Exploring The Unknown

In today's book review, I will be sharing my thoughts on The Bottom of The Pool by Andy Andrews.

The Bottom of The Pool is a thought-provoking book. It is a book that although finished, you can always go back to it. Inside the book, it contains many valuable insights that you can use in your day to day life. Furthermore, there were many relevant and clear examples given to explain the principles/ideas being taught.

Currently, I am still in the midst of trying out so I cannot really say much about the results it can produce however, after reading the book, I definitely felt different. This book raise questions for me to think and that is what I need at this point in life.

Overall, it was a helpful book and it is one that you can use it as your reference in life.

Below is a summary of the whole book and the key points that I have taken down which can be used as future reference.

Chapter One: The Game

Be careful about what you think you know. Because you can’t always believe everything you think.

Sometimes, by changing our understanding and belief about what is possible, it is possible to achieve the impossible.

Chapter Two: A Glimmer Of Understanding

Sometimes, by following your instincts, although it might seem wrong on the surface but when carry out, the result could be vastly different from what others perceived it.

Chapter Three: A Mind Has Wings?

Beamonesque… an adjective meaning “a result so far superior to anything accomplished before, it is overwhelming.”

Chapter 4: Before We Continue

The surface is where results and success have been verified hence, most people prefers to stay on the surface however, in order to achieve even more, sometimes, you just have to take a deep dive into the unknown and this is something that not everyone is willing to venture nor would they agree with your action.

“Great” is the precise target for which the majority of us is trying to aim for. However, why settle for great when “Best” is waiting for you in slightly deeper water?

Chapter 5: Can He Or Will He?

Does a mind have wings? Absolutely! However, a mind also possesses an anchor. And either can be deployed at the drop of a thought.

A mind with wings fully extended creates a flurry of appropriate action leading to positive results. These results are identifiable, even by casual observers who often describe what is happening as “momentum.” Conversely, a mind that folds its wings and lowers its anchor which results in diminishing results can be perceived as “loss of momentum.”

It is important not to let others to cause you to drop your anchor. This could in turn prevent you from doing what you can do.

Preface

By putting the Preface after a few chapters into the book, readers would then read it because if it is put at the front, most readers tend not to read the preface. This is an example of achieving extraordinary results by “taking a left” even though industry standards demand a right turn.

Chapter 6: Thinking Beyond What Is True

Any answer that is true will produce workable, occasionally excellent, results.

The higher the achiever – the closer to the top of any field of endeavour one is acknowledged to be – because of the results they have already produced, the less likely they are to attempt thinking beyond what got them there in the first place. Beyond that, there exists a deeper understanding of almost any subject that we might consider it to be important. Such wisdom is more often found embedded in the principle’s foundation. This, we call it The Truth.

Chapter 7: Imagining A Sense of Humour

It does not matter how you read the book as long as you read with personal intent.

Remember that the main point is you; therefore, please control your imagination, harness it for your benefit, and shift your sense of humour into overdrive. Do note that an uncontrolled imagination can create problems bigger than anything you want to face. Misusing our imagination can leads to fear and know that fear and its many demon relatives do not and cannot exist without a human host. Fear are never simply brought to life out of nothing instead, they are thought to life by us.

Chapter 7 and a half: And While We Are On The Subject

Do not let others’ opinion of you affect you.

Chapter 8: Isn’t It Obvious?

Everything that had been so obvious…was no longer even true.

Chapter 9: Well…That Changes Everything

While we were doing the best we could do, we were not doing the best that could be done. In reality, the best that could be done can only be achieved when a person got to the bottom of the pool.

Most people who are doing the best they can do (especially if they are among the best at what they do) are not often remotely aware that a significant amount of territory still exists beyond that which they have already achieved.

In reality, the results of our efforts are invisibly restricted by three things:

1. What we know about the most accomplished people – living or dead – who have ever done what we want to do. And the best results they ever achieved.

2. What we understand about how it is traditionally done.

3. Where we believe our own abilities measure up to the first two considerations.

Chapter 10: Imagining Beyond Imagination

When a declaration like “this is the way it is done” is made, it is evidence of someone instructing everyone to thread water.

By choosing to perform based on industrial standards and not exploring new and possible better opportunities, you are stopping yourself from going into the bottom of the pool.

Chapter 11: The Secret Benchmark

Will they go with me to the bottom of the pool?

Chapter 12: Your Special Place

Use your imagination to create your own Location of Contemplation. A place created by you and is used solely by you. The place must be available for you to use at all times. Its availability, along with the quiet peace you will choose to create there, is what will eventually produce a unique ability in you.

Consistent extraordinary results – like the ones that exist in your future – are created on purpose.

Firstly, learn how to enter, sit down and stay inside your place for at least 90 seconds. And that small amount of time is often enough to explore a possibility that everyone around you is ignoring.

Concentrate your thoughts into the contrary direction. This is the bottom of the pool.

Chapter 13: Beyond The Box. Please!

If everyone really is outside the box, does not that mean we have arrived at a point in time where no one is actually outside the box? Henceforth, now is the time to think beyond the box. In order to go beyond, you must clear additional brush; you must blaze more trail and to make the best of it, use the end point of the previous successful trail as your beginning.

Chapter 14: How Could I Have Missed It?

Always know that THE BEST results are far beyond the regular old “great results” with which everyone else has become satisfied.

Chapter 15: A Salty Detail

By learning to determine what is true and what is the truth, you will produce extraordinary results that are available to you only because society is virtually blind to the enormous consequence of continuing to ignore one tiny detail about competition.

