A friend recommended The Four Maps of Happy Successful People (Amazon link) to me as a book that was both great and a quick read. It’s difficult to find that combination sometimes, so I was eager to get into it. I also wanted to discover and learn more about the “visual” aspect of this book. Lately, I’ve been looking for how successful authors use visual formats, such as in slideshows, to get their ideas across. I’ll be writing more books and presenting more in the future, so this book is an excellent place for me to start that learning process. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]
Someone even had described the book to me as a meditation on successful living. I wanted to know what that really meant.
The Four Maps of Happy Successful People isn’t anything new in terms of concept, but the way it’s delivered makes it very unique and entertaining. It also reminded me that pictures do an amazing job of explaining things. Often times much better than words. I have to take that into account with my own content as well sometimes.
The book includes a lot of visually interesting and memorable graphics and images. The neat thing about the power of visuals is that they don’t even have to be fancy—a lot of the images in the book are stick figures mostly, but they are helpful.
As for the most impactful parts of the book, I’d say they are the chapters on decision making and action taking. As the authors say, “The expiration date on any commitment is twenty-four hours,” which is a huge mindset thing. This means that every day we have to recommit to things that we want to achieve in our personal vision, which is why things like journaling and using the Five Minute Journal are really handy. Even old-school tactics like vision boards and dream boards can remind us of our why and help us recommit each day.
Our brains are mostly about what happens in the moment, which is why it’s hard to achieve certain goals that we have that take longer to achieve. We say yes to everything and are distracted from our goals, and each day we have to be conscious and recommit to what’s important.
Also, the book uniquely helps you by getting YOU to draw pictures, which I never thought of before. Pretty fun and memorable.
For those who are confused about where they want to go next or what might be important in their lives, you should read this book. Sometimes we have to look closely at what would make things easier on us. This book helps get us there.
Oh, and if that doesn’t convince, I think this quote from the book will:
The most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing, and if the mindset and approach to business isn’t correct the business will not be ready to succeed.
Pretty great, right?
Buy the Book on Amazon