Release Your Brilliance: The 4 Steps to Transforming Your Life and Revealing Your Genius to the World
By Simon T. Bailey

Release Your Brilliance: The 4 Steps to Transforming Your Life and Revealing Your Genius to the World

How disappointing. I was all set to release my brilliance and reveal my genius to the world and then I actually read the book.

This is the kind of book that drives me crazy. Sometimes it seems that an author wants or needs to write a book. So they come up with one concept and then fit their entire philosophy into that framework.

This book uses diamond metaphors.

The front cover flap says, "Each of us is born brilliant. Then we spend the rest of our lives having our brilliance buried by people, circumstances, and experiences. Eventually, we forget that we ever had genius and special talents, and our brilliance is locked away in a vault deep within. So we settle for who we are, instead of striving for who we were meant to be."

The book tries to provide lessons from a life coach by using any and every connection to diamonds the author can think of - no matter how trite or obvious.

So we will be told that we are rough stones on the outside but a brilliant diamond waiting to get out on the inside. We are urged to be authentic - not a cubic zirconium but a genuine diamond. Puh-leeze!

At the end of each chapter are unoriginal snippets called A Gem for You. Here you will read generic sayings such as "Everything you need to be brilliant is already inside you" and "Action makes you stronger."

The author even professes to knows the answer to why we are here. It is to "complete your Universal Assignment."

There are unoriginal exercises throughout the book to "find your internal buzz" or "polish your diamond" for example.

And, of course, there are "Real Life Diamond stories" - case studies of people who have found their inner diamond and released its brilliance.

Maybe I'm jaded from all the books I read and maybe there are people who will be helped by this simplistic approach. But to me, the book needs a lot more polishing just to reach the cubic zirconium stage - let alone to be a precious gem.

What are you reading?  Let us know at dan@greatlakesgeek.com