The Truth about You: Your Secret to Success [With DVD and Note Pad]

The Truth About You. An uncomplicated straight forward book with simple exercises that can potentially help you change your life for the better. For so long we are told to fix our weaknesses but hardly ever are told to build on our strengths. By building on our strengths, not only can we build a more satisfying life for ourselves, but we can be a better help to others. The Truth About You will help you to discover for yourself what your strengths are, recognize what makes you weak, and what you can do to incorporate this new found knowledge of yourself. The book comes with a DVD of Marcus Buckingham explaining the truths about knowing your strengths. While he speaks you'll see a video of a young child working to acheive his strength of playing drums in the school band. While I didn't get the band part too much, hearing what Marcus had to say was super. It also helps that he has a wonderful voice and his accent is not hard to understand. Also included with the book and DVD set is a ReMemo pad. It's two-sided and it's for the exercises he outlines in the book. For young people entering the work force, this book can save a lot of heart ache of stressful jobs that do not work their strengths. For those already established, this book can help you spot your strength, neutralize your weakness, and help to adapt your strengths into your current job. If you're in between jobs, this book can help you re-evaluate yourself and help you pursue the job that will be more satifying to you. Lastly, everyone should come to know what their strengths and weaknesses are for their own personal lives. Not only will it make you more conscientious of how you live, what you do, and what makes you happy, you'll also recognize those things that drain you and make you unhappy unnecessarily. This is invaluable knowledge! The Truth About You is not a "rah-rah" cheerleading you-can-do-it book. It is a solidly grounded book that can truly benefit everyone. For the nominal price of this book set, the knowledge gained is invaluable. Worth reading.

I bean reading Marcus Buckingham in "Now, Discover Your Strengths," then read "Go Put Your Strengths to Work" and "StrengthsFinder 2.0". I then ran a bible study with teens at our church having each of them do the StrengtheFinder, which went somewhat well for all of them, and followed it with the video series "Trombone Player Wanted." While Trombone Player Wanted begins the process of beginning to live your strengths, there hasn't been an actual walk through that makes it pretty easy to take Marcus' ideas and make them a reality in my life. This book has a DVD discussing strengths and finding your potential outside the "norm" or society, your boss, parents, teachers, whoever else is exerting pressure on how you should live. Then the book walks you through now to discover what you really do enjoy doing, and has you write those down in a small journal/flip-book provided. Then focus on some of the things which aren't your gifts. If you've read earlier books by Marcus Buckingham, and applied them to your life successfully, this book won't be very useful to you. Even if you have read the books and not put all the practices to work, the book itself won't be incredibly different. It's more a work that takes "Go, Put Your Strengths to Work" and "Trombone Player Wanted" together into a short book that you can go through within a day or two and begin using right away. If you haven't read Marcus Buckingham before, or are looking for other ways to put his teachings into practice, this book will be a great help.

Marcus Buckingham has once again done a great job in this book. Actually, this is not just a book, it is a complete kit to understand what truly are one's strengths and weaknesses and then, how one can identify them. This kit comes with a DVD, a book and a memo pad. DVD has a movie with three myth-busters (and also three corresponding truths); book is actually a workbook with good career advice, and the memo-pad is where you can write the specific activities to identify your strengths and weaknesses. First few pages of book have the transcript of the DVD, but the DVD movie has a sweet story which goes on with Marcus Buckingham's speech in background. Marcus defines strength as something that makes you feel strong and gets you excited. Your strength is not just what you are good at. Similarly, your weakness is an activity or task, which makes you feel weak or brings you down. DVD also has link to some enhanced content on Marcus's website, where there are some additional videos with practical advice and tools to download. These tools have tests to identify your strengths and weaknesses and make a StrongWeek plan. I will recommend this book to professionals who are early starters in their careers, or those who are looking to make a career shift. In both cases, you need to know yourself properly and carve out your career path for success. This complete toolkit will surely help you to do so.

"The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success" consists of three attractively packaged parts - - a 22-minute DVD that tells the story of how a young man in a school band decided to play to his interests (and strengths) by switching from one instrument to another (yes, it's a metaphor!) - a "ReMemo Pad" that helps you evaluate right on the spot the activities that make you feel strong or weak - an interactive text with pertinent questions that helps you verbalize what you've learned about yourself. While the information contained in "The Truth About You" can help anyone who is out in the work world, the package is really aimed towards younger people who are looking for work, or just starting out in a first or second job. The sad reality that young workers soon discover is that most people either hate their jobs or merely tolerate them. Why? In part, it's because job seekers don't ask a simple question - "What will I be paid to do?" According to the author, you want a job that allows you to improve on your existing strengths while letting you neutralize your weaknesses. That sounds pretty obvious, but anyone who has ever sat through a performance review and been told, "Gee, your writing really isn't up to snuff, you need to work on that," when writing is something you hate doing, knows how totally demoralizing, enervating and time-wasting trying to fix your weaknesses can be. Cunningham's point is that, while bosses often push employees to become "well-rounded" by shoring up those areas in which they are weak, the reality is that you'd be far better served ignoring those areas, or enlisting help to get them done. That leaves you free to concentrate on the things you are really good at, which ultimately benefits both you and the company far more than struggling for hours to put together a departmental budget when you can barely operate a calculator. The text, while basic, contains useful information and exercises that help the reader "drill down" past the stock answers we give when asked what our strengths are ("I like to work with people"). By jotting down what activities you were pursuing that made you feel strong or weak over the course of several days, readers gain insight into what really makes them tick, and then practical advice on how what to do with that information on the job. "The Truth About You" would make a great gift for college grads about to enter the job market or anyone in the midst of career change. Very worthwhile.

Do not let the size of this book fool you. It contains powerful teachings that could change your life. The author, Marcus Buckingham, has taken the lessons from his other books taken from thousands of interviews with successful people and condensed them in this book. The book comes with a 22 minute DVD and a "Rememo pad". The main lesson of the book is that to be successful you must focus on your strengths. Activities and work that make you feel stronger and engaged or "in the zone" are strengths. Things that make you feel bored or drained are weaknesses. (Even if you are good at them). They key to success is to become even stronger in the areas that you already have an advantage in. You can recreate your job by spending more and more time doing things that you are strong at until your weak points do not even matter. You can see examples of this in Shaqille O'Neal, he is one of the greatest basketball centers of all time but terrible at free throws. How much does that even matter? Tiger Woods is one of the top golfers of all time but is 83rd on the PGA tour for shooting out of sand traps. His key to success is having the best swing in golf so he is rarely in sand traps. The book takes you through exercises so you can identify your own strengths and weaknesses. Also as you go through your week you can document times that make you feel strong or weak in your Rememo pad provided. I like this book because it takes a complicated subject and makes it simple. Buy the book, it did not let me down, it truly helped me learn more about myself.