What will learning the ‘Secrets’ do for you?

This book is about you – and how you can get more pleasure and less pain in your life by making better decisions, based on your true values.

It will help you discover aspects of yourself that you may have suspected were there, but have never fully explored.

It will help you build powerful self-confidence, built on unshakable foundations.

It is designed to be practical, with a minimum of theory and only a sprinkling of philosophy.

This book will help you to:

• develop trust in your own judgement

• achieve powerful self-confidence

• identify your strengths, skills and abilities

• banish many sources of stress

• motivate yourself – and other people

• make sound decisions based on your core values

• develop a clear, meaningful direction for your life

• become more fully the person you want to be

Only you know what is best for you, which is why you will not find me handing out advice on how to run your life. You will find me asking questions designed to provoke your thinking in a certain direction: you can choose whether or not this is the direction you want to go.

This book does not have magical powers – simply reading it will not change your life. You, however, do have magical powers: you can use your power of imagination to create an inspiring future for yourself and you can use the power of directed action to bring it to fruition.

You will learn how to put your past in its proper perspective and feel better about it – whatever it was like. You will learn how to deal effectively with whatever is happening in your life right now, and how to communicate more comfortably with other people – getting more of what you want and giving them more of what they want.

You will also learn how to make sound decisions based on what is really important to you, and discover some of the clues to finding your true direction and purpose in life. In turn, this will help you to develop greater self-confidence and an increased capacity for enjoying life to the full.

You will find this book full of new ways of looking at your thinking and your behaviour and noticing how they can be adjusted for better results – perhaps more easily than you ever thought possible.

Watching TV or reading a book – even this one – is no substitute for direct feedback from real people, so while some of the exercises can be completed on your own, some will require a certain amount of interaction with others. So discuss your learning with someone else if possible, and if you have several friends who are interested, you could form your own SHAPE group (see the Appendix) and have regular meetings to help each other along. This kind of support network can be very valuable, especially if you live alone or don’t have many opportunities to talk to people. It will also provide opportunities to try out the interpersonal exercises in a safe environment.