Read This or Die!
Persuading Yourself to a Better Life
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Diagnosed with a terminal illness, a leading marketing consultant discovers that what he has learned about persuading others might help him save his own life.
Ray Edwards was one of the top marketers and copywriters in the business with A-list clients like Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, and Michael Hyatt when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The diagnosis brought his life to a screeching halt and propelled Edwards to question everything he thought he knew about his Christian faith, his relationships, what kind of person he was, and how the world worked.
Out of options and deeply depressed, Edwards decided he needed to turn his life around or die a failure. He had to let go of false beliefs and find better ones. To his surprise, he found that the principles of persuasion he’d honed for over four decades to move others could work for him. In the vein of The Last Lecture and Tuesdays with Morrie, Read This or Die! Is the tale of one man’s transformation and how he achieved it.
Edwards outlines the powerful, time-tested PASTOR process he created that helped him identify and untangle the beliefs that were holding him back and provided a game plan for how to change his life:
Pain: start with what hurts
Amplify: determine how it will get worse before it gets better
Story: find the story of a better future
Transformation: choose the evidence worth believing
Opportunity: discern where change can happen
Response: set up a system that makes transformation stick
For anyone who wants to turn their life around but does not know how, the PASTOR method teaches how to harness marketing wisdom to get honest about what we really want from life and craft better beliefs and plans to help us start living life on our own terms.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Copywriter Edwards (Permission to Prosper) urges readers in this upbeat entry to harness the "power of persuasion" to enact personal change. After receiving a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease at 46, the author realized he needed to make a change. He was"overweight, edging toward bankruptcy, and pessimistic about life in general," so wrote himself a "sales letter" to convince himself to turn things around—and he did, by taking risks (getting tattoos, hiking despite his new physical limitations) and working on his relationships. Using this experience and principles picked up from 40-plus years of copywriting, Edwards outlines steps for catalyzing personal change, whether quitting a job or starting a new habit. The program involves pinpointing the source of psychic pain, "amplifying" it (though one should imagine a worst-case scenario instead of actually hitting rock bottom), understanding that transformation is necessary, making a concrete plan for change, and "requiring a response" within a set time frame. Edwards advances a refreshingly practical approach to personal transformation, with advice that's based in experience and underlaid by genuine passion for the skill of sales persuasion. Those in need of solutions with staying power will do well to give this a look.
