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April
April
The Idiot Factor: The 10 Ways We Sabotage Our Life, Money, and Business
5 comments Posted in: BusinessTagged with Business, Factor, Idiot, life, Money, Sabotage, Ways
- ISBN13: 9781592404674
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
The Pitbull of Personal Development and New York Time bestselling author is back with advice on the dumb things people do to sabotage their success
What do people really want? They want what they’ve got. It’s a simple formula. You have what you want because your actions produced your results. Not your words and certainly not your wants.
In his signature caustic yet lovable style, Larry Winget dishes out straight talk on what he calls “lif… More >>
The Idiot Factor: The 10 Ways We Sabotage Our Life, Money, and Business
5 Responses
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I finally got to sleep this morning at 6AM. “People Are Idiots” literally kept me awake all night. Not just because it’s a “page turner” (which it IS), but also because it had me thinking so much about my life that I couldn’t stop writing notes, pondering the future, and contemplating Larry’s advice.
I’m always wary of reviewers who write a long treatise here. It seems they have an axe to grind — positive or negative — and that their position is more about them than it is the book. So, here’s the bottom line: If you want to get fuzzy inspiration, this isn’t the book for you. If, however, you want a book that shows you how to get your act together, quit sabotaging yourself, and have a better year in 2009, regardless of the economy, stop reading reviews and start buying (and reading) this book.
You may — or may not — like HOW Larry makes his points. However, WHAT he says will change your life. It has mine. Sometimes the most valuable advice is the stuff we don’t want to hear.
April 21, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Rating: 5 / 5 -
Wow! Winget obviously ticked some people off with this one. I had to go back and look at the book again to be sure we were reviewing the same one. The book I read was about the power of taking action, positive role models, personal responsibility, keep on learning, be charitable, the role of integrity, and a lot of other ideas that must be incredibly controversial to some people. Look, Larry’s style might not be your cup of tea. He gets in your face. Admittedly, he’s not all cute and cuddly like some motivational gurus. But his goal is (my guess) to make us think about the consequences of our actions. Period. With this economy like it is I’m personally grateful for a well timed kick in the butt. I don’t need to be blaming anybody for anything right now. I need to get on with life and understand that I’ve got choices to make every day. Larry’s book helps me make better choices.
April 21, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Rating: 5 / 5 -
Larry is bald and brash, wears loud cowboy shirts, smokes cigars, drinks scotch, rants, and surely you feel strongly about him one way or another. (Or, both.) But that’s not a basis for a positive OR a negative review. That’s his genuineness and is the way he singles himself out. That’s the way he gets people to listen to him THE FIRST TIME. Like Scotch in a pretty bottle, if the contents turn out to be rotgut, the bottle will be ignored real quick next time you’re looking for a quaff. If Larry doesn’t come through with quality from behind the sunglasses, nobody will be listening. So if you judge a book by the cover (either literally or figuratively) or can’t hear the message because you react to the messenger about irrelevancies, your review is worthless to an intelligent reader. This is the Marketplace of Ideas, not Tea Time at the Little Church in the Valley.
Let me suggest a three step process for reviews, and then apply it to People are Idiots.
Step One: What is the quality of the writing? Is it grammatical? Consistent? Does it maintain ones’ interest?
Step Two: What is the quality of the information (if non-fiction) or story (if fiction)? [NOT "Do I like it?" That's next.] Is it researched and footnoted if appropriate? If it is free-form, it is logical? Does the author use appropriate examples? Does s/he understand logic?
Step Three: How do I personally react to the book as a whole? Do I agree with it? Even if I don’t agree with it, does it make a significant contribution to the public discourse? (Note: I’ve positively reviewed books I don’t agree with for precisely that last reason.)
In a 5-star system like Amazon uses, I’m thinking that we put step one and step two together and account for at least 4 of the stars. (I say all 5 stars, and step three gives the review character and meaning, but others will differ.)
OK, People Are Idiots:
Writing: As advertised. Larry is brash and obnoxious, harranging and ranting. You want mealy-mouthed, look elsewhere. His writes more like he speaks than most “motivational gurus,” which makes the content readable. To me, it’s fun and I throw in a lot of “Right on’s” (Wait a minute, that’s Step Three. Sorry.)
Information: There’s not a whole lot of research, but that doesn’t bother me. It may bother others. He is drawing conclusions from impressions of American society which, if we are honest with ourselves, will match our own observations. As to the information, one review is right, Larry doesn’t put much about the grey areas of life in People Are Idiots. Shame, shame, Larry. Wait a minute – He also doesn’t mention French cooking, menopause or romance, either. Why the hell not, Larry? Well, only Larry can answer for sure, but I’m guessing that the shades of grey aren’t there because they aren’t what the book is about. This book doesn’t teach subtlety, stealth or feeling good through meditation. That’s because most of us (me included) still haven’t learned the basics adequately. We are dreadfully in debt. That’s not grey, it’s black & white. Most of us are overweight, obese or really fat. That’s not grey. At least part of the time, just about all of us whine and duck responsibility. Nope, no grey there. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the basic lessons down by a damn sight. Learning is good. Repetition is good. New approaches are good. New motivation is good. Before you hang the wallpaper in a house, a carpenter has to build the house level, plumb and square. If s/he doesn’t, you have pretty wallpaper on a flimsy house.
