You Can Make It Happen: A Nine Step Plan for Success

A motivational guide on how to overcome the adversities of life explains how to build self-esteem, surmount problems, and achieve personal success by determining who we are, creating a vision for ourselves, and making a commitment to realize that vision

A successful businessman, community activist, and Oprah Winfrey's boyfriend, Graham has written a plan for all who want to improve their lives. His nine-step plan involves increasing self-awareness, creating a vision, developing a plan, understanding and following personal values, taking risks, managing responses to those risks, building a support team, making wise decisions, and forming a total commitment. Although his plan may be most applicable to people focusing on business and career goals, Graham notes that this plan can also be applied to other aspects of life. In fact, he emphasizes that all aspects of one's life must be healthy and looked after for any to flourish. As in most self-help books, much of the text is repetitive. However, Graham's holistic approach is unique, and his examples?his own and those of many other African Americans?are inspiring. Recommended.
-?Elizabeth Caulfield Felt, Washington State Univ. Lib., Pullman
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Stedman Graham is best known for being Oprah Winfrey's boyfriend. Even he knows that, and it bugged him for a long time. But Graham, a businessman and civic leader, got beyond that designation just as he got beyond the difficult times in his life. Born into a working-class minority family and teased about the mental difficulties of his two younger brothers, Graham hoped to be an NBA star but never made it quite that far in professional sports. But when the going got rough . . . well, you know the rest. His secret, revealed here in detail, is a nine-step plan for success whose precepts are familiar from the works of numerous other motivational authors. Graham is articulate, and his book will provoke readers of all backgrounds to take a look at their own lives and perhaps adapt the author's blueprint for success. With so many personal anecdotes, the book functions as autobiography as well as motivational guide. And yes, Oprah makes a few appearances here but only when absolutely necessary. Ilene Cooper