No Opportunity Wasted by Phil Keoghan

First thing: the dust cover on this book is truly ugly. It has far too much text on the front, and not even in any good typeface, just big, bold Ariel. It's also yellow and blue, which I suppose is designed to get attention and "fire" the reader up, but instead is just irritating. But no matter. First order of business: remove the dust jacket and toss it aside.

Now to the guts of the book. No Opportunity Wasted, or N.O.W., is a book about living life to the fullest right now, as opposed to waiting for that "someday," be it retirement or a lottery win or whatever. The fundamental idea here is that if you keep putting life off, you're never going to live it. Someday never comes. All you really have is today.

With that in mind Keoghan sets out to strip the reader of all the excuses and mental roadblocks that keep people from achieving their most heartfelt goals. The book's chapters read as a step-by-step: Chapter 1: "Getting Rid of Excuses" (like not having the time or money), Chapter 2: "Face Your Fear" (like flying--if that's holding you back from your dream of world travel), and so on. Keoghan requests that the reader make a list of things he or she would like to do or achieve so that by the end of the book one is equipped to meet any challenges that might arise on the way to meeting one's goal.

Keoghan has, certainly, a larger focus on physical activity (you may know him as the host of CBS's The Amazing Race, and he also did a show on Discovery called Adventure Crazy). Many of his examples for achieving goals come from stories of scuba diving, hiking, mountain climbing, etc. For readers whose goals are a little bit "softer," it may at times become harder to relate to Keoghan's guidance. (As a personal example, I often found myself thinking, Fine, but what if I just want to write and publish a novel?)

Article Author: ZMethos

Author of the collection "The World Ends at Five and Other Stories," critic, and sometime summer camp instructor in Shakespeare, vampires, and other odds and ends.

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