Release Your Brillance

How big do you want to be? Are you holding yourself back? Why are you hiding your brilliance? These are questions posed by Simon T. Bailey in his absolutely wonderful book Release Your Brilliance: The 4 Steps to Transforming Your Life and Revealing Your Genius to the World.

Recently after giving a presentation to a human resources organization, their president e-mailed me recommending this book to me. She saw more than a few similarities between my comments and those she heard recently at a conference in New Orleans. That speaker was Simon T. Bailey, a former Disney executive who gave up the promise of the corporate world to start a motivational company. Although I must admit that I had never heard of Bailey, I was intrigued enough to stop by one of my favorite book stores that evening to see if I could find a copy of his book. Well, not only did I find and buy the book, when I cracked it open for the first time after arriving home, I did not put it down until I read in its entirety – with copious underlining of the many wisdom-filed passages throughout the book.

Even though this book is very profound, I found that its simplicity and straight-forward approach to be welcoming. There are enough vignettes both from Bailey's life and from his readers and seminar attendees to give it personality. The exercises are simple and friendly enough to assure that they can be done quickly yet retain meaningfulness.

This is a feel-good book that is based on the belief that each of us is a "diamond in the rough." His 4 steps, which use diamond industry terms like clarity, color, cut, and carat stand for developing insight, discovering unwavering beliefs, taking bold action, and deciding how big you want to be, respectfully. This excellent metaphor makes the book an effective self-help book as well as providing tremendous insights to any clinician. While it appears to appeal to the "normal" person rather than one with mental pathologies or brain trauma, its beauty is that it spurs enough questioning in the reader to leave a truly transformational mark after just one quick reading. This is not only a book that I recommend but one that I suggest pulling off the shelf on a regular basis for that frequently needed "attitude check."