Unlocking Greatness: The Unexpected Journey from the Life You Have to the Life You Want

This book is not only going to get deep. It starts there. Part I of the book is entitled "How to Experience Reality," so… yeah, are you ready for that? 

If so, you're ready to get started in on Unlocking Greatness by Charlie Harary, written with Mark Dagostino (who also worked with the head coach of last night's NCAA men's basketball championship team, Jay Wright, on his book Attitude). "You are not your brain," Harary insists early in the book, "You have a brain." We can argue the semantics or metaphysics of that statement, but the point is, and the point of the book is, that the brain is a muscle we can exercise, that the first step to changing our lives is changing our thought patterns. "Our mind doesn't just experience reality," he says, "it shapes it." And that is true whether we're conscious of it or not. If you'd like to give yourself more agency in the process, you must acknowledge the distance between you and your thoughts, the distance between you and your brain: 

The existential distance you place between "you" and your muscles is what enables you to to attempt to change them. While the distance between you and your brain is harder to realize … it's just as critical.

It is an especially important point today, when the rapid pace of, well, pretty much everything gives us little time to process the lives we're living—little time to acknowledge that space between ourselves and our brains. It is age of distraction, in which, as Harary writes, "The superficiality of information is actually acting as an inoculation against wisdom." It is a fundamental paradox of modern life:

Welcome to the modern world: a world in which most people have more wealth, knowledge, and technology … than their ancestors could have ever dreamed for themselves. A world in which we have so much but so little. A world in which we have everything, except for the ability to process it all. A world in which we are constantly reaching for something, yet never seem to catch it—because we're not even sure what "it" is.

A world in which we are perpetually unsatisfied.

Put another way: 

What we're experiencing, then, is a breadth of information combined with a lack of depth. When we're able to access everything immediately, yet rarely get a chance to go deeper than the surface, that creates a massive problem. As the poet T.S. Elliot once said, "Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

Technology has given us processing power beyond our wildest imagination, but what if it is, in fact, stifling that imagination? What if the so called "information age" is diluting our ability to gain real insight? What Harary aims to give you in the book, that which "is fundamental to our existence," is the renewed "ability to process your own life."

The answer to what you want in life isn't "out there." It's in your mind. It's in you. It's found in your ability to learn how to process life in an entirely new way.

Greatness is not really a destination, but a path. It is a personal choice to commit to that path, to keep pushing yourself "One foot in front of the next. Every day, forever." Unlocking Greatness is a personal compass to keep you on that path.

We have 20 copies available.