Awaken The Giant Within

Now I won’t lie when the book arrived I was terrified by the size of it. How was I ever going to read this book (and plan a session on it)?

However, I am so glad I persevered and read the whole book. This is a book where you need to commit and be ready to ask yourself some difficult questions.

I loved the idea that “there is virtually nothing we have to do”. We all have so many choices but have just persuaded ourselves that we have to do a lot of things when really we have the choice. We have the power to lead the life we want to have.

Central to Awaken The Giant Within is the idea of humans wanting to experience pleasure and avoid pain. It makes perfect sense. Why would you choose pain over pleasure? The problem occurs when you need to feel short-term pain in order to have long-term pleasure. You want to lose weight, but that means the pain of going to the gym, doing more exercise and not eating your favourite treats. That is pain!  But we all know we need to go through that in order to have the pleasure of being at the body weight we desire. The question is how can you retrain your brain to allow you to fulfil your ultimate life goals that will require you to experience some pain?

I also thoroughly enjoyed the chapter on Life Values and the idea of ranking your values. Then you have to assess whether those values are supporting or conflicting. Have you created a value system where you are essential ensuring that you will fail. This can often be seen with people wanting security and freedom. If these are both included in your core values it is highly unlikely you will dissatisfied with your life cause fulfilling both simultaneously is very difficult. Not impossible, but virtually.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I didn’t agree with all of the concepts and to be honest some sections midway were very difficult for me to get through. However, by just taking action on a few of the points you would definitely be moving in the right direction.