Life Strategies (McGraw, 1999)

Doing What Works, Doing What Matters

Some people spend their lives reacting to what life hands them, while others craft life to fit their goals. Author Phillip C. McGraw, who is a psychologist but describes himself as a strategist, is determined to make sure that his readers are the creators of their lives, not created by their lives. By accepting that you are personally accountable for every element of your life, McGraw says, you can erase the negative "epidemic behaviors" (found in all of American society: denial, false assumptions, inertia, deceptive masking) in your life and reach your goals.
Written in a tough-love, sometimes cantankerous tone, this self-help book is not for those looking to explore their inner child or visualize away negative energy. No, this is pull-yourself-up-by-the- bootstraps advice from someone who's done just that. McGraw opens with a scene describing how he helped Oprah Winfrey survive--and win--the 1998 "Mad Cow" lawsuit in Texas, when she was having difficulty coping with the reality of what was happening to her. He helped her face the facts about the lawsuit, after which she was better able to participate in crafting a strategy to win it.

McGraw first forces you to take a good hard look at who you are by dissecting your personality. It may be painful to realize that you fall into the "Porcupine" or "Perfecto" or any of the other personality types McGraw delineates, but here it's true that there's no gain without pain, because (Life Law No. 4) "You Can't Change What You Don't Acknowledge." He then describes in depth all 10 "Life Laws"--the rules by which the world plays--that he learned the hard way. Laws such as "You Either Get It, or You Don't," "Life Is Managed; It Is Not Cured," and "You Have to Name It to Claim It" make up the bulk of the book and McGraw's realist philosophy.

If you learn and abide by the Life Laws and go on to create a Life Strategy, McGraw claims you will not only know yourself better and eliminate negative behaviors, you will also know how to reach any goal you set for yourself. --Stefanie Durbin

p.27 This book is about how to reach, in a strategic way, for something better.

p.38 The skills you need... are the skills of understanding and controlling the cause-and-effect relationships of life: in other words, using your knowledge to make things happen the way you want them to. That means learning how and why you do what you do, and don't do what you don't do; and how and why other people do what they do, and don't do. That knowledge can give you an incredible edge in the competition of life.

p.88 People Do What Works

Your Strategy: Identify the payoffs that drive your behavior and that of others. Control the payoffs to control your life.

p.131 Measuring success or failure purely as a function of results means that you are taking a hard-nosed, bottom-line approach to self-evaluation. You might as well do it that way, because that's how the world is measuring you.

p.150, 152, 166 Perception is the level at which you assign meaning to the sensations you receive from the world... The key point is that where your perceptions are concerned, you have the ability to choose differently from what you are currently choosing, if you wish. When it comes to how you see things, you do have a choice... Your perceptions should develop not just from your view of the world, but from your testing and verification of that view.

p.176 if you have a clear-cut strategy... you can flourish... The world... is not to be feared, just managed; and the key to managing it is having this consciously designed strategy.

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