Revved! by Harry Paul and Ross Reck

Paul, Harry, and Ross Reck.  Revved!  New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Revved! is a business parable.  Harry Paul and Ross Reck tell the story of Katie, a woman hurt by personal betrayal whose career suffers from her attempts to protect herself for additional injury.  She turns things around with the help and advice of an old friend and a radio psychologist.

In the context of a simple story, Paul and Reck describe a system intended motivate employees to perform at a new level, get engaged in their work and go above and beyond what is required in their job description.  It makes the supervisors and managers feel good, too.

The secret to getting the best out of people is this: care about them.  Honestly, demonstrably care.  People care about the people who care about them.  The care a supervisor shows for her employees will be reflected back in enthusiasm, performance, improvements and ideas.

The authors offer a note of warning.  Real caring can’t be faked.  If you jerk people around, it will backfire.

Paul and Reck offer a way to mitigate this potential problem.  Real caring can’t be faked.  Katie doesn’t want to risk getting hurt again by opening herself to genuine caring for others, so her counselors tell her to go through the motions even if she doesn’t really mean it.  It is a trick to get over the impediment of her self-preservation.  After a few weeks, she finds she genuinely cares for her employees.  The authors agree with William James that emotions follow actions, and if you act as if you care for someone, you soon will.

By stages, Katie is introduced to the few simple steps to demonstrate caring for others in the workplace.  The intent is to help her build new habits in manageable pieces and to prevent too much shock from her embattled and suspicious employees.

The authors give their system a name, Looking Out for Number Two.  Each step is named as well: Winning Them Over, Blowing Them Away, and Keeping Them Revved.  In spite of the fancy marketing language, program is straightforward.   The authors summarize it in three pages at the end of the book, and that could be shorter.  The titles are big, but the actions are small.

As you might expect, Katie sees amazing results in just two months.  Katie is a fictional character.  Real life might proceed a little slower an more messily.

Even so, the advice presented is sound.  It has the advantage of being simple and actionable.  It’s not about trying to stir up a feeling of caring.  It’s about specific actions that show caring in practical, meaningful ways, knowing that the response in our emotions and in others will come naturally.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Developing the Leader Within by John C. Maxwell
Winning with People by John C. Maxwell

Vital Friends by Tom Rath

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Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

Ben-Shahar, Tal. Happier: Learn the Secrets of Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007.

Happier is based on a popular class Dr. Ben-Shahar teaches at Harvard University. The author refers to happiness as the ultimate currency, and in that light, it is not surprising that so many people are seeking more of it.

Ben-Shahar frames happiness as a balance of present and future benefits. Many people sacrifice present pleasure for hopes of a more desirable future; they’re rat-racers. Hedonists seek momentary pleasures without regard for the future. Those who’ve given up on finding happiness in both the present and future are nihilists. Happiness is found in a life that has future benefits that is enjoyable along the way.

Happiness is about more that just pleasure, which is hollow by itself. Happy people lead lives they find meaningful. In a sense, a meaningful life provides the ultimate future benefit. Pairing meaning with enjoyment along the way, present pleasure, leads to happiness. This doesn’t lead to a life free of negative emotions or perpetual positivity; Ben-Shahar thinks that is unrealistic and probably unfulfilling and throughout the book reminds readers of the balanced definition of happiness.

The middle section of the book tackles some of the practical matters of happiness in education, work and relationships. School is all about present sacrifice for future payoff. That mindset can send people in to careers they find to be meaningless drudgery. The same attitudes can come into relationships. Happiness in the real world sometimes means setting aside the expectations of others and society and acting on what you personally find meaningful and pleasurable. Not everyone has the luxury of putting off all obligations and doing their own thing, but nearly everyone can do something to introduce more happiness into their lives.



In closing, Ben-Shahar offers a number of “meditations.” These chapters offer exercises, of both practice and thought, for building happiness on our lives.

Superimmunity by Paul Pearsall

Psychologist Paul Pearsall was an early proponent of current notions of mind-body medicine. For Pearsall, it was important to heal a person’s life even if it wasn’t possible to cure their disease. Often a disease can be the body’s way of getting a person’s attention, and letting him know a change is needed. People who make those changes can experience healing, sometimes in the form of a cure and sometime as health and happiness in the midst of disease. Pearsall described some of his ideas in Superimmunity.

In this book, Pearsall draws from Eastern medicine an organizing theme: hot and cold thinking. Hot thinkers are fast, impatient, black-or-white thinkers. They can be judgmental and prone to exaggeration, overreaction and isolation. Cold thinkers overreact to trivial things and underreact to important things. They are prone to passivity and feeling of inadequacy. They are isolated in their own way, and though often out of touch with their emotions, they often despair.

The body responds to these thinking styles. Hot reactors are always on the attack, and their immune systems attack their bodies. Heart disease is associated with hot people. Cold reactors are inactive, so their bodies may respond with excessive activity, particularly cell growth (i.e. cancer).

Pearsall does not eschew medicine. If you are facing a serious illness, the likes of heart disease or cancer, you need a lot of medical help. However, you also need to enlist the aid of your own immune system, which may be doing something counterproductive if it is very active at all. You’re immune system is closely linked to your brain, more so that was commonly thought when Pearsall was writing in the 1980s, so getting the best immune response calls for leaving hot or cold thinking for something more balanced.

“Until recently, we have behaved as if the immune system were somehow separate from us, doing its job secretly, automatically, beyond our control…. Research now tells us that our immune system functions within a supersystem of mind and body,” Paul Pearsall, Superimmunity

Superimmunity includes many tests to help you identify if you tend to be a hot or cold thinker (you can be both). From there, Pearsall offers strategies for cooling off or warming up your thinking as needed. This can mean observing your body, listening to your disease and getting in touch with your emotions in ways that can be unfamiliar to one in the throes of hot or cold reaction. This self-evaluation that reveals the underlying dysfunction, and your own exploration and imagination may uncover your path to healing.

Pearsall does not suggest that changing your thinking will always lead to a cure, though sometimes it might. Disease and mortality are part of being a human. However, you can truly live while you are alive, and in this since experience healing. Life is more than surviving, eating, drinking and breathing. It is important to live as fully as you can.

Paul Pearsall also wrote

The Beethoven Factor

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need

Toxic Success

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Bnson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Timeless Healing by Herbert Benson with Marg Stark

Pearsall, Paul. Superimmunity: Master Your Emotions & Improve Your Health. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987.