Book Review: No Matter What by Lisa Nichols

 

This week’s book review is No Matter What by Lisa Nichols. Anyone who has seen The Secret will recognise Lisa Nichols as one of the stars. This book does more than just offer a few quote-friendly soundbytes though.

The book is written on the principle that we should develop our “bounce-back muscles” and is then divided into chapters regarding each muscle: the Understanding muscle; the Faith-In-Myself muscle and the I-Konw-Like-I-Know muscle are a few of them. In each chapter she tells you what she means by the name of the muscle, and how you can work on it – but she also uses a personal story to illustrate her point.

As you go through the book, you begin to realise that Lisa Nichols actually had a fairly shitty life up to a certain point. You know how some successful people tend to be a bit like the old Monty Python sketch, “we had to get up an hour before we went to bed, slept in a cardboard box in the middle of the road” in a sort of show-offy “I had a shitty start and now I’m rich; you’re only poor because you’re lazy” sort of air.  Lisa Nichols’ book is different because although she’s been through some truly awful things, she doesn’t tell the stories with that air of arrogance. You do end up reading each chapter and feeling inspired: if she can go through that and still succeed, perhaps I can too!

Nichols is so honest about her experiences, it’s not romanticised or over-egged, just laid out there: this is what happened; this is how I felt; this is how I got over it; here’s how you can get over this sort of problem. And by “this sort of problem” she doesn’t mean the exact problem she’s overcome, but any problem where you need to bounce back, basically; any setback. And in that way, this book is really useful.

Each chapter has “inspired action steps” at the back which are activities to help you to exercise the muscle she’s just written about.

The format of this book works really well. It’s sort of part memoir, part self development book. The fact Nichols puts so much of herself into the book really helps it to work so that it’s believable; you can see that she’s been there, rather than someone who doesn’t seem to have ever had a problem bigger than chipped nail polish trying to tell you how to solve all your problems.

This book is a really easy read; it’s interesting and engaging and there were parts where she was telling her own story where I was desperate to find out what happened next. The fact Lisa Nichols has been through so much but come out the other side not only stronger but also wiser and successful does make you think perhaps the same could be possible for yourself – which I suppose is the purpose of the book in the first place. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who’s looking to improve their life in some way.

 

 Thanks for reading.

You can read my other book reviews here.