And Step Three, People Are Idiots did speak to me. Larry speaks to me. This time, he put out a quality product. Whether you agree with all or most of what he says, it causes thought. For that matter, if you agree with ALL of what he says, you may be one of the idiots. We are supposed to exercise independent judgment. It’s America, remember?
As for me, I’ll keep walking with Larry, learning from him, and taking heart.
Pippa passes.
R
April 22, 2010 at 1:20 am
Rating: 5 / 5 -
Larry Winget’s first popular book took an original approach, made us laugh, and gave readers a kick in the pants. His second was almost information-free – perhaps a quickly-written mistake. The third book was further re-hashed information no one around here was willing to finish.
“People Are Idiots” is just bad.
When I found a lone copy on the shelves at Border’s over a week ago, I grabbed it, hoping it would be something fun and inspiring to read over the holidays. It wasn’t. Larry admits the information is old. It is. That isn’t the problem.
In “People Are Idiots,” Larry states that everything truly is black and white and that there is no gray area. Things are right or wrong, tall or short, bad or good. No wiggle room. No space for what makes us human: Awe, the enjoyment of wasting time watching TV re-runs, God, unscheduled time wasted in nature, or money blown on psychics. That one strikes me funny. My next door neighbor of eighteen years makes a cushy and legitimate living as a (psychic) consultant for the Los Angeles Police Department. Apparently we’re idiots if we don’t believe exactly what Larry does.
The lack of gray area gets worse. Obviously Larry has never had a chronic medical problem, or bothered to deal with anyone suffering from, oh, let’s say Alzheimer’s. Migraine headaches, M.S. and giving care to those who have problems do not fit into Larry’s scheme for our lives. When my cousin misses a week of work due to a serious bout with Meniere’s Syndrome, she must be a real slackass.
Again, if it isn’t in Larry’s world, it can’t be in ours.
I’m further amazed by Larry’s assumption that we all want money. Lots of money. I’m actually offended that Larry equates money with success. I lived in a situation of enormous wealth for four years and hated every minute of it. On the other hand, I have a friend my age (late fifties) who raised three girls on his own by working the oil fields and the docks. At age fifty, he decided to “retire” despite the lack of a traditional retirement plan. He rents a small bedroom with the money he makes selling artwork on the streetcorners, rides his bicycle locally and uses public transportation otherwise. He’s the happiest, healthiest, and sanest guy I know.
Larry also assumes we all want to live a very long life. My parents both made it into their nineties and were miserable that last decade. They were well set, but their health declined naturally (both died of natural causes), and life held very little joy for them. I teach adults and don’t know one who aspires to simply live a long time. That idea is another of Larry’s enormous ego trips.
In “People Are Idiots” Larry spends more time bragging about how rude he is than he spends actually being rude. He loses credibility. And his self-branding just shows that no one else thinks Larry is a “pit bull,” although I imagine in reality he is. My daughter, a forty-year old psychologist who “wastes time” volunteering at a local animal shelter learned that pit bulls are one of the gentler dog breeds. They only acquired their poor reputation because gangsters decided to take pit bulls, abuse them, and train them to attack and fight. It seems that Larry should have gone straight to “Gangster Larry.”
In “People Are Idiots,” Larry brags a lot about his image. His image is a joke. It just doesn’t work. As a failure from Oklahoma, he must have suffered severe culture shock when he arrived in the big city in search of what he considers success. We have motivational speakers like tall, handsome, congenial Tony Robbins. Tony fires people up by empowering them with all good things. He’s frank and friendly, and full of information. He sticks to his original precepts from twenty-odd years ago, but updates them and adds new information. I still have an original tape set from twenty years ago and when I want to get inspired, it still works.
Larry, on the other hand, could admittedly open a jewelry store with just the amount of bling he wears every day. His image is foolish, but it isn’t fun. He looks and sounds like a high school bully.
Would you have trusted your school bully to help you improve your life?
This book is old material, readers. It’s presented in Larry’s worn-out confrontational manner. And it’s woefully lacking. If you believe in anything remotely spiritual, if you sometimes enjoy a day of sitting in front of the TV eating (heaven forbid popcorn), or have an uncontrolled physical problem, you’ll fall right smack into Larry’s non-existent gray area and end up so annoyed at your own stupidity for buying this book, you’ll recycle your copy like I did mine.
People really are idiots. They’ll buy this book.
April 22, 2010 at 2:12 am
Rating: 1 / 5
People are idiots. (He did not have to prove it to me, I have worked in retail for over 20 years). If you want an author who will get in your face and challenge you to quit whining and making excuses and change, then this book is for you. If you are overly sensitive or love being a loser, then you will likely find the author to be rude and crude. You will also be offended by his rants. For me I enjoyed his sense of humor and agree with the principles in his book to take 100% responsibility for your life and make changes if you want different results. The truth is we have created the circumstances in our life through our actions. We spend our time on what is most important to us. We have in our life what we were willing to pay the price for. Every decision we make takes us either closer to our goals or farther away from them, choose wisely.
April 21, 2010 at 5:59 pmIf you sit up and pay attention this book will show us all how we act like idiots sometimes. We sabotage our lives when we are ignorant, stupid, lazy, don’t care, lack vision, have low expectations, don’t recognize the consequences of our actions, have bad habits, have poor role models, and have no plan. The author shows how to overcome all of these challenges through sound principles and common sense. This is not rocket science but it is solutions to problems that some readers may not even know that they have. You will find principles in this book that will change your life. Don’t be an idiot, buy the book and learn something new.
Rating: 5 / 5