Andy Cope - The Art of Being Brilliant: Transform Your Life by Doing What Works For You

Irreverent, inspiring and engaging. Humour and wisdom drip from every page. If youre a boring academic look away now. The rest of you read on. You wont be disappointed. Promise.

Paul McGee

Practical insights on how to make positive thinking work for you. And without any of the pastel-coloured, muzak-themed humourless preachy-ness that so often makes you give up on this useful and important topic.

Michael Bungay Stanier, author of Do More Great Work

The Brilliant philosophy is simple, funny, profound and it gets results. The two Andys wonderful down-to-earth book appeals to my no nonsense northern outlook with great practical ideas you can immediately apply both at home and work.

Steve McDermott, European motivational speaker of the year and best-selling author of How To Be a Complete and Utter Failure In Life, Work and Everything

Fun & thought provoking. Love it!

Andy Gilbert, author and creator of the Go MAD Thinking System

Lifes too short folks. We all need a reminder that positive attitudes get positive results so follow the simple advice, be your best self and stand tall.

Diana Higman, Medallist at World Transplant Games

The Art of Being Brilliant has been a major contributing factor to our successes in maximising happiness and creating our world beating team. Deciding to be BRILLIANT can and will change your life for the better!

Rick Turner, Businessman, entrepreneur and theme park owner, www.thebigsheep.co.uk

If youre informationed out (like me) and just want a result...congratulations...here it is.

Richard Wilkins, UK Minister of Inspiration, www.theministryofinspiration.com

Chin up, chin up. Everyone loves a happy face. Wear it. Have it. Itll brighten the darkest place. Twinkle. Sparkle. Let a little sunshine in. Youll be on the right side looking on the bright side. Up with your chinny-chin-chin.

E. B. White, Charlottes Web, 1952

2012 Andy Cope and Andy Whittaker

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Foreword

Have you ever achieved something in your life that you are very proud of, and then someone else comes along and does it better, like being trumped at cards?

Well, there I was, thinking I had achieved that elusive magic element in The Naked Leader books simplicity. Simplicity in stripping down to the essentials, and then stripping them down even further, until you end up with pure common sense, which in this age of information overwhelm is, sadly, not so common.

Then along came Andy Copes first book, Being Brilliant. Full of the blindingly obvious, stuff we can make happen in our personal as well as business lives, and with bags of humour thrown in.

And, to add insult to injury, he even had the bare-faced cheek to ask me for an endorsement! How was I supposed to endorse a book that does what I set out to do, but so much better?

Still, I wrote an endorsement, consoled myself that this was a one off, a true one book wonder, and relaxed.

Then one day THUMP a large envelope hit the mat. And, guess what? It was now two Andys with this book The Art of Being Brilliant. And this time they didnt just want an endorsement, they wanted me to write a foreword!

No way. How am I supposed to write about a book that is written with such easy-to-follow language, in such a clear and practical style, and which has at least one simple idea on every page that you can make happen straight away?

And with illustrations!!

No, its all too much.

Sorry Andys the answer has to be no.

Now, will you please stop writing such great books, and go get proper jobs!

David Taylor

David works with world-class leaders and organisations, is author of the best-selling Naked Leader books, the Honorary Professor of Leadership at Warwick University Business School and a Business Ambassador for The Princes Trust.
www.nakedleader.com

Jimmys Diary

He hadnt been up there for years. Probably decades! In the faint light of the attic, the old man shuffled across to a pile of boxes that lay near one of the cobwebbed windows. Brushing aside the dust, he began to lift out one old photo album after another.

His search began with the fond recollection of the love of his life long gone. He knew that somewhere in these albums was the photo he was looking for. It was the black-and-white one, when she had that smile. Patiently opening the long lost treasures he was soon lost in a sea of memories. The old man wiped away one or two happy tears. Although the world had not stopped spinning when his wife left it, the past was more alive than his present emptiness.

Setting aside one of the dusty albums, he pulled from the box what appeared to be a diary from his sons childhood. He couldnt recall ever having seen it before or even the fact that his son had kept a diary. Opening the yellowed pages, he glanced over the entries and his lips turned up at the corners in an unconscious smile. His eyes shone and he chuckled aloud. He realized he wasnt just reading the words, he could hear them, spoken by his young son whod grown up far too fast in that very house. In the utter silence of the attic, the earnest words of a six-year-old worked their magic and the old man was carried back to a time almost forgotten. The spidery handwriting reflected on important issues for a six-year-old school, football, holidays, arguments with his big sister entry after entry stirred a sentimental hunger in the old mans heart. But it was accompanied by a painful memory that his sons simple recollections of those days didnt tally with his own. The old mans wrinkles became more deeply etched.