Blast Off! The Surefire Success Plan to Launch Your Dreams into Reality [Book Review]
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A number of years ago, Allison Maslan sent me a copy of her book, Blast Off! The Surefire Success Plan to Launch Your Dreams into Reality. The blog where I reviewed it is no longer online, but it was such a good book I decided to post it again here.
Maslan’s book is based on the Blast Off! Coaching Program which she developed to help others achieve their goals, after turning her own life around, both personally and professionally.
This is a real time-saver, because you can choose to read only the chapters that pertain to your specific goals. I do, however, recommend reading the whole book when you have the time, because it’s full of nuggets that you may find helpful, even in areas of your life where you generally feel satisfied. Some are real eye-openers, some may be difficult to accept, and others are simply reminders of things we already know but aren’t putting into practice for one reason or another.
Here’s an excerpt from the chapter “Blast Off! to a Life of Passion and Meaning” :
Four Ways to Build the Back End of Passion
- Establish good nutrition. It’s easy to fall into fast food or snacking when you are so engrossed in your passion that you’re not taking the time to eat right.
- Eight hours of sleep each night. Sleep is one of the most healing, energizing medicines, and it is absolutely critical for a creative mind. Did you know that sleep deprivation is used as a brainwashing technique? Without sleep, you are living in survival mode, which is the opposite of a passionate life.
- Take a passion break once a week. Most of my creativity comes when I’m not working. When my mind is clear and I’m exploring or having fun, the ideas have room to appear. Turn off your phone. Shut down your computer. Go spend the day outdoors in nature, go to a movie, take a bike ride, or visit some friends. Talk about things other than your passion. (For a few minutes, anyway.)
- Get physical. Especially if your passion is of the intellectual persuasion, you must get into your body. If you’re living from the neck up, your body needs to be enlivened. Choose exercise that you can sustain by doing activities that you will enjoy, such as dance, running, swimming, biking or boxing. Mix it up! It’s more beneficial to incorporate more than one activity to stimulate various muscle groups in the body. You will also stimulate the serotonin in your brain for more creativity and mood enhancement. You will prevent fatigue and burnout as you stimulate your cardiovascular system, get your blood pumping, and your billions of cells moving. Ahhhhhhh.
Allison Maslan, Blast Off!
Do you know anyone who couldn’t benefit from taking this advice?
There are forms and worksheets included to help you explore your dreams, plan a roadmap toward your goals, and track your progress. There’s also an interesting Blast Off! Dream Career Questionnaire, designed to help spark ideas to help you tap into your passion to brainstorm ideas for your own dream career or business.
What I liked best about the book is that it doesn’t just tell you what to do. Instead, each chapter includes a series of practical exercises to help you identify the changes you want to implement and the steps you need to take to reach your ultimate goal. Furthermore, the exercises are unique for each chapter, and not just re-worded to suit the topic. A lot of people may resist doing the exercises because they require effort, but I’m a firm believer that the more you put into something, the more you’ll get out of it.
Readers can follow the program independently, with a partner, or with a Blast Off! Group. Guidance around forming a Blast Off! Group is provided in the book.
I recommend...
I always appreciate practical, actionable advice. Sounds like this book offers such advice in the exercises she includes with each chapter. Most of us have the right desires, it is knowing how to actually take a step forward where we tend to get stuck. Thanks for sharing!
Practical and actionable are so important – nobody wants to read a lot of theory when they have a problem to solve!
I’m the sort of person who loves to read self-help books, but rarely puts any (non-tech, non-productivity) advice into action. At worst, even if I don’t use the advice in a book, I’ll have that knowledge to share with others. So, although I’m never going to get eight (consecutive) hours of sleep, you’ve made this sound like an interesting and compelling book. Thank you for sharing it with us!
Now that you mention it, I rarely get eight consecutive hours of sleep either, though I’m an “early to bed, early to rise” kinda girl (not necessarily by choice, but when you get up early, you get tired early, and the cycle perpetuate itself).
What a great book review! I love the actionable items you shared and am guessing the rest of the book has even more along these lines. They seem doable. What strikes me is the idea that before you can ‘go for it,’ whatever your ‘it’ is, you need to secure the basics of sleep, nutrition, and exercise. Having the underlying support from within will give you the energy and motivation to pursue your passion. Of course, as we know, life rarely works this way. We often find ourselves in burnout mode while pursuing our goals and then realize that something is off.
Yes, every chapter has a list of actionable items like this. That’s what appealed to me most.
I suppose that no matter what the goal is, you need to “build the back end” as Maslan puts it. It’s almost like creating an infrastructure for your goal.
It sounds like a wonderful book.
We love to walk two miles or more each morning. It has helped my husband and I clear our heads since both of us work from home most of the time. Being physical has helped with my creativity as well. It has cleared my mind to get a better perspective of what I want to do next.
I know what a difference walking can make, especially when you work from home and otherwise might not get out and about for days on end. One of the main reasons we got our dog was to force us to take regular walks! Even when I don’t feel like it, a change of scenery, fresh air and movement have a huge impact on my physical and emotional well-being.