Power Up Your Life

Author: Lisa Sansom

Are you living the best possible life? In this issue, we explore books for discovering your potential and motivating yourself to achieve it. Whether you’re new to the workforce, retiring, or smack in the middle of work life, there are ways for you to shine.

Plugged In – The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work

From the funky graphics to the font on the cover page, this book appears designed to attract Generation Y’ers, which Erickson defines as those born from 1980 to 2000. This is the generation now entering the workforce, and Erickson speaks directly to them. She essentially crafts this book as a love letter to the nascent employees. However, when she does get into career advice, it sounds remarkably like other career manuals that have been written for other generations, but in simpler, slightly hipper language. She encourages Gen Y’ers to find their passion and provides some guiding questions to help with that exploration. She counsels on how to “find your place”—choosing a good company and the right location. She also shares tips on leveraging advantages. Knowing that this book is aimed at business novices, Erickson does discuss basic business communication and etiquette (because you don’t really pick that up watching The Office). This inclusion might make the book a useful graduation gift for that college grad in your family. However, if you have any career experience at all, there are other titles on the shelf that will better suit your needs.

Author: Tamara Erickson
278 pages
ISBN 978-1-4221-2060-6
Published by Harvard Business Press, 2008

Why Not Me? – The keys to unlock your power & release 
your potential

Meincke, in easy-to-digest format, presents 52 keys to unlocking your power. Drawing from inspirations as diverse as Dharma from the Hindu religion to Donald Trump, Meincke has crafted his book such that you can open to any page and find some bold-faced wisdom (literally, in bold, so you don’t miss the key points) that is worth pondering. Why Not Me? is largely inspirational and practical, not theoretical, and would make a good ‘beginner’ book for someone who is looking to broaden his or her horizons.
The book starts with “Faith in yourself” and “Ownership”, each creating a solid foundation for the book’s central message. Even if everyone were to stop after that second key, a great deal of personal power and potential would be realized. There is not much in this book that will surprise a reader who has already experienced other inspirational writings of this nature, and there are authors who have a better command of the language. This is not high literature. But therein lies its gift—it is accessible and real, and while it may look like an easy read, what it recommends is not easy to undertake.

Author: Mark Meincke
162 pages
ISBN 978-1-4392-0397-2
Published 2008

Shift… or Get off the Pot – 26 Simple Truths About Getting a Life

You just have to love Edgecombe’s irreverent sense of humour. She tells a largely (pun intended) inspirational story about her inability to squeeze into her old wedding dress and ends with a “note to self: pack ‘the dress’ away so you don’t have to look at it every time you go into your closet.” Shades of Erma Bombeck with the wisdom of… well… Erma Bombeck! Edgecombe gets the reader’s attention from the first page where she instructs you to turn to page 129 and do the activity that you find there. From there, every page brings a new “simple shift”—except that they’re really not all that simple to execute.
Conceptually they are straight forward, but would you really turn your cell phone off for one entire day and revel in the freedom? Edgecombe also introduces some new personality typologies that come across as simplistic, and some of her ideals are much easier to embrace if you don’t have to worry about the practical business of, say, working 9-5. Yet, there is a lot of merit to her book, and if you were able to take just a couple of her “shifts”, you would likely generate more of what you desire in your life—and create some good stories along the way.

Author: Linda Edgecombe
158 pages
ISBN 13: 978-1-897178-65-2
Published by Insomniac Press, 2008

Don’t Retire, Rewire! 
(2nd edition)

Statistics and basic math tell us over and over again that the Boomers are going to be retiring in droves. Usually, this is a cautionary tale about how organizations need to have effective knowledge transfer and succession planning to ensure organizational knowledge continuity. However, Sedlar and Miners tell a different tale: how to plan for your retirement so that it is energizing, not exhausting. What? How can retirement be exhausting, you ask? Apparently, it is possible to “flunk” retirement—people who didn’t have enough money put away, or got so frustrated with the new lifestyle that they didn’t cope well, and ended up going back to work. So, the authors suggest a new approach: rewiring, which involves setting yourself up for successful retirement on your terms.
The focus here is largely on the mental and emotional game of a successful “rewirement”, and is therefore a good read for anyone over the age of 45. Even if “rewiring” isn’t on your immediate horizon, the authors present some provocative questions that can make you consider how your present goals and priorities are working towards creating that life that you want next year or in the next decade.

Authors: Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners
287 pages
ISBN 978-1-59257-689-0
Published by Alpha Books, 2007

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ISSUE 11-2 OF YOUR WORKPLACE MAGAZINE.