I have filled this book with highlights and Post-It notes, and covered half a dozen pages of a legal pad with notes as well. This book is a great first stop on a journey toward creating a life—not just a career, but a LIFE—that is more meaningful than the same old routine so many of us have found ourselves trapped in.

If you've spent a lot of time studying personal development, some of these concepts will be familiar: choices lead to consequences, belief drives behavior, take responsibility for your outcomes.

For me, the most valuable part of this book was defining what success looks like for me in various areas. Some of those, like career, I have thought about extensively. Maybe excessively. Others I hadn't really given much thought, like physical. What does it mean to be physically successful? Maintaining a healthy weight is an obvious criteria, but I realized improving my posture when working is also an important goal.

Bain puts his formula for success as BOX: belief, opportunity, and excellence. This is a handy way to think about what we must get a handle on to succeed. My only disappointment with this book is that the final third is heavy on anecdotes and thin on exercises. For example, Bain writes "Discovering and managing opportunity take insight, skill, patience, and a clear vision…" yet offers no examples of how to develop one's skill at discovering opportunity.

Which is why I say this book is a first step. It is an inspiring read and makes a convincing case that success is dependent upon our inner strengths and not outer circumstances. I trust that others in the field will provide some of the details, such as what managing opportunity looks like. Bain's primary mission in this book—and I believe he accomplishes it—is to get us moving in the right direction.