Jolt: Shake Up Your Thinking and Upgrade Your Impact for Extraordinary Success

by Richard Tyler

Jolt! Provides the burst of fresh thinking needed to upgrade yourself from ordinary to extraordinary

Are your habits and limiting beliefs holding you back in your professional and personal life? Are you stuck stagnating in your comfort zone? What you need is a jolt. Organizations are no longer looking for people who turn up and do a good job; they are looking for the extraordinary. So it’s time to get motivated, be positive and make exceptional things happen. Jolt will help you recognize that in many situations it’s not a lack of skill that’s holding you back but your own limiting beliefs and habitual thinking. Deep within all of us lies an inner spark to be unleashed, if only we can find the way to shape our thinking, carve out the right action, and rock the world. Jolt will show you how

• Shake up your thinking, embrace the new and unleash the extraordinary version of yourself
• Help make a sustainable gear change
• Recognize the habits and limiting beliefs holding you back
• Test out new ways of thinking and doing things

Genres: Personal Development, Psychology, Business

192 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 2015

Reviews

[Andrea James]

I originally picked up this book because I was helping to MC an event at which the author was speaking (yes I do live up to the Singaporean stereotype of being a geeky swot). So I'd bought the book simply to get a sense of the author and hadn't even considered what value the book might have for me personally. In fact, I had added trepidation as I'd recently come across a number of sub-par books by public speakers.

As I read my way through the book I was pleasantly surprised to find that behind the book's straightforward language and the author's personal stories lay a couple of messages that served the book's title; these messages jolted me. Yes, I had previously heard these concepts but perhaps it's the author's face-slapping clarity that made my head go "doh!".

I particularly liked what the author calls his "Performance Map" because through the examples given it became apparent to me what I could do to fix the blocks that were wonky in my own performance map.

The author clearly has a lot of hands-on experience in transforming people's thinking and this is a practical book that feels a little like a very helpful DIY version of his workshop. And the book has definitely achieved its purpose of pushing me to leap (and hopefully soar).

[Julian Walker]

A refreshing, open, and honest self help book is rare to find - but here it is.

Packed with thoughts, tips, and exercises, the author takes you though multiple steps (or jolts) to help you be extraordinary, whilst reminding you there is no quick fix, and that the real journey is within each of us.

Quite apart from having had a perhaps less than orthodox approach to life, his experiences and approach are inspiringly different - and this book is like splashing your face with cold water ... just the jolt we all need.

Easy to read, no boring jargon or rhetoric - cracking stuff.

[Maya Panika]

Richard Tyler was once a performer in musical theatre and that shows in the writing style, which tends to the theatrical quite a lot of the time (he uses lots of exclamation marks!). Occasionally it veers off the stylistic deep end and reads as though Alan Carr dictated it - which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, certainly not a problem as such, it made for a refreshing change from the usual earnest, self-helpy guru-style – it’s just something to be aware of. The content is, overall, very good, very anecdotal (hence memorable). Not all of it applied to me and my life, but much of it did and while I wouldn’t say I got too much of a jolt out of it – there’s nothing much here I haven’t already heard/read before – it did make me THINK, which is, after all, the point.
The main advantage ‘Jolt’ has over other self-help books (I’m a fan of Paul McKenna myself) is that it is much more easily readable and digestible. There’s a freshness and clarity to the way the author delivers his message. Advice and philosophy are broken down into small pieces, each with a catchy codeword to help you remember. I liked the clean layout and the way points come one on another, repeating without repetition, building to each ‘jolt’ point, with a list of questions designed to make you think about what you’re reading and apply it to your own situation and circumstances. As a non-workplace worker, I found the performance-oriented chapters most interesting: chapters where you’ll find concepts like, ‘veer from the routine and get wonky’, and ‘become the chief of possibility’ - -entertaining and genuinely instructive; there are great ideas here. I found the chapter, ‘make your audience matter’, very inspirational.
In short, this is not a truly groundbreaking work but it’s a very good addition to the canon and certainly very well worth a read; especially useful if you’re in an office environment or running a small business and in need of some real fresh thinking.

[Jan Bos]

Some bits of Richard Tyler's book appealed to me, but overall it failed to give me the jolt. Maybe this was due to overlap with other authors I've recently read, for example Fred Kofman.

Favourite quote:

Getting wonky is NOT about being wacky for the sake of it. It is about you pushing at the edges to stand out in a world that is flooded with magnolia!

[Shawn]

I took my time with this picking up here and there. Good business and marketing book.