Act Like a Success Think Like a Success is a self-help book by Steve Harvey that delivers Steve’s life advice with a mix of autobiographical, motivational, and inspirational content.
Contents
Bullet Summary
- Find what you’re good at and build your career around it
- Commit to your gift and work hard at it
- Embrace failure
Full Summary
About The Author:
Steve Harvey is a comedian, TV host, and a devout Christian. He is also the author of popular dating books for women such as “Think Like A Man, Act Like A Lady” and “Straight Talk, No Chaser“
Introduction
Steve Harvey is one of those guys who “started from the bottom”.
In that sense, he can be quite inspirational and he can connect with more normal readers the way that some other self-help authors cannot.
Harvey dropped out of school, worked a factory job until he was fired, stayed homeless for almost three years, and didn’t get serious about success until he was in middle age.
And yet there he did it.
Find Your Gift
You should build your career -and possibly your life- around what you’re good at.
To know what you’re good at, you need to know yourself and you need to be brutally honest (love reality, says Ray Dalio in Principles).
Steve says you can turn any passion into a well-paying job.
My Note:
I don’t fully agree here, though. You can turn many passions into high-paying job as millionaires videogamers can testify.
But just like many other authors on this topic, I believe some passions are harder to monetize.
So you might at least want to think about that. Just don’t let that stop you in your track. Countless “unmonetizable” businesses made millions.
Commit to Your Gift
To reach success, you must not only find your gift, but fully commit yourself to it.
My Note: fully committing to a gift not only is crucial for success, but will also heighten your passion for the gift. Read Grit by Angela Duckworth for more.
Failure is Your Friend
The need to embrace failure is a constant refrain in the self-help literature.
However, Act Like a Success Think Like a Success provides some very motivating real-life examples that back up the talk with the walk.
People laughed at Harvey when he quit his job to pursue comedy. And he lost every comedy competition he entered. He had some terrible performances in front of big crowds. And he was scared before any big major event.
Yet, he took some big lessons learned from his failures. Harvey started keeping tabs on his jokes. He scored based on the crowd’s reaction and used that feedback to decide what could stay and what should go.
Snub The Haters
Steve Harvey recommends you don’t find any time for the haters. When you respond and entertain them, you give them power.
And you waste your precious time.
Keep climbing instead, and they will be so far down the ladder you won’t even hear them anymore.
More Good Advice
And here is a list of good advice I handpicked:
- Remove excuses
- Avoid negative thoughts and negative people
- Only share goals and visions with a selected few
- Write a vision and constantly look at it (put it somewhere you see it every day)
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help
- Know your worth and ask for equivalent compensation
- Success doesn’t come overnight: start small and build your way up
- Learn to say no: Decide your value and refuse what doesn’t support them
Review
Act Like a Success Think Like a Success is a good book on success mindsets and on the power of possibilities.
However, the most important advice on success may be missing, which is:
Feel like a success, and you already are a success.
Or better yet, don’t care too much about “success”, especially how other people define it, and you’ll live a lot better.
When it comes to the book itself, the self-help part contains advice that is rather popular and well-known in the self-help literature (read best self-help books).
But the mix of theory plus real-life stories may even make it slightly better than the average self-help book. Contrary to some, Steve Harvey isn’t trying to make money selling the advice: he’s already made it to a successful position in life and then he is giving advice.
Since Harvey did start from very low and he did start late, Act Like a Success Think Like a Success Can also be very inspirational for readers.
I would recommend it first and foremost to anyone who likes Harvey, to people who start from humble beginnings, and those who’d like to become comedians.
