100 Ways to Screw Up Your Life – Book Review
Dragos Roua of Brilliantly Better, a fellow blogger whose writing I have enjoyed repeatedly, has recently published four books in one month. Honestly, I was a bit skeptical since the publication of our most recent book, the NuNomad, took us over a year. I mean, 4 books – one month/1 book- 1 year. Yeah, right. Still, I had to go look because I really do like his writing and he’s a very nice guy to know in the blogosphere.
Dragos is famous for his list posts. Ok, so everyone does list posts. Why is he famous for that? Dragos doesn’t do posts like “8 Ways to Screw in a Lightbulb”. No, he does “100 Ways to Screw in a Lightbulb”. Many of his list posts are really long lists. He does have some shorter, 14 and 30 list posts but he has enough 100 list posts to stand out from the crowd.
What Dragos has done has been to take a few of his most popular list posts and enhance them to become books. Of his 4 recent books he has “100 Ways to Improve Your Life”, “100 Ways to Screw Up Your Life”, “30 Sentences for a Millionaire Mindset” and “The 7 Ages of an Online Business”. Luckily for me, he was offering a free e-copy of any one of his books in return for a review (hence, here we are!). I was psyched because I’ve been very intrigued by the title, “100 Ways to Screw Up Your Life”, but was skeptical enough that I wasn’t ready to hand over the plastic. And so I quickly raised my virtual hand to volunteer my time.
I am a personal and business coach. For over 11 years I’ve been helping people improve their lives. Life improvement isn’t new to me. However, life ruin – now that’s something new! I had to have a look.
To be honest, I’ve never done a book review for anyone before, and I felt a little strange – a bit like a hired gun. What if I thought it sucked? That would be a bit awkward. And so I cautiously opened my electronic version of Dragos’ book.
“100 Ways to Screw Up Your Life” is exactly as the title describes, a list of 100 ways you can live to be less than your potential, ruin friendships, and basically become an old, lonely, and unfulfilled couch potato. What amazes me about Dragos’ writing, however, is that he has the ability to actually come up with 100 points that are meaningful and wise and to do so in a warm and humorous way.
Here are a couple of quotes that I really liked. The first comes from point number 5: Dream Without Taking Action
But daydreaming without action is useless. Sitting on your fat ass while waiting for all your intentions to manifest, without taking the smallest action for moving things forward, wonʼt change anything. Oh, sorry, it will change something: you ass will be fatter.
and from point number 17: Fight Your Enemies
An enemy canʼt be in the present, unless you agree to propagate that past situation in the present. And thatʼs such a waste of time. Let the past be the past. Live in the present.
Dragos’ sense of humor lightens the very deep points he is making and allows us to acknowledge that we are all most likely guilty of at least a handful of them. (oops, sorry Dragos – I’m not to play the guilt card – point #7). In fact, as I read, I was losing count of how many ways I might be screwing up my own life.
If you choose to buy his book (no I am not receiving any commission for this) be aware that Dragos is not a native speaker of English. There are some awkward phrases and a few typos that reflect this. However, the points he is making are well worth looking past the sometimes stilted language.
I came away from reading his book feeling as if Dragos has a unique gift for observation of our human folly, that his insight and awareness make him worthy of reading and that I wish I possessed such wisdom. I highly recommend, “100 Ways to Screw Up Your Life”. If you’d like to get your own copy, visit his site Brilliantly Better.
