The Charge by Brendon Burchard - Book Review

Posted by Absolutely on January 31st, 2022

This book is about high performance. It is not for the timid or those that lack ambition. It is certainly not for those who seek the easy, pain free, effortless way of life. This book is about how to chart a course of personal development that challenges you in the most profound and taxing ways in order to realize the most profound results.

Burchard starts out with this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: \\\\"We are always getting ready to live, but never living.\\\\" This sets the tenor of his thesis in this book. He challenges you to decline to accept mediocrity and to strive for the best you can be and the best you can achieve.

He divides the forces that lead to superior performance into \\\\"drives\\\\" which motivate and enable you to achieve the most. The book is then organized around those ten drives.

The first section addresses the five Baseline Drives. They include the drives for Control, Competence, Congruence, Caring and Connection. These drives influence the quality and the energy of your life. They help you meet your core biological needs. These drives are essential for meeting your basic needs and maintaining minimal security and performance. They are your foundation motivators.

Next he discusses the five Forward Drives which include the drives for Change, Challenge, Creative Expression, Contribution and Consciousness. These drives are for more than mere survival. They are the engines that push you to achieve your total potential.

In each chapter the author explores how the drive functions, how to use it in your life in the most effective ways and what it can help you accomplish. He uses illustrations from his client\\\\'s lives, his own life and other stories.

Unlike his first book, The Millionaire Messenger, which was more of an introduction to his work and a hook to draw people to his website, this book offers some substantive and weighty material. While you may well benefit from the classes and coaching services he offers to augment The Charge you could learn a great deal from the book alone and if you make it a point to implement what you learn it could be worth far more than what you pay for the book.

As with most success literature there is nothing completely novel here. Burchard has taken the classical principles of motivation and success and organized them along these unique lines. Burchard studies psychology and you can see psychological theory at work in the book.

Usefulness:

This book has the potential of being very useful to the person who reads it entirely and then consciously puts in place a plan to implement what is learned over time. As with most books in this genre simply reading it and putting it away will offer little benefit.

Readability/Writing Quality:

The book is well written and easy to follow. He includes exercises at the end of each chapter to allow you to implement his ideas.

Notes on Author:

Brendan Burchard is an internet information marketer and trainer. He mentors and he coaches. He founded the High Performance Academy and is a public speaker on high performance.