Soar By T.D Jakes Book Review — Elijah Monday
“When you picked up this book, chances are good that you had heard of me before you saw my name on the cover…Whatever it may have been, you likely had certain associations and preconceived notions of who T. D. Jakes is and what he’s all about.”
TD Jakes
Though these words come in the penultimate chapter of the book, and seemingly have nothing to do with ‘soaring’, they describe my expectations going in to this reading experience perfectly. As a long time fan of the author’s televised broadcasts, I assumed I knew what I was in for when I picked Soar for my introduction to the book club: Another motivational book I could easily fit into my already fit-to-burst schedule in time to review.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Starting with the excellent metaphor of flight for success, Jakes takes you on a journey of self discovery filled with practical and immediately applicable wisdom for taking your business, and your life in essence, from dreams to reality. After engaging the reader by his masterful diction and potent examples, witty anecdotes and personal accounts, he then proceeds to lay out a simple flight plan for the trip to come, and by the end of the book, you realize you’ve completely reevaluated the improbability or even impossibility of creating the kind of success most of us only fantasize about.
Using the eponymous metaphor, he walks us through a robust process, subtly confronting widely held, self-defeating mindsets that have crippled most of us due to experiences of failure, either in our lives or of those around us. Every point on the journey is driven home in almost indisputable terms with verifiable evidence to back it up, yet the book manages to do so in a way that doesn’t condemn or berate the reader for previously held erroneous beliefs or poor choices of the past. Instead, we’re encouraged to dream again, with the certainty that success is attainable for each one of us, whether you’re a baby boomer or millennial, faithful or irreligious, or any of the many other stratification we use to define ourselves.
The tools and advice are top-notch as well, with his marriage of the timeless principles of business success to the realities of the current internet-connected world we live in. The section on E-commerce was particularly revelationary for me, as a millennial that already feels jaded by the powerful technologies that have become common place in these times.
From inception of the dream to the maintenance and growth of its eventual manifestation, Soar has the hopeful entrepreneur of the 21st century covered. It’s a heck of a literary experience, and somewhere along the way, Jakes manages to fit in a first class business education and tons of resources that anyone with the passion and will can access regardless of their current circumstances.
I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to make their lives match the visions of success hidden in their hearts.
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