Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed

The strongest part of the book may well be Tracy's own story. Born in Canada in 1944 into a family that kept saying 'we can't afford it', the author openly describes himself as a 'loser' of a child: suspended from school, failing six of seven courses in his final year, his first job washing dishes in a small hotel. He worked in sawmills, on logging crews and digging wells, and at 23 was still a farm labourer sleeping on the hay in a barn. These candid admissions lend some credibility to the promises that follow: the author speaks not as someone who sat down and invented a theory but as someone who walked the road.

In the introduction Tracy presents the system's central metaphor: life is like a combination lock, only with more numbers. Turn the right numbers in the right sequence and the lock opens — do what others did to succeed and you will get the same results. The author describes reading for more than twenty thousand hours over twenty-five years, launching «The Inner Game of Success» seminar in 1981, which later became the Phoenix Seminar. This part also reads a little like an advertisement: the book repeatedly refers to the 'miraculous' results of seminar graduates.

At the heart of the first chapter are the 'seven ingredients of success': peace of mind, health and energy, loving relationships, financial freedom, worthy goals and ideals, self-knowledge and self-awareness, and personal fulfilment. Tracy calls peace of mind 'the highest human good' and puts forward an interesting idea: happiness is our natural state; rather than earning it, we must remove negative emotions such as fear, anger, doubt and guilt. He also admits that, because of his religious upbringing, aiming at his own happiness long seemed 'selfish' to him.

The chapter is full of practical tools: 'zero-based thinking' (if you could start over in any situation, what would you do differently?), 'mountaintop thinking' (imagine your ideal life in detail) and a simple test of relationship quality — how much two people laugh together. In the financial section he says that 'it is not money that lies at the root of all evil; it is lack of money', and claims that 80 percent of the population are preoccupied with money problems. No source is given for such figures — a general weakness of the book.

At the end of the chapter Tracy previews the next eleven, and here some of the book's problems surface: chapter 6 promises a 'superconscious mind' that lets you accomplish 'virtually any goal', and chapter 12 the 'secret of the ages'. Such language reminds today's reader of books like «The Secret». A small detail stands out too: in one seminar participant's story the marathon distance is given as 26.4 miles (it is actually 26.2) — a minor indicator of the book's attitude to facts.

Even so, the exercise that closes the first chapter — 'decide what's right for you before you decide what's possible' — is genuinely useful. The book is written in simple, clear English and reads easily. For lovers of the motivational genre this is Tracy's most comprehensive and foundational work; for sceptical readers the smartest approach is to take the practical exercises and set the promises aside.

• Autobiographical narrative combined with a practical system
• Application exercises at the end of every chapter
• Many examples and anecdotes from seminar participants
• Simple, clear language and short paragraphs