It is because if you and I had not determined to think to the bottom of the pool…if we had never begun to examine the difference between what is true and the truth – if we had never said a word – I am convinced that no one would have ever missed it. But in not having missed it, they would have missed everything.

True can and often does produce great results but they are not the best results, the best results lie in the bottom of the pool, the truth.

Chapter 16: Discovering The Truth About Myself

The degree to which you will ever be financially compensated is inexorably linked to the obvious greater value (OGV) that you create for someone else.

It never occurred to me to be honest with myself about what I was actually worth.

Chapter 16 and a half: Not Even A Full Turn

How much you will be paid is dependant on how much value you are able to provide for someone else. I.e. the knowledge and technical skills of carrying out an action.

Chapter 17: The OGV And Your Future

How you think determines who you are, it also determines who you are becoming and who you ultimately become.

Do not live your life as a pawn of circumstance, You have authority over what you want to become.

If you want folks to choose you each and every time, the greater value that you have created must be Obvious because most people cannot determine the difference between the great and greater values.

Chapter 18: Competing In Deep Water

“Customer satisfaction: is the lowest bar you can possibly hit and still stay in business.

On the surface, games are contested over price and product. However, deep down, what truly sets apart one another is the obvious greater value (OGV). OGV is a rely experienced but completely overpowering advantage.

Chapter 19: The Invisible Uncontestable Edge

The quality of your answers will usually be determined by the quality of your questions.

The reason why we are willing to travel further/pay more for the same product is because that someone, at some point, did something so special for us or became so important to us that we would never think of doing business anywhere else. Who they are and what they have done is so powerful that it trumps price, distance and time. That person overcame any tendency that we might have had to allow price to determine our behaviour. Whether inadvertently or on purpose, they created greater value in our lives and it was obvious.

Do note that greater value and obvious greater value are not the same. More often we perceive greater value in terms of price or convenience or both. Obvious greater value is usually proven. We are convinced of the OGV by a realisation about what is truly important in our lives.

Even when one produces a great result inadvertently, a bottom of the pool understanding of why the result was produced will allow one to produce the same result on purpose. When the result is produced on purpose, however, its flames are fanned by word of mouth, allowing them to take place over a wider area, in greater volume, and for an almost unlimited amount of time.

To achieve such results, it depends on one’s ability to understand and identify greater value for people then the greater value must be refined and enriched to the point that it is obvious. The next factor is YOU. Who you are becomes the deciding factor to those making the decision.

Chapter 20: Money In Garbage

A story about a kid who provides a service in disposing garbage in his neighbourhood.

He smiles and waves to the neighbours of his clients, and he smiles when he talks. This young man has created a high level of comfort and trust in the neighbourhoods where he works. Value.

The fact that your customers want you to stay in business shows that you have achieved several steps above mere greater value. This is OGV.

Chapter 21: A Smart Man…And A Wise One

What you know might not be sufficient. There is more for you to learn and understand.

“But what a tragedy it would be if one day we are found to have achieved only average results produced by what is true…because the person upon whom we depended to lead us never bothered to pursue the truth.”

Chapter 22: Connecting The Dots

Obviously, there are results on the surface, but the greatest results to be gained are accomplished by thinking to the deepest level of an issue.

Although when you head down to the bottom initially, others might react in an outright negative manner, as you find and establish the location of you’re the foundation, the results created will draw others to your efforts.

At this point, your personal believe level in an incredible future is higher than ever before because you have experienced unusual results.

Do not forget your sense of humour. Exercise it often.

A controlled imagination will not only connect dots that sometimes seem invisible to others, it will banish the fear that threatens your confidence and joy.

Do not mingle long with those proud souls who strut around outside their boxes instead, move away quietly in the direction of the beyond.

Your life is like a grand game. If you decide there is no more moves, that there is no more beyond…if you decide you have arrived, the game is over.

Life’s richest rewards are gained searching for wisdom. Wisdom is a deeper understanding of principle. After a deeper understanding is achieved, next is to go deeper.

Your place of retreat – your Location of Contemplation is not rental property. It cannot be loaned or stolen. You cannot be evicted. It is reserved only for your own usage. This is your fortress of solitude- the place for you to hope, dream, aim, rest, plan, question, design, wait, renew, celebrate, imagine, begin and become.

There is danger in what is true, for most who find it cancel their search for anything beyond what they have already found so why continue? Because they have found an answer but not The Answer.

Although your choice may determine your destiny ultimately, it is your thinking that determines your choices.

Remember that every choice that you made is determined by:

1. How you think

2.What you think

3. How long you think about it

4. What you decide you do not have time to think about so you are not distracted from thinking about what you have to think about in order for you to be able to decide.

How you think is massively influenced and largely determined by what you read, hear and watch.

Furthermore, another huge factor in forming the foundation of you is the group of people with whom you surround yourself.

Chapter 23: Reaching The Promised Land

To change everything in your life, it is going to be up to you.

An excellent book is like an excellent hammer. Books are tools. Books only provide an education or a measure of understanding that cannot be gained anywhere else or in any other way.

Although you cannot control many situations that you face in life, you can control how you respond when tough instances occur. If you can understand and believe that bad thinking can lead to bad choices, and that, in turn, those bad choices yield bad life situations, then surely you can understand and believe that good thinking can lead to good choices, and that, in turn, your good choices will yield great life situations.

Sunrises proclaim the future, not the past. They bring assurance, not uncertainty. A sunrise is the onset, not the outcome; the potential, never the limit. And while sunsets are for everyone, from this moment forward, All Sunrises Belong To You.