Elevate: Push Beyond Your Limits and Unlock Success in Yourself and Others (Motivational Leadership, Self-Help Book) (Ignite Reads)

Elevate, the much-anticipated book by weekly blog writer and entrepreneur, Robert Glazer, was released October 1, 2019. I was privileged to participate in a sneak peek of the book and am now ready to share the highlights of what I enjoyed about this new and important publication. To offer some background information, the book is based on Robert’s weekly Friday Forward emails, which can be characterized as nuggets of gold. He picks a topic and explores it with depth, warmth, and offers non-judgmental practical application in all areas of one’s life: spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional. The overarching premise of the book is consistent with the Friday Forward emails and encapsulates the purpose of the book, stating on its front cover, “Push beyond your limits and unlock success in yourself and others.” Before I get into what I personally enjoyed about the book, it’s imperative to me that I point out two features that underscore its practical application and elevates its advisory theme to a higher level. At the end of every chapter, there is a section entitled ‘Action Steps,’ which systematically range from drawing on your own past experiences and noticing a commonality of where there was struggle, to offering tips on health, moving out of your emotional comfort zone, to offering additional resources to assist in overcoming challenges and improving your life. As a subtheme to the book, we’re all learning all of the time. Something else that I noticed in the text, was that critical points were written in the book’s aqua accent color. There’s no mystery here that this was intended to highlight these important concepts and to make these easier to locate for future, personal reference. With all of that said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book! There were so many connective ideas, making it natural to reflect on areas of improvement and feeling confident that advanced success is not just achievable, but a deeply personal activity that the reader is happy to take ownership of, and enjoy working toward (versus just straight discipline). It’s an easy, quick read; but, one that moves to the top of my personal list of reference works, when I need to review my approach. Robert dedicates his book to ‘…everyone who knows deep down they can be more.” That sums up the gift that this book is. And one last thing: when dedicating the book to his family, Robert used the Oxford comma. That just puts a bow on it.

I stumbled upon Robert Glazer by hearing about his Friday Forward email. I fell in love with the emails and shared them with friends. I saw that he had a book coming out and, to be honest, I pre-ordered it just to support him. Here are my honest thoughts on the book: - It was less expensive than I expected. I wondered what I would get for that, but I am very pleased. - When I opened the package the book was smaller than I expected. At first, I thought this was a reflection of the value, but it is the opposite. This book is designed in a way to keep handy and refer to it as a reminder / pick me up / reference. It is easy to keep handy without taking up a lot of room or being obnoxious. - The book doesn't have a dust jacket (Yay!) and feels solid both in the hardback cover and the thick pages. I read something that said when people held a heavier weight paper, they gave more "weight" to the content. I hope that is the case. I really enjoy the feel of the book more than I would have expected. Now onto the content: - Robert Glazer put together a well sourced book that includes actionable solutions for every area of your life. He divides these areas up into: Emotional, Spiritual, Physical, and Intellectual. - I found his sources (books, authors, studies, etc.) very solid. Half of them were either authors / sources I was familiar with, which was reinforcing. That gave credibility to the other sources which I will now seek out as well. - He recommends other authors / websites / etc. and often sites his sources for findings and actions. I like being able to trace how he came to the conclusion and find additional supporting info if needed. - At the end of the chapters he has a summary with actions to take and resources to help build and expand on what he has shared. I like this a lot. Action is missing from most books and the summaries are usually poorly done. Not here. I wish I had a PDF of the action steps so I could have all the links etc. at my fingertips. I know, "first world problems" :) - The style of his book is to get right to the point. It is not a "rah rah" motivational book. It is not some book on ONE topic that is overfilled with 250 pages of mostly filler (likely forced by their publisher) or a someone trying to overly convince you their "one thing" is important. His book gets right to the punch, gives you a source to follow up with, if you wanted. He then takes the information from all over and combines it into a plan to live a balanced live in a virtuous cycle of success and happiness. - This is a great book, if you are looking for motivation and concrete steps to take to build yourself a better life. I think it would easy to dismiss or overlook this book as I might have at the start by its low price and smaller size. But the contents are very powerful and well thought out and put together.

Practical and quick read with insightful advice although basic and not really different or providing any new or ground breaking information.

Words have never tasted better than this in this gripping read which is filled with wisdom birthed from real life experiences. The pages of this book are laced tightly with brilliant insights that are powerful enough to turn your life around. I’m glad this book was loaded with the same amount of inspiration that has been integral to the heartbeat of Friday forward messages. In this book, Robert Glazer does his damnedest to add valuable flesh to all the four skeletons that are essential for capacity building—The Spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional elements—which he urges us to think of as chambers of an inflatable ball separated into four sections. Each section can be filled with a dense gas. As each ball expands in size, the more energy and mass it will have, resulting in optimal momentum as it rolls. The key thing to remember is that this ball will only perform best when all chambers grow in tandem rather than one section getting too big at the expense of the others. This is because if one chamber is too big or too small in comparison to the other chambers, the ball will not roll evenly. Instead of rolling steadily it will wobble awkwardly and eventually get off track. This depiction is true to life; it warns us of the dangers we may face in our lifetime if we do not pay attention to what is happening to us. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is ready to live an elevated life!

I've rated this book a five star (5*). My reason is simple. The book will help you to develop as a leader and will impact you to work on others to become leaders not followers. Every person who desires to empower himself and other must read this book. Bob's writing used real life examples to explore and expound the frameworks on which the book is based as well practical actions to put the ideas to work. Ability to build capacity in these four areas of our lives - spiritual capacity, intellectual capacity, emotional capacity, and physical capacity will help us to grow as individuals. This book is a must read if you want to improve as a person so as to impact your life and those around you.

Amazing book. Handy book, papers easy to handle. Step by step guidelines for capacity building across 4 aspects spiritual, intellectual,physical and emotional . Activity at end of segments connect you much more to the process and gives useful references and tools. Great buy and value for money Thanks

I've subscribed to Robert's weekly newsletter 'Friday Forward' for about a year and a half now and not once has it been undeserving of its spot in my inbox. To say I was a little excited when I heard he was coming out with a book would be an understatement. Like in his newsletter, in Elevate, Rob does a great job of taking evidence-based ideas and relating them to everyday life. Through stories and actionable advice, he explores the concept of 'capacity building', the strengthening of one's ability to perform. Capacity building isn't working endlessly harder (and ending up burned out), but instead closer to how an athlete trains. Measured, deliberate, and focused on the right areas. Written in an approachable style, it focuses more on results than explaining extensive research which makes for a quick and easy read.

Enjoyed the book a lot. I think its a good 80/20 approach, meaning here you get all the key wisdom from many more insights/scientific books in one.

This book is short, I wanted more haha. It's a great, straight to the point, book. Recommend for people trying to do more, become better and change the world around them. Thanks Robert!