Empires of the Mind (1995) Denis Waitley

In a world in which people anywhere can communicate and do business with people anywhere else, it is not the nation but the individual that is becoming the focus of our questions about wealth and poverty. Future tomes may have to explain why one person creates great value, inspiring and energising their community, while with access to similar or even greater resources, another becomes a TV-watching wage slave who will risk nothing.

Empires of the Mind may just inspire you enough to avoid the latter fate. A great example of how the lines between personal development and business literature are blurring, Denis Waitley's book is a blueprint on how an individual might approach their life within a supercharged, irrational and ceaselessly changing 21st century economic world. Where once we saw change as punctuating time, now we see it as the nature of life itself, and in its wake lie the notions of solidity, status and security that characterised the world of our parents. It is up to us, not institutions or family, to lead ourselves.

Waitley says we will be lost if we do not cultivate four things: knowledge, openness, integrity and vision. The new world does not revolve around institutions, organisations or set patterns, but knowledge, therefore those who live in a continual state of learning will not only prosper from it but enjoy it the most. Openness to new ideas is a must; any prejudice or outworn assumptions will be an invisible roadblock keeping us from entering the territory where dreams happen. Real, lasting success in work/business life will come from personal integrity; do I 'walk my talk?' Finally, we must to some extent live life backwards, the substance of our days and our relationships lit up by a unique vision of the future.

Towards the book's end, Waitley quotes the famous first line of Dickens' Tale of Two Cities: 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.' Despite our relative prosperity and personal safety compared to Dickens' era, the fear of bad things stalks us. We live in an epoch of unparalleled opportunities for personal growth and success, but that very fact seems to make us choose a narrow path with limited responsibility. Yet the act of taking responsibility for who we want to be and where we want to go - this is real freedom.

In a globalised, knowledge-based economy, we must see ourselves as individual business units, rather than employees - even if we are working within a firm. We must embrace what the Japanese call kaizen, or continuous improvement - of the self. Yet we are not simply the sum of our work and financial status at any one time. Continuous self-improvement gives us the larger perspective, inner security and depth that make us truly valuable to the world over a sustained period.