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Change is Not just a Six-Letter Word

Change is More than a Six-Letter Word Available in  Kindle Edition and Paperback. 
Even as one glances at the cover, Mark Reklau’s 30 Days-Change Your Habits, Change Your Life echoes the kind of idle boast even a true expert usually wants to avoid. My first impression was that the book sounds like a bad infomercial. Yet, as is often wisely stated, you can’t judge this book by the cover. Page after page, the review copy provided showed me that  30 Days is more than a boast. The book delivers on its promise for those focused and ready to act on self-improvement, even as they try to keep pace with life’s daily shifts.

More than that, as I read the 204 pages, I began to wish the book had come to my attention sooner. The release date is more than a year ago. Even so, I choose to share the publication because the knowledge it holds remains in constant demand.
“Taking full responsibility for your life includes the risk of making mistakes and leaves you without the common excuses (society, my boss, my family, my age etc…), but it also creates options, space and power,” the author states on his website.  Change can never come too late.
As for tone,  30 Days is easily read, mostly because every chapter is topical. Readers can explore each of the 94 chapters in sequence, or as I, many readers might prefer to jump to the areas of greatest interest. That said I recommend anyone who gets a hold of the book read the Introduction and first chapter to gain a feel for the author’s views.

Reklau is clear from the start – the blame for our lives is on us. “Most people have no idea how they get what they get,” he writes in the Introduction. Some of us just blame it on fate and chance.,,,Everything that happens to you is created by YOU – either consciously by design or unconsciously by default; it’s not a result of fate or circumstances.”

Reklau, who uses the book in his pursuits as a life coach offers advice in a manner that one might expect from improvement gurus. The main difference, which makes this work worthy of a read, is that the book is complete in its message, not a come on. Those who follow the link above can check out his business website and find offers for ongoing consultation, but those who seriously want to redesign their lives will find the book a treasure trove.

He offers blunt advice in a direct, concise prose. “Every day brings with it the opportunity to start a new life!” he writes in the first chapter, Rewrite Your Story.  “You get to choose your identity at each and every moment! … It’s up to you to decide who you are going to be from this day on.”

As stated, the Table of Contents reads like an advice list – Choose Your Thoughts, The Importance of Attitude, Know Your Strengths, Avoid Energy Robbers.  When one steps back from the work, it is clear that part of the book’s attraction is its tight organization and design. Readers who want a quick answer to the life-change question will glean a lot from the browse. Those who take the few moments needed to read a chapter will gain ever more. For example, in Chapter 11, Get Comfortable with Change and Chaos, Reklau writes: ” For personal growth you have to be in a constant state of feeling slightly uncomfortable. Get into the habit of doing things that others don’t want to do. You have to choose to do what needs to be done regardless of the inconvenience!”

Readers who take the thirty days to reflect on their attitudes and behaviors will not be disappointed. In that effort, the book can be a guide and counselor. In the end, 30 Days will be one of those keepers on the shelf that is pulled down once or twice a year to refresh our thoughts on what it takes to achieve the lives we desire. If nothing else, the book will serve as a constant reminder that life we have is the result of our actions. Change will become more than a six-letter word.

 

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VGwrites

I am a storyteller, author, editor, blogger, and retired university professor of Creative Writing. Now in Central Florida, I still teach every now and then, but write most of the time. Most recently, I poetry was featured in Mo Joe The Anthology. My last book, 10 Stories Down, a poetry collection published in September 2011, is inspired by several long-term stays in Beijing. Life and Other Things I Know: Poems, Essays and Short Stories (Elephant Eye Press, 1999), was the first. Throughout the years, the list expanded to include: African American Children's Stories: A Treasury of Tradition and Pride, Grandma Loves You: My First Treasury, African American Stories: My First Treasury, Like A Dry Land: A Soul's Journey through the Middle East and contributions to Take Two, They're Small, an anthology of poems, memoir, essay and fiction on food. My poetry, fiction and essays have also appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Washington Living, Upstate New Yorker, The Southern Quarterly, Reporter Magazine, Drylongso, Fyah, MentalSatin, Pinnacle Hill Review, Invisible Universe, Bridges, Ishmael Reed's Konch Magazine, New Verse News, and UpandComing Magazine.

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