The Power of One More: The Ultimate Guide to Happiness and Success

Chapter 11 continues the principles of goal setting set out in Chapter 10. Mylett gives the theoretical and practical application of The One More Mindset more clarity. Standards are the means in which thoughts can be realized. These goal-oriented thoughts become actions to accomplish more. Here, the theoretical facilitates the practical. To achieve bigger goals, Mylett insists that standards need to be raised. Higher standards can be identified by looking to idols and reflecting on tolerance for difficult activities. Mylett lists nine ways for readers to set higher standards. The listing format gives readers a clear procedure for accomplishing what Mylett advises. As consistent with the rest of the book, whenever Mylett writes out a list, readers can expect to find practical techniques for changing one’s mindset and actions. This is one of the chapters that functions as a how-to section rather than one that only provides a description of a strategy.

Chapter 11 adds two more layers to the one more persona: impossibility thinkers and possibility achievers. In addition to the one more thinker and leader, these identities accord to the theoretical and practical framework of the book. Because the one more mindset is about both thinking and doing, Mylett instructs readers on how to do both most effectively. Central to this chapter is Mylett’s reference to Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich (1937), a foundational text of the self-help genre. As in the previous chapter, Mylett includes a list, this time of principles from Hill’s text that can guide the reader to thinking of the impossible to achieve what is possible. As relates to The Power of Faith to Accomplish More, Mylett also cites several religious and political leaders: John the Baptist, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. These references lend a degree of spirituality and political activism to Mylett’s book. Although his text is not explicitly about changing the world, he appropriates the teachings of these influential figures to argue for the positive change one can make in one’s own life.

While Mylett finds Think and Grow Rich a valuable text, he does not think it “goes far enough as a high‐performance cornerstone for contemporary times” (140). In this way, Mylett supplants what is considered to be a foundational text on entrepreneurship and achievement with his own. It is a common tactic of self-help writers to position their work within a lineage of books that have promised their readers success, especially if those texts have endured over time. One of the key concepts in both texts is the power of free will. Like Hill’s book, these chapters emphasize thinking as the first step to transformation. They present a direct line of action from thought to implementation without considering other factors, such as physical or mental health or lack of resources, that might inhibit readers from accomplishing their desired goals.

The new ingredient that Mylett adds in this section is faith. This comes with the author’s realization that to help readers buy into the idea that they can accomplish the impossible, more than willpower is required. While meant to inspire, Mylett’s use of extraordinary historical figures as models of faith-based success stories is an example of survivorship bias, a faulty argument that only looks at the successes and ignores the failures in a given context. Survivorship bias is common in the self-help genre because those who have failed to achieve success using a given model are considered to be at fault rather than the model itself. Mylett provides no discussion of individuals who have had strong faith—either in themselves or in a higher power—and failed to achieve their goals because that could introduce questions about the efficacy of Mylett’s other strategies as well.