By Melinda

January 17th, 2013

Having worked several years in the corporate life, I have been to my fair share of motivational meetings. And, at the end of the day, they’re really not that motivational. You go back to your gray cubicle and put out for “the man.” In most instances, the company only sends you to motivational meetings so you will make them more money, not because they are genuinely concerned for your emotional health and love of your job. But you might just find yourself motivated to make some career and life changes after reading Donna Hartney’s The Aha! Handbook: How to spark the insights that will transform your life and career.

Donna Hartney explores different depths of “Aha!” moments. She helps you to differentiate between an “Aha! That’s what that funny smell is!” and “Aha! I don’t have to work for ‘the man’ no mo’!” (Jive-turkey vocabulary is optional.) The focus of her newly released book is the grander scheme of Aha!s. She should know. She had her own Aha! in 1984, which resulted in a career change. And I am so glad it did, or I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to read her wonderful book.

Of course, I was a bit apprehensive about reading the book. I am not big on reading self-help books, because they all come back around to the same point, which is, “Just shut up and do it already!” I don’t need a book to tell me that. The voices in my head do a wonderful job of that already. But what I really, really related to in her book was the fact that she approached it from a scientific viewpoint.

Before I was a stay-at-home mom, one of my jobs was Business Analyst for a large credit card company. I totaled sales figures. I deducted charge-off figures. I averaged late charge figures. I gave percentages of finance charges to sales figures and percentages of averages and so forth and so on. So I’m a numbers kind of a gal. And Donna broke things down on my level. She studied close to 100 first-hand accounts of AHA!s, and then she divided them up into different types of AHA!s. She then broke each of those down into percentages. It’s easier to use an example from the book to explain:

“Is necessity also the mother of life-changing AHA!s? It can be, but is not a requirement. In the study, momentous epiphanies occurred along the full range of experiences—from the desperate (13%) through to the uncomfortable (73%) and on to the divine (12%).” – Donna Hartney, The Aha! Handbook

So if information like that gets you hot under the collar, I can definitely recommend this book for you. But what if percentage points aren’t your thing? What if you are motivated by true-life stories? Well, then, I can still recommend Donna Hartney’s The Aha! Handbook for you. It is chock-full of amazing first-hand accounts of people that have paved the way in not only the USA but in the world. Stories from Nelson Mandela, Andre Agassi, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jay Leno, and many, many more people from different walks of life grace the 176-pages of The Aha! Handbook.

The bio on the back of Donna’s book is true to form when it heralds her as “A rare combination of researcher, instructor, and case study….” This book is very well-researched, well put-together, and is easy to read. Even if you don’t feel like you are in need of an Aha! moment at this time, chances are you will be one day. Be prepared.  Get your copy of Donna Hartney’s The Aha! Handbook! today!

 

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