Alex James's Blog: AlexJamesNovels Blog - Posts Tagged "self-help"

What's Your Urp?

‘We are all so much more than our technical skill set and our qualifications.’

‘Bring your whole self to the process of finding people to help, and of helping more people.’

Written by professional business coach Andrew Gibson, What’s Your URP (WYU) describes how Andrew successfully applied his principles to business, happiness, and life in general. Andrew has been kind to help me in person on a number of occasions, beyond expectation. I always walk away from our meetings reassured and ready to take positive manageable action, especially after Andrew helped my confidence when I was lost with what steps to take after my business plan didn’t proceed with the Prince’s Trust, and his support has since helped me keep a positive outlook and a sense of direction.

As a result of my acquaintance, I knew before reading that WYU would be an interesting and thought-provoking read, but until I started reading I didn’t know how much there was to learn, about myself. WYU walked me through which people I had helped, how I helped them, and how I felt about helping them. It shone the spotlight on my passions and how I’m more than just a job title. I gained an understanding of the place of the people in my field in terms of their expertise, and there were illuminating sections on best practice in networking and being specific as a business or individual.

WYU helps you think through your happiness and your passions in life to make sure life is working for you, with the aim of making money doing what you love doing. Andrew explains with case studies how the Unique Referral Point works, perhaps as opposed to the Unique Selling Point. WYU can help both your business and your wish for a positive direction in life. It is a book that is relevant to each person, and therefore immediately useful and relatable. I doubt I’m going to find a different book that does even one of these things well for me, for a long time.

‘In our modern world we have moved away from this principle. As a society, we have embraced complexity and seem to take pride in finding complex solutions to complex problems.’

Make Life Simple (MLS) is a solution-focused approach to life, whether it’s giving presentations, raising your children, looking after your mental or physical health, or helping people. MLS advises us to look for noticeable differences instead of jumping into actions, to save time and really take stock of what we want in life.

Solution-focused practice may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but some of its principles have helped me assess what’s valuable in life and what’s most important in some big decisions, which have given me the confidence to see things from a helpful angle.

I’d recommend this book to anybody who needs a new angle on anything that’s time consuming, complex, and important – and that covers a lot of life. The advice is heartfelt and trustworthy. Will it get ‘results’? It’ll get you happier and more manageable results, and I can speak from personal experience.