It's not that easy to evaluate and review `self-help' books, as what I find useful is probably not at all useful to someone else. I guess it depends on what your perceived `problem' is, or more positively, what is `your area of desired improvement'.

I liked this book, I found it very helpful. This book deals with fears that are preventing you from becoming the person you wish or be or attaining a target that you are aiming for in your life.

The approach is very aggressive as you would expect from the title and front cover. Machowicz encourages you to `live life aggressively'. Machowicz draws on his experience as a Navy SEAL, and tells us about how he went through some very extreme situations that inevitably lead to fear and how he developed mechanisms to cope with and conquer that fear. It is a macho approach and in some places reads very much like the true to life novel by Andy McNab, `Bravo Two Zero'. However, I don't think that should put readers off, there is some very useful insights here. Take the CARVER matrix for example. This is a target evaluation method of military origin. Machowicz applies it to everyday life. If you enter `Waging Project Management Warfare' into a search engine you will find an article where an attendee of one of Machowicz classes applies the principle to software development!

There is definitely as much value in reading this as in relying solely on the works of desk bound psychologists.

I also liked the fact that it was written relatively recently, 2002. The context is relevant. I have read seminal works that were written nearer the turn of the last century, and although the content of these is beyond reproach they are very dated and increasingly hard to relate to the present and the type of problems encountered in today's world.

Some of the author's quotes come from such diverse works as Dune, by Frank Herbert. He refers to the training of Paul Atreides where he is taught that `fear is the mindkiller'. As a part-time Sci-Fi fan, I am encouraged to read a self-help book that values some of my favourite literature.

Throughout the book Machowicz refers to his self-defence style called Bukido. This comes across as a bit of a blatant sales pitch, but does nonetheless encourage the curious to enter `Bukido' into a search engine to see what it is all about. You might want to do that before you buy the book! Machowicz seems to be aggressively following his own advice, and is also now a TV star I believe hosting `Future Weapons' on the Discovery channel. Maybe that in itself should suggest that there is something of value in this book. However, reading the output of famous people telling us `how to become successful' does not always work. I'm thinking of the book by Noel Edmunds, `Positively Happy'. It is also very hard to determine if you should take the cynical, and possibly accurate viewpoint, that the author is more interested in selling his product, in this case his book and his training courses, than he is in the altruistic intent of making you a better person.

The author's intentions and motivations aside, I picked some ideas from this book that I liked and am actively making use of them. Although I have completed the book I still want to review some of the sections at a later date. So for me there was some useful ideas here and so I give it a four star rating.