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Saturday, August 18, 2012

A book review, which came out of no where, but I'm glad it did!


I was a little surprised when I was contacted regarding Mark Victor Hansen’s new program for entrepreneurial youth which is based on his book “The Richest Kids in America.” As a writer of Spiritually Aware Parenting I wondered how it would fit into this blog. The title suggested that it was about money and nothing but money. Not that money is a bad thing. The concept that spirituality and poverty should go together ought to be way, WAY out of date. Perhaps somewhere in my subconscious the idea of money still has a bad name.
That needs to be fixed!
So for that reason and for my new pledge to say Yes to opportunities that come my way rather than judging them too soon, I agreed to read the book and conduct an email interview with Mark to further understand the program. The interview is currently in progress, so stay tuned.
However once I read the book, I wrote and said I would like to review it as well. It fit well with the blog, my daughter loved it and quite honestly I found it inspiring as well.

Mark Victor Hansen is the co-creator of The Chicken Soup for the Soul series which has sold millions all over the world. In his book for kids, he combines the ideas of wealth with universal truths, and at the same time helps build up a child’s sense of self and wellbeing: it’s a back door spiritual pick me up.

His book Richest Kids in America starts off with an introduction to the universal concepts of conscious living. Within his first few chapters Mark empowers children to listen to their inner voices, to learn how to hear it, trust it and go with it, even in every day issues. He offers exercises to build self-esteem such as making lists of things the reader does well, rather than only focusing on the self-defeating criticism that so often bombard all of our minds. Mark successfully promotes following one’s bliss, finding passion and doing what you love as that is a statement of Who We Are. He writes about the value of the imagination and how it truly is a tool for creation of our realities and offers examples as proof of how anything is possible with a bit of mind focus. What’s amazing is, as a parent who for years has put “spiritual” books in front of my children and has started to wonder if it was getting the opposite result that I wished (read eye rolling) I got to offer this book to my children as a different avenue. While they were excited to read a book that they thought was about kids their age who had found ways to make a fortune, I was hiding my excitement that they were reading empowering literature, which would build up their trust in their own inner self.
The book relays numerous stories, real life accounts of children and teens from the ages of 9-23 who have found that inner spark, focused on it, trusted it and made the plunge, resulting in becoming incredibly wealthy in a short period of time.
The focus of this book isn’t about get rich quick schemes. These kids have worked with focus and persistence, learning to stay true to their vision and themselves. This book is a great tool to inspire our young people to trust their own unique talents and individual journeys. There is a theme of taking a problem and spinning it on its head so it launches itself to being about opportunity. My daughter did point out that a lot of the children/teens were overcoming huge problems, such as cancer, which she couldn’t necessarily relate to, however she was inspired by the passion each entrepreneur showed in their work. In a time when children and teenagers are given a hard time, in the media especially, for complaining about the small things, or just sitting around, I find Mark’s book a breath of fresh air, enabling teens to see themselves in a better light. It is easy to believe other people’s opinions about ourselves, and it’s lovely to see a book that is an advocate for the younger people of the world to not be bothered about age or experience, but to follow their hearts and intuition.
The one thing that throws me off, and perhaps still does, is the title for I find it implies its only about the pursuit of cash and how to become rich, when really the book covers so much more. As a parent I don't know if the title really hits the heart of the book, but saying that, it could be a smart thing, because as a teen, often we would pick up a book about making cash way before one promoting inner peace. Like I said before, its nice to see a book cover spirituality undercover, when kids of spiritually aware parents could be fed up of hearing universal truths full out.

I’m sure that when our interview is completed Mark will be able to fill us in on the details of his program based on the book, or you can visit The Richest Kids Academy at www.gorichkids.com.

His book Richest Kids in America is available through Amazon.com.




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