Review of “Be Amazing” by Paul S. Boynton

Discover Your Purpose, Conquer Your Fears, and Fulfill Your Potential

My decision to read this book was more based on the subtitle than the title. The title sounded a little self-serving, but as I read the book, I realized that I want to be amazing not for my benefit but for how my being amazing can help others. This made me feel better about reading the book and sharing a review of it.

The book outlines six qualities that you should have to be amazing and four steps to get there.

The six qualities are:

1. Offer unexpected acts of generosity, kindness, and other thoughtful behaviors.
2. Don’t necessarily strive for being the best but do strive to be the very best you can be.
3. Have an intention that becomes a narrative — even if it’s only one sentence long.
4. Be as accommodating as possible.
5. Create a community, serve the one you’re in, or bring disparate communities together.
6. Be authentic about and focused on things you feel passionate about

The four steps to get there are:

1. Find your “spirit blueprint.”
2. Make a decision.
3. Discover what amazing will look like.
4. Make it happen.

After reading the book, I noted that:

I am called to be an amazing course creator who creates courses that help people feel comfortable with and learn how to use software.

And my intention (Quality Three) is to:

Create a safe place for people to learn.

Some of my favorite highlights in the book include:

• “What makes each of us unique is not a problem; it’s an amazing blessing.”
• “Being amazing is much easier — even effortless — whenever we are passionate about what we’re doing.”
• “Being amazing means doing your personal best (which is much different from being ‘better than’).”
• “…flowers don’t compare themselves with other flowers, they just bloom.”
• “The first thing standing in our way is our thoughts, and the second thing is our unwillingness to take action.”
• “What we think is reality is really just our reality, not the reality.”
• “If we see our potential, we will be eager to seek out opportunities and step into the unknown where amazing waits.”
• “…taking action is really the only way we’ll ever move from hoping something will happen to actually making something amazing happen.”
• “When we are feeling stuck, we need to dig deeper, not give up.”
• “Every time you hear that negative voice [in your head], take the message and flip it.”
• “You teach through your actions.”
• “Being amazing is about you being you.”

This book contained a lot of stories about amazing people and how they were amazing. While I enjoyed and got some inspiration from these stories, I wished there were more substance and less storytelling. But overall, I enjoyed the book and have gotten a lot out of it.