How to Begin

Start Doing Something That Matters

By: Michael Bungay Stanier

Narrated by: Michael Bungay Stanier

“Piercingly frank, funny, gorgeous, vulnerable, and ultimately really damn helpful.” (Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times best-selling author of How to Raise an Adult)

Unlock your greatness. Set a goal that matters to you — and to the world.

With The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier penned the bestselling coaching book of the century. With The Advice Trap, he showed you how to tame your Advice Monster. Now, he’s here to help you reclaim your ambition and motivation to become your best self, driven with purpose and meaning.

If you are ready to get unstuck, to figure out what you should do that matters, to unlock your best self, to take on a project that you know is yours — you need to know How to Begin.

This is your practical guide to finding the focus and courage to set a Worthy Goal: one that lights you up, compels you to grow, and serves a bigger game by being thrilling, important and daunting.

With humor, compassion, and laser-focused clarity, Bungay Stanier walks you through a tested process to:

• Find and refine your Worthy Goal to meets three integral criteria.
• Strengthen your Worthy Goal with three tests — and a single word that takes it from Good to Great.
• Get clear on your commitment.
• Build the resources to cross the threshold and begin.
• How to travel in small steps to ensure that you progress.
• Find the four types of people you need to travel with — and the fifth you should consider.
• And a good deal more.
  

This book is for you if....

You’re at the start of your adult life, and you’re fired up to live a life of meaning and impact.

You’ve achieved things in your career, and it’s now time to “climb the second mountain” and think about legacy.

You’re unhappy with how the world is working right now, and you want to change your part of it for the better.

You’re a coach, and you want to support your clients to be great and do great things.

You’re ambitious, but feel you’ve never been given full permission to find and strive for a Worthy Goal.

It needs you to begin, and start doing something that matters.

***

“Of particular appeal for those of us who instinctively recoil from self-help woo-woo and just want to get on with doing Great Work that leaves the world a bit better than we found it.” (Courtney Hohne, Chief Storyteller for Moonshots, X, formerly Google X)

“A friendly voice and a guiding hand.” (Austin Kleon, New York Times best-selling author of Steal Like an Artist)

“Piercingly frank, funny, gorgeous, vulnerable, and ultimately really damn helpful.” (Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times best-selling author of How to Raise an Adult)

“Eminently practical, clever, delightful, and beautifully rendered – a non-fiction Where the Wild Things Are for adult dreamers and doers.” (Whitney Johnson, best-selling author of Smart Growth and Disrupt Yourself)

“I loved this book, and that's coming from a gal who's never been big on goals.” (Liz Wiseman, New York Times best-selling author of Impact Players and Multipliers)

“Powerful, magical and compelling. We don't need more time, we simply need to decide.” (Seth Godin, author, The Practice)

©2022 Michael Bungay Stanier (P)2022 Michael Bungay Stanier

Compelling and so relatable

This is not a book on theory. It is a well written guide. How to begin can relate to a huge project /dream or it can relate as you transition into the next greatest phase of you. It was easy to follow and paced with each step and examples. I highly recommend the audio version. It feels like Michael was my personal coach.

Worth the read and gentle swift kick

If you’ve considered a shift of any kind then a lot of the book and it’s ideas will resonate with you. Ultimately it’s down to you and the action you will or won’t take. I recommend it for a gentle, real-talk push towards actionable progress that makes you feel empowered to live into your fullest potential.

Game changing for worthy goal setting

I am a big fan of MBS and The Coaching Habit and I have to admit I was wondering why he chose to write a book about worthy goals, but….. this is sensational. This breaks down the process of setting a worthy goal into very clear steps. The best part is the challenging questions Bungay-Stanier uses to get you to challenge whether your goal is truly worthy and challenging and confronting questions about who you need and don’t need on your team. Bungay-Stanier also uses his own examples with openness, transparency and humility to bring the learning to life. Beautifully narrated with lots of little bonus nods to the listener. I am just in AWE.

Very good motivation

Liked the walking through of rating your goal as well as the people you need in your life

Easy steps to follow

You can take this and walk through the steps with better understanding and change

Practical and inspiring

Short but worthy
Clear not boring
Useful not numb
A short and useful story. MBS could’ve used the last 2 chapter’s power to build more momentum and more emotion.
Still, worth giving it a try

Provides a thoughtful approach to setting the right goals

I’ve been successful at achieving goals in a variety of areas of my life. Some of those successes have been audacious. Others, I’ve wondered why I deemed important. This book lays out a straightforward, actionable plan for choosing and embarking on meaningful goals.

Brilliant yet again

Love the continuity of the writer. He is so agile in his writing and as a fan. I often have felt that he is so good, how could I ever be as good as this guy... maybe I should just quit and be mediocre. But if I quit. chances are I'd meet the writer and be embarrassed to tell him I quit after he dedicated his life to helping me NOT quit and go after my worthy goal... that would be horrible. I highly recommend this read and all of MBS's works. Ill need to listen again while physically taking notes so I'm excited to get it started sonI can get started.

Another MBS winner!

Inspiring the warrior, disruptor, and productivity hack within with usual great storytelling and flair of this author.

Inspiring

This book is deeply inspiring and such a soothing (yet challenging) listen. I’ve passed it along to friends!