Master Your Mindset: Live a Meaningful Life
Michael Pilarczyk
Wiley (April 2025)

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.”  Henry Ford

Think of mastering your mindset as a never-ending process during which you accelerate your personal growth and professional development. Think of Michael Pilarczyk’s book as an abundance of invaluable — and practical — information, insights, and counsel that will help you to begin and then sustain that process.  He created the material. It is up to you to absorb, digest, and then apply it. (He explains how to do that.) Simon Sinek asserts that every initiative must begin with a WHY (i.e. a central, compelling purpose). You cannot master what you have not identified and then defined. Next, you need a strategy (or multiple strategies) that guide and inform your initiatives. Think of each strategy as a “hammer” that drives tactics best viewed as “nails” to achieve the given objective.

These are among the subjects and related issues that Pilarczyk rigorously examines:

o The most valuable lessons that he has learned
o Success and happiness: what they are and what they aren’t
o Clear thinking
o The power of listening
o Illusions, delusions, and realities

o Developing a personal operating system
o Quality of life
o Mental wiring
o Developing a positive mindset
o “The Law of Atttraction And Demand”

o Twelve causes of failure
o “Eight Pillars of Personal Mastery”
o “The 12-Step Strategy”
o Different approaches to visualization
o Steps 6-12 of your strategy to achieve self-mastery

Consider Michael Pilarczyk’s heartfelt invocations with great care as you pursue your own adventures in a business world that has become more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than any prior time that I can recall:

“Be a source of inspiration to others,
be the light in the darkness,
be the smile that drives the tears,
be a student of life, first and foremost,
be who you are deep inside: yourself.
Surround yourself with people who believe in you, who are honest and sincere,
People who encourage you when are about to give up
and can help you become the best version of yourself.
Live Your Best Life.”

* * *

Here are two suggestions while you are reading Master Your Mindset: First, highlight key passages. Also, perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to “The Keys to Mastering Your Mindset” set that concludes each chapter.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.