Business writer Ian Garner asks himself if he his own worst enemy and reaches for Byron Morrison's new self-help book Maybe You Should Give Up to answer the question

Byron Morrison is a bestselling author, mindset, and performance coach, specialising in helping people reach their full potential. He works with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business leaders in fifteen different countries, researching what the barriers are to people living the life they want.

Morrison attempts to identify, and breakthrough seven mental barriers to help people let go of everything that is stopping them from achieving the happiness and success they want.

The main title, 'maybe you should give up,' sounds perhaps terribly negative and also a bit passive aggressive; however, the sub-title is more positive with a message alluding to his key advice, which is that you are usually the problem so “get out of the way and take control of your life.”

Morrison’s opening gambit is to test the hypothesis that self-help books don’t work. An interesting introduction to a book in this genre. His claim is that the advice given in self-help books works in the short term but inevitably fails over time.

He writes that the key barrier to success is ourselves. We get in our own way, we sabotage our efforts, we lose momentum and become discouraged. Sometimes we even get on a cycle of moving from one self-help guru to the next, leading to a spiral of failure.

By using his own example to illustrate these mistakes, he shows how he reached the conclusion that he was the problem. He tended toward playing it safe, afraid of failure and trying to be perfect. These were the things he needed to give up and are the subjects of the book’s title – “maybe you should give up.”

Morrison claims our brains are programmed against change, our sense of self-preservation riles against the new and the unknown, resulting in resistance from within our own heads.

His list of seven major beliefs that people need give up are all inner dialogues, with thoughts like: “I can’t control what’s happening,” “I’m not doing this right,” and “it’s not the right time.” He describes these as “rocks that weigh you down.”

He tackles each of the seven barriers in turn, some are ‘boulders,’ some ‘rocks,’ and some are ‘pebbles,’ but they are all barriers to success.

He supplies detailed examples of the many ways we undermine ourselves, and how we let others discourage our progress, or at least encourage us to give up.

And, by using his own examples, along with those of his clients, it enables him to illustrate what has happened before and to demonstrate his theories.

His anecdotes come with a message: choose not to be angry, frustrated, or fearful, choose to rise above these things and be positive.

Morrison writes in the first person, it’s as if you are having a one-to-one conversation with him. I believe there were times when he had made his point quite early but repeated the same point over and over again. This may have for emphasis and to ram the point home, but sometimes it was a little overdone.

All in all, it is an interesting book with plenty to think about with a strong message: don't sabotage your future by self-doubt and listening to the naysayers.

I can sum it all up with a simple thought - use the power of positive thinking to overrule the voices in your head telling you to doubt yourself.

If you harness the positive you will prove the cynics, internal and external, wrong and take control of your life.