

If I thought couple of years ago when I read A Theory of Everything by Ken Wilber that Wilber is pushing the envelope as far as it can be pushed, James Rick proved me in his book that I was wrong. Just like Wilber, Rick explored, learned and experimented almost every area that could provide him with wisdom on life and this book is summarizing this journey, providing the reader with mind-opening insights in a relatively simple language on the most complicated issues we're dealing (or actually not really dealing) with as human beings.

Still, this is not your regular 'self-help' book. Far from it. It definitely doesn't provide you with fish and actually more than it teaches you how to fish, it makes you conscious of how good you can fish. To me, this book is about a journey, where instead of looking a lost tribe or exploring terra incognita, we are joining expedition searching for our lost potential.

Why is it so important? Rick explains that "power is the ability to , do, and have whatever experience we choose". This increased number of options would eventually enable us to choose "experiences that are more enjoyable than others". Wouldn't we like to have only enjoyable experiences or "navigate reality with greater ease" as Rick offers us to dob? Of course we do, which is why this journey of exploration is so important.

This exploration guided by Rick is full of theoretical as well as practical information to manage your resources (time, energy, knowledge, connections and wealth) effectively. It took me sometime to read this book as I found myself stopping many times to think and digest Rick's insights, but it definitely worth every minute. So if you're interested in unleashing your full potential maximizing your own resources, I have a feeling you will enjoy this book.

Disclosure: Rick James is the founder and CEO of Global Sky that partners with Eco-Libris. We received a copy of this book from the author.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!