SURRENDER

Executive coach Komodina offers a strategy for gaining what one wants by letting go of the past.

“Our schooling system is tailored around conformity,” writes the author in his nonfiction debut, “and we have no curriculum that empowers the creative mind.” Educators at every grade level will likely object to this interpretation, but Komodina pushes on to offer his own remedy in what he calls the seven “Straight A’s” of becoming one’s best self. These are “Asleep,” “Awareness,” “Acceptance,” “Awakening,” “Application,” and “Ascension,” which lead to “Abundance.” The author asserts that everyone is at one of these stages, and he elaborates on each, drawing on his own personal story (including his relationship with his Christian faith, a prominent element throughout) and his professional experience as a fitness and executive coach.The overall goal of his system is to strip away conformity and compromise: “You owe it to yourself to live in the truth,” he writes. “You owe it to the truth to honor it and accept it.” In addition, a key element of his program is the concept of surrender—that in order to achieve one’s potential, one must first give up the aspects of oneself that aren’t working. Komodina’s firm encouragement runs through the entire book, and he’s at his strongest when at his most straightforward: “We were all put here to do the same thing in one way or another,” he writes, “to love.” The author’s frequent references to religion will appeal most strongly to fellow Christians, as when he notes that during the writing of his book, he had “an extremely profound assignment bestowed upon my life by God,” However, all readers will find the more general affirmations here to be worth pondering, particularly his take on the concept that people are often their own worst enemies.

An energetic call to discard outmoded strategies in order to succeed.