LOOKING FOR THE “RIGHT” BOOK TITLE

By Bill Cottringer

Coming up for a Book title is a real test to see if you know what you are talking about with what you are saying in your book. And you are trying to capture the essence of over 100,000 words with three or four words, for maximum clarity and impact. And of course, the title you end up liking best, may change the whole direction and flavor of what you have already written, requiring some serious re-writing. It is a complex mess pushing out this mother of ideas.

I am struggling with the creative process to come up with a compelling title of what I think is my best shot for a best-seller. I have this central belief that all personal, professional and spiritual development strategies, ideas and methods are working together to help people understand and overcome common basic mistakes we all make in our journeys.

This humbling process helps our minds to converge on a single-mindedness that sees through the world of opposites and extremes (this and that), and ends up influencing us to lean more towards a true r and more positive perspective of the realities we are part of now (even seeing a little bit of good in the absolute worst of situations), so that we can sort out the few things that need fixing from the many that just need to be accepted or dismissed. This single-mindedness, which is a lifelong struggle to get in better alignment with God, is what takes us from where we are to where we want to be, so that we can help others close that gap too.

Here are the main points of the material that will go into the book, to help give you some ideas to work with in evaluating the proposed titles/subtitles or invent something new. The main choice will involved being direct or indirect in the packaging.

1. The success issue is too huge to ignore at this point in the evolution of our consciousness and self-development journeys. Failure and mistakes and the difficulty of getting past these negative things are so widespread, that a true success formula that understands what success is really all about and helps us all get more of it, is a central need in our lives. The bookstore bookshelves are overflowing with this success stuff and people are buying it all big-time. It is unavoidable to not think about the urgency and importance of becoming more successful, based on considering others people’s measurement of success and how we choose to define it for ourselves or a combination of the two. It is basically what life is all about: Finding out how to be more successful to get more of whatever you have decided you want—wealth, health, meaning, wholeness, peace of mind, happiness, satisfying accomplishments, recognition, contentment, a sense of making a difference, the certainty of making the most of what you were given, being smarter, serving better, having more security, or whatever. Success seems to be circular—it is what you do to get what you have.

2. Progress at success in anything involves the resolve to see and understand abstract ideas with enormous consequences, and then apply these abstract ideas in concrete, practical ways in life to get things done. Here is an example: Success all starts with how you define it—how will you know you are being successful? If you let others define it for you, that will be one thing; if you determine what it is for yourself, that will another; and if you mix these two inputs, that will result in something else altogether. And the definition you end up with will be related to how well you close the gap between where you are and where you want to be. And how well you know the intimate details of this success thing, will determine what you do to get it and how much of it you get.

3. Life seems to happen in a strange order. We get the tests first before the lessons and we fail before we succeed. But then again we choose to approach things in life in the wrong order. We try to change other people before we change ourselves first, we try to change a whole company or school before we learn to fit in first, we seek to be understood and accepted before we understand and accept others first, and we try to run before we learn how to walk. But further down the road we eventually see that we have to fall prey to this wrong order thing first to get to a better viewpoint ahead, and that place always turns out to be a better one for us in the long run. In this sense, everything we are doing is moving us in this better direction, sooner or later. And this is even true when we try to swim upstream against the current like a salmon and do not like where we are one bit.

4. There are seven (7) tough tests in life, in which your answers help define the level of success you master in closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be. These tests are: (a) dealing with the five basic questions that won’t go away (Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? How do I know if I am doing it right, What’s in it for me? Where do I go for help?) (b) developing your signature self by making progress in the six main dimensions of life (physical, intellectual, social, emotional, vocational and spiritual) (c) Learning to communicate, build relationships and confront conflict and getting the right order of things (d) finding and going through the three doors to success (smart thinking, social skills, and focused determination), (e) learning to get out of your own way (controlling the controllables and letting go of the rest), and (f) applying these lessons to solve the four main problems in life—unconditional love, forgiveness, commitment and money management—for our common pot of gold in the land of plenty, which turns out to be the ultimate definition of success, as inner peace.

5. Progress at being successful doesn’t have to involve a major make-over. In fact you are probably making more progress at being successful than you imagine, because of the human nature baggage we all carry of impatience and immediate need gratification, which keep us from seeing what is happening. Sometimes major gains can come from important insights. For example how you decide to define “success” will have a lot to do with how much or how little of it you have in your own eyes and the eyes of others. Or, when you start noticing the connection between what you think and expect and what you get, you become more aware of your power. For example, in seeing the positive value of negative situations or people and how your thoughts may perpetuate the negativity, you begin to have more power to repair the important aspects of the few realities that need fixing, which you have the talents to fix. Of course you have to develop these talents to be able to use them effectively with competence and confidence.

6. The bottom line to life is this: You can get what you want once you discover the secret way life operates. This secret is made up of (a) The Yang and Yin Opposites, the meaning this very basic reality has to you and how your reconcile this and that to get to the other side, and (b) The law of attraction—positive energy attracts positive realities and negative energies attract negative realities. The real challenge to live this truth is in becoming more aware of how you may not be asking for the right thing in the right way at the right time. And in a sense, timing in anything is everything, as is the order in which we approach things. Of central importance is to see that things are moving along according to plan. When you don’t see that and try to do something about it, you don’t succeed. That is because you are not seeing something that needs to be seen, just because when you do eventually see it, it will be more recognizable in comparison—just like your not knowing daylight without the experience of darkness.

Directions: Place an (X) in any of these book titles that speak to you, in capturing the essence of what the book is saying. Or feel free to invent you own recommendation from what I have said here. I will certainly give credit for a real contribution!

_____ SEEING THROUGH THIS & THAT: The Single-Minded Path to Inner Peace

_____ THE SUCCESS TEST: Making the Most of Your Default Settings

_____ SUCCESS EXPRESS: Mixing What You Get with What You Have

______ MERGING THE TERRIBLE TWINS WITHIN: Personal Team-Building Plan for Maximum Success.

_____ THE MYTH OF SUCCESS: Finding Your Default Genius Anyway

_____ FLIP-FLOP SUCCESS: Doing things in their Right order

_____ FEET ON GROUND, EYES ON FEET: Commonsense Success Strategies

_____ THE COMMON HUMAN MISTAKE: Realism

_____ SUCCESS BY DEFAULT: Remembering What You Know & Using It Better

_____ THE ART OF REALITY REPAIR: Giving & Getting for Results

_____ GIVING & GETTING: The Merging of You & Life Into a Better You

_____ WHY THE TESTS FIRST, THEN THE LESSONS? You Wouldn’t Want it Any Other way!

_____ THE STRANGE ORDER OF LIFE: Who’s doing the flip-flopping?

_____ SELF MANAGEMENT: Building Success from Inside-out

_____ SMART SUCCESS: Do Less & Get More

_____ THREADING LIFE’S NEEDLE WITH YOUR ROPE: Finding the 5% Truth
Hidden in the 95% chaos.

_____ WHY IS THE SKY IS BLUE? I’ll Tell You

_____ EXTRAORDINARY SUCCESS BY ORDINARY MEANS: Common Sense strategies for Getting More by Doing Less

_____ TRYING TO FLY WHEN YOUR FEET ARE STUCK IN CEMENT: The Art of Getting Unstuck

_____ MIXING YANG AND YIN: Doubling Your Half of the Big Picture

_____ SEVEN TOUGH TESTS: Finding & Living Your Answers