“I wrote this book as a roadmap to help you find success, purpose, and happiness,” explains Tom Lewis, author of the new book, Solid Ground.
In his highly personable book, Lewis uses his life story to connect the dots between his challenges and accomplishments to demonstrate the five foundational building blocks of success. He speaks from his experience as an award-winning homebuilder and philanthropist. And, as someone who overcame difficult markets, tough competition, and a life-threatening illness.
Those five foundational building blocks and key qualities necessary for reaching your potential are:
- Finding your talent
- Making good decisions
- Taking smart risks
- Keeping your drive alive
- Managing your career
In Solid Ground, Lewis also covers the topics of personal character, goal setting, helping others, benefits of self-awareness and finding purpose and meaning.
T.W. Lewis
Some of Lewis’ life lessons are:
- Finding your talent and your purpose is the key to life. Both take time.
- Try something hard. Fail. Get back up. Repeat. That’s how you build your confidence and your resilience.
- Taking risks is necessary to get rewards, and failure is an important part of your journey to success.
- Commitment eliminates the clutter in your mind and helps you focus on your goals.
His advice about strong teams is:
- A strong team requires strong individuals.
- Every teammate is responsible for a different job, and everyone counts on everyone.
- Everyone shares the same goals.
- Everyone has to buy in to the leader’s vision.
- Camaraderie and spirit are the heart of a real team.
One of my most favorite set of takeaways from the book are where Lewis reminds readers of Dale Carnegie’s timeless twelve rules for winning friends and influencing people, dating back to 1936:
- Never criticize, condemn, or complain.
- Give honest and sincere appreciation.
- Arouse in others an eager want.
- Remember people’s names and use them.
- Talk in terms of other people’s interests.
- Avoid arguments.
- Being in a friendly way.
- Appeal to the nobler motives.
- Dramatize your ideas.
- Throw down a challenge.
- Let the other person save face.
- Ask questions instead of giving orders.
And here is some other advice Lewis references in the book:
- If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters. – Alan Simpson.
- If you want your dream to come true, you first must have a dream. – Tom Lewis
- To be a leader you must earn the trust of others. Trust is the natural result of trustworthiness. – Dennis Prager
- Being a good leader requires only three things: a clear vision, trustworthiness and compassion.
Add this book to your reading list. It's worth your time!
