650. Expert Interview: A "Low-Energy Approach" to Personal Development

John Vespasian

John Vespasian is the author of nine books about rational living. He has turned his international background and his personal interest in history into a breed of personal-development books that emphasize rationality, resilience, and learning from real-life examples. His latest books are “On Becoming Unbreakable,” “Thriving in Difficult Times,” and “Sequentiality: The Amazing Power of Finding the Right Sequence of Steps,” which came out in 2017.

A "Low-Energy Approach" to Personal Development

“I became very dissatisfied with the kind of self-development books on the market. I find most of them very fluffy, superficial, and impractical because people tell anecdotes and do not give you any practical advice. So, I started to write the kind of books I could not find–books based on history, facts and real people trying to draw lessons from history that we can apply in our lives today.”

Why Is This Important?

“I call this a low-energy approach to personal development because I am not a super extrovert. I have a lot of commercial activities but always from a different perspective of looking for efficiency, shortcuts, the right sequence of steps. In my books, I research hundreds of stories of real people, how they achieve success without being super motivated, super positive, and super talented.”

What Are the Key Lessons Learned Here?

“I discard the approach of goal setting because, nowadays, personal development is almost the same as goal setting. My research and experience shows that most people who become successful and healthy go through personal problems and solve them, not by being super oriented to a goal but by having a strong sense of direction. To have a sense of direction doesn’t mean you know exactly where you’re trying to get. You don’t know exactly your destination, but you have a clear sense of what you want to do, what you like, and the areas where you’re strong. You follow this direction and eventually figure it out.”