Although I am generally a keen reader of self-help or financial advice books, I struggled to make it through this one. The book's (and its author's) heart is in the right place, and there are definitely bits of information and advice here that almost anyone would find useful, but the way its content was presented and the style in which it was written made it a chore to get through. There is also more than a bit of content in these 260 pages that I find quite troubling - more on that later.
This book has what I have found constitutes the Holy Trinity of mediocre self-help books.
1. A forced casual style, filled with cringe-inducing turns of phrase ("get the fuck on the fuck" is a genuine line printed in this book - I would appreciate any insight into what that actually means), unnecessary swearing, and a number of added extras (such as the little "nuggets of wisdom", surrounded by two dotted lines) that unhelpfully break up the flow of the reading while simply repeating what is being said in the main body of the book. Amusingly enough, the author initially found success helping authors complete their books (her website being called, predictably enough, "writeyourdamnbook.com"), which makes me hope that she at least has a more serious style in her writing portfolio to offer her clients.
2. A rambling structure, with ideas that, although simple to explain, somehow manage to take up entire chapters through the inclusion of silly anecdotes, the above-mentioned turns of phrase, and just generally repeating the same thing over and over again. Ironically enough, this goes against the actual content and message of the book, which is that being wealthy/fulfilled is as simple as changing your attitude and making yourself entirely open to the opportunities that abound around you. Then again, if all the chaff was cut out and this book found its natural length of, say, a series of articles, it would be much tougher to sell for £13 than this visually eye-catching book.
3. Speaking of structure: the book itself is obnoxious to leaf back through to find a specific passage or quote that speaks to you or that you need to reflect on. This is especially disappointing as this functionality is pretty much required for self-help books, which invariably encourage you to re-read the parts that you "need the most right now" whenever that need arises. Rather than have a handy section at the beginning or end of the book where all the information is neatly summarised (something done very well by Tony Robbins' book, which is far superior to this one should you be looking to improve your financial situation), there is a short bullet-point list of key takeaways at the end of each chapter, again written in the frustrating "I'm your buddy" style. Really not very useful.
Beyond that, however, I find issue with much of the book's content itself. Like so many other "self-help" experts, the author's professional background is the usual mix of success coach / motivational speaker / entrepreneur. While I in no way want to play down the author's success, or the way that she turned her life around, it is rather frustrating that so many of these authors' massive success seems to have come from helping other people be successful rather than, say, created a product or niche service that they managed to grow into a successful venture. This would be fine if only there was any attempt in the book to accept that starting a business that is primarily based around a service that you provide by yourself is completely different to, say, based around a physical product. Worse still, the advice for aspiring business owners here invariably seems to be "throw yourself into it and don't be afraid to take large risks", advice that is optimistic at best and downright dangerous at worst. It is much easier to extricate yourself from a success coaching business that has floundered than it is to lose a toy car business after having ordered the production of 1-2000 toys. Not only that - the author repeatedly extols the virtues of seeking the help of a success coach yourself, and states that the multiple paid seminars and courses she attended are what helped her to "get to the next level". Astonishingly, she states that one of the key turning points in her life was hiring one of the personal coaches she respected most for a one-to-one, six-month course, which cost - wait for it - 85 thousand dollars. And how did she get that money? She borrowed it from a friend. The book then goes on to explain that the difficulty in this situation was having the guts to ask a friend for some much-needed financial help, and that, once you have taken that step, the actual amount you ask for, be it "80 dollars or 80 thousand" in the book's very words, is the same. This is not only untrue, it manages to waltz over the fact that the vast majority of people, in the US or elsewhere, do not know anyone who has even close to that amount of cash to casually lend to a friend in need. And all in the space of a page.
Regarding the tone, while I do understand that the tone of these books invariably has to be upbeat as a large amount of people reading them are probably going through tough times and therefore need to have their spirits raised, this book often times drives straight over the line separating "very optimistic but ultimately realistic advice" and "outright pseudo-spiritual self-help baloney". The idea that there is a "Universal Intelligence" out there waiting to make you rich is based on a good piece of advice, namely that opportunity is everywhere and needs to be seized; however the "intelligence" part of the term is dangerous, as it reverses the process of seizing opportunity from an active one to a passive one. It's just a matter of changing your view of the world, of money ("stop thinking of money as bad or evil" is something that is ceaselessly hammered in here, as if to say that poor people are simply poor because they "hate money" or "hate rich people"), and waiting for all these opportunities to fall in your lap.
And finally, added to this is the part of the book that left me most ill-at-ease: the part where the author speaks with admiration about a woman who managed to cure her cancer by "changing her worldview" and going from seeing herself as diseased to seeing herself as healthy and living life to the fullest. The idea that a large amount of people who are either destitute or suffering from health issues (which, in the free universal healthcare-less United States, are likely to be one and the same) can not only become rich, but even cure their illnesses by thinking more positively and "communing with the Universal Intelligence" is downright dangerous. There is, in closing, something to be said here about how scary it is that "becoming wealthy and fulfilled" and "not suffering from potentially life-threatening disease" can be conflated, but that is a conversation for another day.