Article first published as Book Review: ‘Succeeding by Choice' by A. Levi Murray on Blogcritics.
January 27, 2014
Succeeding by Choice:
How to Achieve Freedom, Happiness and Prosperity on Your Own Terms
Dr. Levi A. Murray
Aviva Publishing (2013)
ISBN: 9781938686924
New Book Teaches How to Choose Success and Prosper
Dr. Levi Murray has written a book that has all the information you need to become successful, no matter where you are in life. In Succeeding by Choice, he begins by asking the hard questions, including asking you to look at your own life and realize that if you’re not happy, it’s because of choices you’ve made in the past or choices you’ve failed to make. He reminds us that being successful is a choice. We can choose not to succeed; we can give up because it’s easier, but we can also choose success.
One story Dr. Murray uses to illustrate this point beautifully is about a friend from dental school who decided he wanted to be in an MD program. He kept failing to be accepted into a residency program, but he kept trying. His friends told him, “Why are you still trying...? Even if you get in, it’s going to take like five more years to finish and you’ll be forty years old before you get out!” He replied, “Either way, in five years I’ll be five years older. So the question is, do I want to be a forty-year-old DDS or a forty-year-old DDS MD?” In other words, stop making excuses and go after the life you want. The time will pass anyway so you might as well make the best use of it and pursue your dreams.
Dr. Murray knows it’s easier said than done to go after what you want, but he helps to make it easier by walking us through the process of how to achieve success by discussing topics such as how to be the leader of your own life, how to eliminate the negative from our lives, and how to take the action necessary to achieve what we want.
Throughout the book, Dr. Murray uses powerful quotes and stories to get his points across. One quote I especially loved was from Zig Ziglar: “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.” I also appreciate that he does not hold back from telling it like it is. In discussing why we need to eliminate negativity in our lives, Dr. Murray tells us to quit watching the news and listening to talk radio. He states that talk radio is a constant flow of negativity, and by watching it, “Your decisions will not be centered on growth and accomplishment; they will be focused on shortage, instability, and fear.” He realizes this viewpoint will not be popular with many and people might think if you avoid the news, you’re behaving like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, but he counters this argument by saying, “I challenge you to think of someone you know who has achieved all he wants in life and is in a place that many envy and few achieve, and who listens to talk radio every day.”
I also appreciated his point that we need to ask for what we want in life. We can’t allow ourselves to be limited, to think we don’t deserve more. Life will pay us whatever wage we ask so long as we ask and take action. Dr. Murray knows we get what we ask for from personal experience. When he opened his dental office, the business consultant he hired told him he should make a million dollars the first year. He thought that was a lofty goal and when the business was slow at the beginning, he thought that was to be expected. He kept waiting and then became frustrated when the business did not grow until he realized if it continued that way, he would be out of business. After a year of leaving the business growth in his consultant’s hands, he found a different coach and he took action, using that coach’s “do-it-yourself” program to grow his business. What was the result? Within the next two years, he grew the business to a million dollars. He just had to be willing to succeed and do what was necessary and he made it happen. As he quotes Abraham Lincoln as saying, “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” By taking control of his business, Dr. Murray has built an incredibly successful practice today.
The whole reason Dr. Murray wrote Succeeding by Choice was because he wants his readers to succeed as well. At one point in his life, he was a missionary. Today, he is a different kind of missionary—he works to spread his belief that people can succeed. He also makes it clear that there is nothing wrong with success or seeking money for the right reasons. He points out how people are held back by the fear that they will be successful or rich and a belief that in order to have money, you have to take it from others. Dr. Murray knows that belief is completely a myth. Instead, he tells us to become a “person of increase,” someone who “gives to everyone he comes across the feeling of becoming more. A person of increase creates opportunities for others. He has a mindset of abundance. He is an advancing person because he is moving forward, progressing, achieving, learning, and growing. He is going places, and he gives others the opportunity to join him.”
Dr. Murray is a person of increase in his business, his life, and now by making the world a better place by writing this book. If you want your life to be better, if you want to know success, prosperity, and greater happiness, then take the opportunity to read Succeeding by Choice, and if you have it in you to make the right choice, you’ll never need to look back.
For more information about Dr. Levi Murray and Succeeding by Choice, visit westmountaindental.com/succeeding-choice/.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. and award-winning author of The Best Place
