So presumably, you're not a business owner or a business manager. But you'd like to be one some day. If so, then this book will help you immensely. If not, then this book will still help you advance in your career, and by advance I mean that this book will help you get promotions and raises (or both). The reason for this is, within the pages of "Survive, Thrive or Dive" you will learn what is not taught in high school, trades school, or business school.

You will learn about the psychology and sociology of what makes people, act like people.

This is critically important and I'll tell you why.

People respond to the sociological conditioning of those around them. It's like the age old truism within the meaning of the children's story about the ugly duckling. Children's stories are often about other things.

If you read the rest of the links in this website, you'll find that "The Wizard of Oz" had a lot more meaning than you might have guessed the first time you watched it wearing pajamas with a bowl of popcorn in your family living room, but now I'm digressing, so let's get back on track.

The deeper meaning behind Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling" is all about sociological conditioning. It's a brilliant allegory, illustrating how people who were meant for great things, often suffer at the hands of others who abuse, ridicule and demoralize their victims into believing they'll never be anything other than mediocre (like the very people who abuse and victimize them). Things are no different now than they were in 1843 when Andersen wrote the story. If you're not familiar with this Danish classic, the storyline involves an orphaned baby bird, or "chick" if you like. As a chick, this little bird didn't know who it was, or what its potential was, because it had no one to train it up and mentor it into its God-given potential. This describes most of us. And deep down, most of us are wanting to know the answers to two questions:

Who are we?

And…

What are we truly capable of being?

If we're not prepared to do a little work to find the answers to these questions, but instead we let those around us, decide for us, who we're supposed to be and what we're supposed to do, then chances are pretty great we will settle for something far less that what our potential is. Just like Matt Damon's character "Will" in "Good Will Hunting" which was an excellent modern day parallel of this 19th century classic. Matt Damon's character is capable of far more than what his life currently is, but he doesn't know it. What he needs is someone to point the way, and to guide him in ways that will allow Will to break out of his box and become who he really is, and what he was meant to be. Will gets his life turned around because of the teaching and training of a psychologist (played fabulously I might add by Robin Williams, but now I'm digressing again).

In Hans Christian Andersen's story, this orphaned chick came to the conclusion that it must be a duck, and an "ugly" duckling at that, so it became depressed and discouraged with its life. It thought it was a duck, but that's only because when its mother died, it was "adopted" by a mother duck, so this little chick followed around the other "ducklings" and tried to act like a duck.

Except it wasn't a duck.

It was a swan. Trouble is, it didn't know that. So, in order to fit in with all the other ducklings that it hung around with, it tried to walk like a duck, fly like a duck, and quack like a duck. Which was a shame; because swans are incredibly majestic creatures and they are called to far higher purposes than waddling around and quacking like a duck. Psychologically speaking, most people you know are far more interested in acting like everyone else around them, rather than acting like who they really are. If this sounds confusing, hey, it's psychology. It's supposed to be confusing. If you want to get a better handle on why people act like those around them, rather than acting like themselves, then get a hold of my book "What's Your ROI?". It explains this very well, and it's written in a novel form with an engaging storyline that (from what readers have told me) is pretty captivating.

Back to psychology. The nutshell truism is, in our society, people try to fit in, and in order to do that, they will act like those around them. Forget the duck and swan story, let's say that the orphaned chick was an eagle, but it got adopted by a family of turkeys. So the eagle starts acting like a turkey, because that's what all the other chicks are doing. Except it's an eagle.

It's pretty hard to catch the highest upward drifts so you can fly high with the rest of the eagles, when you're surrounded by a bunch of flightless turkeys. Catch my "drift"?

If you feel that you're more of an eagle than a turkey, then you have to learn how to fly with the eagles. If you don't know how to do that, then you'll need a mentor, and you'll need to find someone to learn from like Robin William's character Dr. Sean Maguire. That's what you're going to learn from reading (and applying) what is taught in the pages of "Survive, Thrive or Dive". And once you learn these things (and apply them) then someone is going these things (and apply them) then someone is going to take notice, and they're going to say:

"Hey, I thought this guy acted like all the other turkeys, but he's starting to look more like an eagle!"

When that happens, then the other eagles are going to take you under their wing, because eagles are always looking for other eagles, it's just that most of the time they're surrounded by turkeys.

And that's when you'll begin to advance in your career.