Get the Life you want by Richard Bandler - Book Review

Richard Bandler has written some excellent books. Using your Brain for a Change, Transformations, Persuasion Engineering and Time for a Change should be in everyone's NLP Library, but his more recent work has been a little more patchy. I have a somewhat mixed view of 'Get the Life you Want'.

The first few chapters give a good overview of submodalities and timelines - basic NLP skills that will be used for many of the exercises spread throughout the book. The rest of the book covers how to deal with various issues such as grief, motivation, and decision making.

As usual Richards writing is a joy to read as he weaves his magic discussing each issue before giving an NLP exercise to help resolve the issue. No one writes in as motivational a style as Richard Bandler does, and if you've ever been to one of his training, then reading his books is as if he's in the room.

The problem I have with this book is the exercises - several of them are described in a manner that is far too vague, and many of them (especially towards the back of the book) seem to bare little relation to NLP and seem more like the kind of self-help exercise you could read in any number of books.

For someone with prior NLP experience, there is little to learn here. Some of the exercises may give an NLP Practitioner a new approach, and as mentioned above, the actual text is a joy, but otherwise there is little new NLP.

It's as if Richard saw the success the Paul McKenna was having with his 'I can make you ...' series of books and decided that he wanted a piece of the action. The books style and cover of 'Get the Life you Want' are similar to Paul's books, and it even has a CD as Paul's books do, but this is a real let down. The CD was not developed to go with the book, and is in fact the first CD from the Personal Enhancement series as far as I can tell. And while the CD is still excellent it seems really lazy and not entirely honest to package it with the book with no mention that it has been released before. Also it isn't at all clear what the CD is designed to achieve.

While I may have been very critical of 'Get the Life you Want', I am not suggesting that this is a book without virtue. Richard Bandler is still miles ahead of the competition and people new to NLP or people looking for help with any of the issues the book covers will find a lot of value in this book, its just that much of the material is available elsewhere and nothing seems particularly new.

'Get the Life you Want' is about learning a few NLP techniques and applying them to specific issues. If you're looking to learn about the complex subject that is NLP rather than solve a specific issue then Richards other recent book 'Richard Bandler's Guide to Transformations' is a better bet, and I'll be reviewing it soon.