[Review] Your emotion is not at fault, it is your fault that made it an 'archenemy' of success

*Review was written by Tran Tran Hung - EUV1 (Ho Chi Minh City Office)

The book “Emotion is the Biggest Enemy of Success” by Dr. Le Tham Duong was penned by journalist Nguyen Tuan Anh who is the editor of many Dr. Duong’s books. If in the first book, the editor almost report the doctor’s lecture verbatim, in this book he carefully invested in both form and content.

Looking at the title of the book, at first many people will mistake this for a book that simply teaches the skills of success just like any other book. But no! "Success" in Dr. Le Tham Duong’s view is a function of 4 different variables: health, family, friends, and career. Therefore, the book refers to every practical aspect of life around us.

The book has 5 parts, part 5 is an appendix, the main content concentrated in the first 4 parts are:

1. How to make a lot of money?

2. Women need to be loved, men need to be understood

3. The only enemy is yourself

4. Road to success 

The topics are conveyed by the author in a close, daily life voice with subtle integration of extensive knowledge in all subjects: securities, finance, banking, leadership, human resources, psychology, and management (business management, time management and many other managements, ...). The book turns these knowledge, which seem complicated and wordy, into a concise, simple and straightforward way under the observation of Dr. Duong and the pen of journalist Nguyen Tuan Anh.

Besides the close voice, the use of words Emotion is the biggest enemy of success also hits the psychology of the reader, thereby creating a strong impression that the readers remember longer, this beauty comes from the names of each section of the book.

Part 1: How to make a lot of money?

As soon as happiness reached the peak of fullness, the "dead point" appears

The life of a person, a business, a nation must constantly change in three states: daily changes (improvement), periodically changes (restructuring), changes on the largest scale (reestablish). After changing each small stage, then making a bigger change in model, industry, personnel ...), each larger stage makes a bigger change ... We have witnessed the collapse of BlackBerry, HTC, NOKIA, ... due to the fear of change. The book has given us an interesting comparison between the collapse of these businesses and the family love:

While the introduction is: "When the company has just grown to the top of a period, they are already complacent about their achievements, drinking beer all day, having a big belly and not worrying about changing, so it’s obvious that the company will collapse", the conclusion is: "when the married life is at the peak of happiness, fullness, and always feeling unable to separate, that is the time when the "death" point appears. If you don’t find ways to warms up love and your marriage, you guys will start to compare, feel more and more bored, and get divorced quickly"

A very delicate practical connection between business and family helps us answer the question "How to make money".

Part 2. Women need to be loved, men need to be understood

This section has very humorous headlines like "Why are good men ain’t fun?"...

The author gives very true stories that we often see in life. For example, many wives when returning home compare "other's husbands" to their husbands. This shows that these women have not mastered their emotions. The woman mastered the emotion is one who went home happily with her husband and children  no matter how tired she is, instead of a tired, frowning face. If you frown and show your tiredness, the atmosphere of the family can not be happy, from there your husband and children will also be bored, no one talk to each other anything. On the contrary, if you smile when you return home, the family atmosphere will be completely different.

In part 2, the author mainly discusses about manners and above all, how to manage emotions, manage our emotions and our girlfriend's/partner's emotions (it is called pushing emotions of the opposite person).

3. The only enemy is yourself

This is my favorite part of the book for two reasons. The first is that I can learn many things from this part, the second is that we can again see another difference of Mr. Duong from most other speakers, especially foreign ones, it is a deep understanding of the country and people of Vietnam, the strengths and critical weaknesses of the Vietnamese people, which are thoroughly analyzed in this section.

In this section, with his humor, Dr. Le Tham Duong described the opposing character sequence of Vietnamese human resources to help readers answer the question "Why it is difficult for foreign leaders to use Vietnamese human resources? ". The answers to this are likely because:

"Firstly, Vietnamese human resources are very diligent but easily satisfied"

"Secondly, they are very smart but only using intelligence to cope"

"Thirdly, they are very clever but only do by halves"

"Forth, they like gathering but without connection"

"Fifth, they are very friendly but it won't last long"

"Sixth, they are very united but only united when things get hard"

Do you think the book tell us the right things?

Part 4: The road to success

Success is like a multivariate function. The first variable is health. The second variable is the family. The third variable is friends (community). The fourth variable is career

That's the first quote that I recommend this great book to Sunners! But if you read carefully, you will see, each person's path to success is not entirely the same.

In this part, Mr. Duong wants to emphasize that each person's variables are different, so it’s wrong to impose yours on someone: "Whatever you do, you must first agree on your own personal frame of reference, otherwise, it would be very confusing to talk about anything, and now that I talk about success, it is due to each person's frame of reference. Success in one person’s view is having a position, in the other’s view is owning beautiful houses and luxurious cars ... no one is wrong. But if we keep saying like that, it will never be enough."

When going into detail of each variable, we will see:

"The first variable- Health, which is divided into two parts: brain health and muscle health."

"The second variable- Family, which is divided into two types: Small family and Big family".

"The third variable- Friends, there are three of them: the first one is yourselves, the second one is your soulmate, the third is the "drinking buddies"

"The fourth variable- Career, which has two parts: ambition and mission".

Many Vietnamese have the habit of taking their own frame of reference and success to impose on others. But they do not know that what they consider to be successful (positions, beautiful houses, luxury cars, etc.) is only a variable of the success function. If we only value these things (and not taking into account the other three variables), the success function will be skewed and produce no results, which means we still do not succeed at the end.

In the end, after going through the 4 parts of the book, Mr. Duong shared his own path of success:

1. Put yourself in the field that you are good at (competence, forte, passion)

2. After putting yourself in your best field, you must continue to eliminate the bad of human beings.

3. The third movement is to continue looking for three factors of your own self (competence, forte, passion) because forte and passion can also change ...

4. Learn from 5 teachers: books, the internet, yourself, your friends, and your idols.

5. The hardest thing on the road to success is time management.

6. In order to succeed, it is necessary to have a foundation (will, desire, hard work, patience, loyalty, honesty).

"Emotion is the biggest enemy of success 2" is full of meaning in every page but not dry at all as it reflects the very true story of everyone life. For me, this is a must-read book, especially for those who are still confusing on their way to success. Don't worry about splash headlines the in each title of the book because they are real facts.

For those who have not read this book, I want to give everyone this quote: "Balance your emotions, even during a thunderstorm." Hopefully the book will somehow help you avoid making mistakes and your emotions an "enemy" of success!