54 pages • 1 hour read
Ed MylettThe Power of One More: The Ultimate Guide to Happiness and Success
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 14 Summary: “One More Inconvenience”
Chapter 14 encourages readers to seek out discomfort. Inconvenience is not a guarantee of success, but it is a requirement, no matter what goal you attempt to accomplish. Sacrifices can produce extraordinary results, and there is no way to achieve an ideal life while staying in one’s current comfort zone.
To engage discomfort, Mylett recommends tackling the hardest tasks of the day first. Completing an easy task is easy because it doesn’t require you to push your limits. Conversely, difficult and inconvenient things condition you to perform at a higher level the next time you try a hard task.
Mylett tells readers that accomplishing inconvenient things can make them controversial figures. If you become a leader, you will need to challenge those under you to perform difficult tasks to accomplish the team’s vision. A life of convenience is not only boring but also limiting. Because our brains are programmed to seek out comfort, we need to actively pursue discomfort to enhance ourselves. This includes not imitating others but rather defining our own goals for success.
One more thinkers learn how to discern between beneficial challenges and detrimental problems. The former is an inconvenience that can be worked through and makes you better in the end. The latter is an issue or habit that prevents you from improving. The one more thinker perceives these problems as obstacles in the way of their improvement and should be addressed with “a sense of urgency” (182).
He recommends that readers seek out inconvenient relationships. Quality relationships are not built on comfort and convenience. Mylett also compares the act of sacrifice to The Power of Faith to Accomplish More. It is inconvenient to maintain a “close and spiritual relationship with God” (183), but it is required to reap the benefits of faith.
To harness the benefits of inconvenience, Mylett tells the readers to ask what kind of life they want to lead, whom they want in their life, and what their standards are for reaching their goals. Each of these questions will provide answers that will in some way require the reader to embrace inconvenience. The pursuit of this inconvenience is a direct correlation to one’s commitment to success.
Chapter 15 Summary: “One More and Defining Leadership”
Chapter 15 describes how readers can become one more leaders. Mylett’s definition of a leader is someone who “help[s] people do things they would not otherwise accomplish without your presence” (187). He believes that everyone is a leader, in fact, because everyone leads themselves to some degree. Moreover, Mylett believes that leadership can be learned. A leader needs to sell a big dream, harness everyone’s unique gifts, and understand the six basic needs that drive humanity.
To sell a dream, leaders need to give people the purpose and passion to accomplish something historic. As part of the team, they need to believe that the leader’s vision and strategy can produce an incredible goal. This is how an organizational culture is made, whether that is in a sports team, a company, a military outfit, or a performance troupe. Leaders also need to instill in their followers that the dream makes a difference in the world: “Leadership is about executing small things very well but thinking and talking about big things repetitiously” (189). The dream needs to capture the emotions, intelligences, and desires of all people involved.
A leader also needs to identify the unique gifts that each member brings to a team. A real leader is someone who shows people how to recognize, harness, and employ their gifts in service of a mission larger than themselves.
Mylett echoes inspirational speaker Tony Robbins’s identification of six basic human needs: “certainty, uncertainty and variety, significance, love and connection, growth, [and] contribution” (192).
Although everyone wants to have all six, more often, people only focus on two or three that are most important in each place and time. People who want certainty value safety and routine. A leader needs to speak differently to people who value certainty so that they can allay their fear of losing stability. On the contrary, people who value uncertainty and variety need to feel that the leader’s dream will provide their lives with excitement and change. Significance can be ensured when leaders remind their followers that their efforts are important and meaningful to the larger cause. Recognition at every opportunity is essential for people to feel significant. The universal need for love and connection can be summoned when acceptance, compassion, and empathy are practiced by the leader. Likewise, talking about others’ needs, rather than your own, makes people feel loved. For growth, the leader needs to institute challenges that excite and push people to be better. Followers should also be reminded of the tremendous accomplishment they completed after difficult tasks. Contribution can be evoked by letting people know that they make a difference in their organization’s culture. Their efforts, no matter how small, make the dream a reality. Mylett also shares that leaders should be aware of the possibility that people’s basic needs change.
Lastly, Mylett encourages one more leaders to set an example. By holding yourself to the highest of standards, people will naturally be drawn and want to follow you. By reinforcing the dream, figuring out everyone’s individual gifts, and attending to their basic needs, a leader sets the example for success and moves one more step closer to achieving the goal.
Chapters 14-15 Analysis
Chapter 14 adds another strategy to The One More Mindset; that is, people should seek out inconvenience and discomfort. The pursuit of uncomfortable situations to become resilient resonates with the message of the rest of the book, given the emphases throughout the book on pushing past limits by giving one more effort. Mylett’s gives practical advice like completing the hardest tasks of the day first to accustom oneself to challenging situations early in the morning. This encounter with difficulty is meant to toughen the one more practitioner and train their mind to embrace challenges. Mylett also provides readers with a set of questions intended to teach them how to harness inconvenience. These questions are supposed to facilitate the reader’s self-reflection and are meant to be uncomfortable for the reader so that they can learn to face discomfort in their thought processes. The one more mindset thus encourages inconvenience as a mode of thinking.
Chapter 15 introduces the identity of the one more leader. Helping people accomplish what they otherwise could not accomplish is the requirement for being a leader. Although not stated by Mylett, readers can reason that coaches, teachers, parents, siblings, and mentors all fall under this definition of leadership. Another prerequisite for being a leader is advancing a dream. Mylett shows readers that leaders need to dream big to capture the hearts and minds of their followers. The two last requirements for being a leader are harnessing people’s abilities and understanding the six basic needs that drive human beings. Mylett borrows his definition of the six basic human needs from Tony Robbins, another self-help author and motivational speaker. This is another instance in which Mylett links himself to an established expert in the self-help field. When introducing the topic, Mylett states, “Tony Robbins and I are among many who subscribe to the idea that there are six basic needs” (192). The sentence structure—using a dual subject—allows him to claim like-mindedness with Robbins while acknowledging that the six basic needs are neither his nor Robbins’s original idea. They are “among many” who subscribe to this belief. This is another rhetorical move that Mylett uses to cement his authority on a subject on which he is not an expert.
Mylett does have experience with and expertise in leadership, so he does not need to reference an outside expert on this topic. When leaders understand how to provide certainty, uncertainty and variety, significance, love and connection, growth, and contribution to a group of followers, a team, or an organization, they can mobilize people to achieve extraordinary goals. Part of this understanding also requires that leaders recognize when peoples’ needs change. This awareness and adaptability in leadership relates back to the one more mindset.
Mylett uses listing as a rhetorical technique to allow readers an easier understanding of his concepts. Visually, lists engage readers by breaking from the monotony of left-to-right prose. Mnemonically, lists also allow readers to memorize and remember complex topics in short and concise language. Mylett’s listing technique satisfies the notion that a leader is supposed to provide followers with understandable instructions and memorable ideas. Likewise, much of Chapter 15 and its lessons are in bolded font, providing readers with clear and emphatic visual stimuli to remember Mylett’s ideas. In this way, Mylett champions the theme of Achieving Goals With Neuroscience and Quantum Mechanics by visually stimulating readers. Not only are his ideas intended to capture the reader’s attention cognitively, but they are also meant to physically—in this case, visually—enhance the reading experience.
