Week4/Blog Response to Ashley May

My brother and I

Ashley May wrote:

While reading “Art of Possibility” this week, I was able to take I a lot of what was being said.  I loved that their seems to be a personal connection or story to every principle that the Zanders try to implement in this book.  I was a bit overwhelmed by the stories this time, however.  It seemed like the reading this week was all stories and no meat. 

The point from this week’s reading that I liked the most was the “not taking no for an answer.”  It was disguised as “being a spark” but that was what I took it to mean.  It was basically a message of perseverance through any odds.  

Other than that point, everything else seemed to be a repeat of what he had previously said.  I actually found myself to be quite annoyed with the reading this week.  I put it down yesterday, and came back today to write the blog.  Amazingly, I find myself annoyed again while writing about it.  I’m not exactly sure what the source of my aggravation is, however I’m sure it can be attributed to my resistance to many New Age philosophies.  The excitement that I felt in the first 4 chapters is clearly over.  While I did take some things from this book as a whole, I don’t know that I would ever recommend it to anyone else to read.  For the sake of keeping my personal feelings to a minimum, and trying to remain as professional as possible, I’ll stop with that.   Too bad this isn’t a hard copy; I bet I could have recouped some of my money at Half Price Books!

My reply:

 

Ashley,
I know I've had my fill of self-help books from my wife who seems to haul one home about every week.  I try to stay far away from them.  However, I did really enjoy this book, but I will agree with you on the end chapters  It was a re-hash of some of the basic points of his philosophy, but I still think it was nice to step away from academia and ponder on the finer points of inspiration.
After reading your blog I was giggling.  I think it's great you speak your mind.  Keep it up!