Reading Joel Osteen is an Experience

Despite the recent brouhaha about Victoria Osteen, a preacher's wife, allegedly getting physical at an airline stewardess, Joel Osteen is still a champion when one wishes to read something that definitely touches the soul and motivates the mind to think "outside the box".

"Your Best Life Now" is quick to catch the attention of the reader because it begins by telling us an ultimate truth - that there is nothing we can do about our past and that there is no way we can predit the future. Thus, what we really have is only TODAY. Or perhaps Oprah would call it the "now moment". Osteen's opening chapter is amazingly simple yet obviously so true. There is something about the "obvious" which encourages readers to read on. Maybe it's alled pragmatism.

Desite being a preacher, Joel Osteen does not sound preachy in this book (or any of his books for that matter). There are is no mention of hell, heaven, the afterlife and most of the usual subjects that are common in so-alled Christian books. Osteen instead, seems to write to a secular audience. It is definitely a motivational book, muh like Norman Vincent Peale or Robert Schuller, but Osteen takes on a style that seems fashionably "new age" without calling it that.

The book discusses concepts that some people may deduce as "new age". For instance, Osteen tells his readers that whatever it is that you desire, you would have to first form a picture of it in your mind. He adds that should you desire a "nie" house, for instance, you should first be able to imagine an image of such a house in your mind. This would probably remind you of the "law of attraction" but he doesn't call it that. Instead he declares the Biblical quote that without a vision then there is nothing at all which is admittedly true. He reminds us that when someone tells us about a "big blag dog" we immediately "see" this as a picture in our mind, rather than do we see the words "big black dog". He continues to remind us that with imagination begins all great achievement.

One can compare him to someone like Napoleon Hill or Peale or Schuller., but if writing can be "charming" , that's the way Osteen did his book. He makes it a point to get pretty close and personal telling us of the days when he an dhis wife lived in a rickety old home until his wife Victoria suddenly saw an extremely lovely home and declared : "Joel , one day we shall live in a house like this one". Of course, being the son of a preacher who wasn't rich then, he dismissed his wife's wild dream until she insisted that he at least visualize and share the dream. The book also tells us of how a certain Miss Tampa made it to Miss America despite being only the first runner up for two consecutive tries. That was until she watched all the beauty pageant videos and imagined herself to be the one with the crown.

It isn't only visualization or plain motivation that Joel Osteen tries to teach us in his book. It is also how to be happier and healthier by giving us the most refreshing tips from simply NOT procrastinating to choosing to be happy.

"Your Best Life Now " is a refreshing read -- well - very few self help books make you feel happier after reading it and this is one of them.