A Fair Trade Book
Title: The Resilient Power of Purpose
Author: Larry DiAngi
Author's web site: https://purposewithapassion.com/
Date: 1998
Publisher: Larry DiAngi Productions
ISBN: none
Length: 105 pages with a few blank pages for readers' notes
Quote: "You were not born to live on a lower level, but to move continuously to higher levels."
Yes, this is another motivational book for business-oriented readers. How well do the ideas presented here work? Well, they seem still to be working for Larry DiAngi; his business site's still up and running.
How well do they work for other people? Well...I've been living with a solid sense of purpose for more than fifty years now. I am who I am, and I enjoy almost every minute of it. Here I stand to testify that a life of integrity, dedicated to the Higher Good of All, is the only kind of life that's worth living. And, frankly, books like this one tick me off.
Because, does a life of integrity and dedication to the Higher Good mean business success and prosperity? Hah. One of my few regrets in life is that my life took place in different places, so most people have no idea how much success and how much failure it does mean. I was, Gentle Readers, a little hillbilly kid, the offspring of two lifelong "poor relations," who went to Washington, D.C., and became a Bright Young Thing. And developed a mysterious, disabling illness (from a mandatory, contaminated vaccination for a disease I'd already had), wasn't able to do a full-time job, so I just started my own little business on a $50 budget. (That wasn't completely illegal yet in the 1980's.) And the said business prospered for several years. I was a (successful) foster mother to a "problem child." Then I was a (successful) wife to a bankrupt cancer survivor. Only when he became ill again did I realize that, after ten years of fabulous frugal life, he'd quietly recovered what most people would call enough money to retire well on. And only because I respected his wish to leave our house and business to me, and the money to a distant relative of his that he'd legally adopted as a son, was I cheated out of all of it--even the business, which was mine--by his ex-wife, who was one of those nurses whose patients always die shortly after leaving assets to the nurse in a will, and her last two patients were young. And I've not been able to scrape up enough money to invest in anything with any hope of generating enough money to live on, since. So help me God. All I've been living on, the whole time I've been blogging, has been integrity of purpose.
What purpose is that? God knows, I don't. I've held the same moral and ethical standard high. Making a mockery of it, encouraging people to say "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? If you're so moral, why aren't you blessed?" So, I got tired of reading letters from rich people, asking me for money, while I was in fact starving. So, I started asking people for money. So, now you know I'm not rich and I've not been blessed with prosperity, so you've probably lost interest in me. So the only way this web site can possibly go from here, unless it receives funding NOW, is down. Fund it or lose it.
If this fundraising appeal doesn't work...I'm tired of scraping, tired of scrounging, tired of eating a meal or two and then going through the hunger-pangs business before I eat another one. I'm not young; my body is wearing out fast, and the word "resilient" as applied to human beings makes me queasy. You be resilient if you want to be resilient. I'd rather be with the people I've loved than be with anyone who blathers about people being resilient. I'm not the violent type, but nothing in the Bible or the Constitution says I have to eat. So, this week I ate; after this week, I'll eat again just as soon as I'm holding ten hundred-dollar bills in my hand. And then I'll resume blogging about what I'm doing with that money. And so on.
For obvious reasons, I have very mixed reactions to the whole "motivational" genre. Regular readers knew that. What can I tell you that's new, that's about this book as distinct from the works of Tony Robbins or Napoleon Hill? Well, for one thing, it's shorter than most of theirs. It contains fresh anecdotes from the life of Larry DiAngi. It contains relevant quotes from the Bible but does not confuse religious faith with business career motivation in the extremely annoying way that peaked in the 1980's; I give it many plus points for that.
It does contain some whoppers. Page 14 asserts that "if you give...some of your abundance away...more will be given to you." Hah. Apart from always shopping at charity stores, my husband and I gave away outright more than any American I know would believe was possible, in view of our incomes and expenses. Now, most of the time nobody even "gives" me the words "Thank you" when I hand them money. (In a small town, when the word gets around that you don't have money, the sort of Trash who spend much time in cashier or receptionist jobs feel free to expose their fundamental nastiness to you.)
So...The Resilient Power of Purpose is not a new book, not an antique book, and not an expensively produced book, and it's not recommended to anyone whose blood pressure is already high enough, but some people who've bought it do rate it high, according to Amazon. I physically own one copy, which I'll pass on, online, at the usual Fair Trade Book price of $5 for the book + $5 per package for shipping, including $1 to DiAngi or a charity of his choice. After that, prices can't be guaranteed.
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