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How to Begin
- Start Doing Something That Matters
- Narrated by: Michael Bungay Stanier
- Length: 3 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Relationships, Parenting & Personal Development, Personal Development
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Publisher's Summary
“Piercingly frank, funny, gorgeous, vulnerable, and ultimately really damn helpful.” (Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times best-selling author of How to Raise an Adult)
Unlock your greatness. Set a goal that matters to you — and to the world.
With The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier penned the bestselling coaching book of the century. With The Advice Trap, he showed you how to tame your Advice Monster. Now, he’s here to help you reclaim your ambition and motivation to become your best self, driven with purpose and meaning.
If you are ready to get unstuck, to figure out what you should do that matters, to unlock your best self, to take on a project that you know is yours — you need to know How to Begin.
This is your practical guide to finding the focus and courage to set a Worthy Goal: one that lights you up, compels you to grow, and serves a bigger game by being thrilling, important and daunting.
With humor, compassion, and laser-focused clarity, Bungay Stanier walks you through a tested process to:
- Find and refine your Worthy Goal to meets three integral criteria.
- Strengthen your Worthy Goal with three tests — and a single word that takes it from Good to Great.
- Get clear on your commitment.
- Build the resources to cross the threshold and begin.
- How to travel in small steps to ensure that you progress.
- Find the four types of people you need to travel with — and the fifth you should consider.
- And a good deal more.
This book is for you if....
You’re at the start of your adult life, and you’re fired up to live a life of meaning and impact.
You’ve achieved things in your career, and it’s now time to “climb the second mountain” and think about legacy.
You’re unhappy with how the world is working right now, and you want to change your part of it for the better.
You’re a coach, and you want to support your clients to be great and do great things.
You’re ambitious, but feel you’ve never been given full permission to find and strive for a Worthy Goal.
It needs you to begin, and start doing something that matters.
***
“Of particular appeal for those of us who instinctively recoil from self-help woo-woo and just want to get on with doing Great Work that leaves the world a bit better than we found it.” (Courtney Hohne, Chief Storyteller for Moonshots, X, formerly Google X)
“A friendly voice and a guiding hand.” (Austin Kleon, New York Times best-selling author of Steal Like an Artist)
“Piercingly frank, funny, gorgeous, vulnerable, and ultimately really damn helpful.” (Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times best-selling author of How to Raise an Adult)
“Eminently practical, clever, delightful, and beautifully rendered – a non-fiction Where the Wild Things Are for adult dreamers and doers.” (Whitney Johnson, best-selling author of Smart Growth and Disrupt Yourself)
“I loved this book, and that's coming from a gal who's never been big on goals.” (Liz Wiseman, New York Times best-selling author of Impact Players and Multipliers)
“Powerful, magical and compelling. We don't need more time, we simply need to decide.” (Seth Godin, author, The Practice)
More from the same
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What listeners say about How to Begin
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Andres Silva O
- 01-15-22
Practical and inspiring
Short but worthy
Clear not boring
Useful not numb
A short and useful story. MBS could’ve used the last 2 chapter’s power to build more momentum and more emotion.
Still, worth giving it a try
2 people found this helpful
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- Annette Mason
- 01-20-22
Thrilling, Important & Daunting - great way to begin 2022 & Beyond
MBS’s energy is palpable as he describes how to journey into our ‘Worthy Goals.’
Really enjoyed the emphasis of “Don't travel alone, Build the Band” and then he presents the four archetypes to have on the journey
All gems of answers and I thought Chapter 9 was my most favorite chapter in the book.
Then I got to FIN and his heartfelt story and tribute to his father. The exclamation point comes in the Gratitudes.
A rare audio book that shares out loud some precious diamonds in the back matter after the finish -
Amplifies the impact of the chapters.
1 person found this helpful
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- Mommaof7
- 04-25-22
Woke
I was into what he was saying until he went woke and ruined it. Couldn’t stand to continue listening past that point. Waste of money.
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-16-22
Like a three hour coaching session
I have a bias because I love pretty much everything MBS produces; however I believe this is objectively an outstanding piece of writing and delivery. The trick with personal development and growth is to keep it simple and actionable, while still providing the opportunity to reflect deeply. This book does that, and the interweaving with personal experience and examples adds colour and humility to the process.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough, with the one proviso being that you have to do the work. This is not a non-fiction information book - it’s a manual to be followed. I am at the start of this process personally but already finding many insights and new perspectives on what thrilling, important and daunting goals mean for me.
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- julia
- 01-15-22
Step-by-Step Inspiration from the World’s Favourite Coach
Michael Bungay Stanier takes the listener through an intense coaching project in this highly effective audiobook for people who are looking to begin a worthy project.
First he invites us to be ambitious with our life and for the impact we can make. Then he takes us through a step-by-step process defining and refining a worthy project.
By the end of this book you will have a blueprint for success
Helpful, Insightful and Deeply Human, this is a book to share, to return to, to rely on.
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- Mark Dean
- 03-07-22
Brilliantly written
MBS has a wonderful way of making his ideas accessible and relatable. This book gives plenty of opportunity to put the lessons into practice and make the most of the content. I’m very appreciative of the effort that has gone into adapting this book to an audible - not simply a reading of a text, but developing it to be listened to. 10/10 would recommend