Book helps readers make changes today for a better tomorrow
Viewpoints

Allyson Lewis shows a copy of her new book, "The Seven Minute Difference: Small Steps to Big Changes."

Book helps readers
make changes today
for a better tomorrow

Beth Bland
Guest Columnist

I have never met Allyson Lewis, a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley in Jonesboro, but I feel as though I have. Not only do I feel as though I know her, but after reading her two books, I feel as though she is watching me and taking note of my progress toward the goals she has helped me set.

Her new book, "The Seven Minute Difference: Small Steps to Big Changes" (Kaplan Publishing, $20), started out, she writes, to be a business book about making small choices (and making them over and over) that will lead to big changes in your work. It was a good idea.

But the book evolved into something more: Using the same tools to make changes in your entire life, most specifically to bring your beliefs, goals and actions into alignment so that the whole well-oiled machine works better. This was an even better idea. Too many of us, I have noticed, spend time dreaming of how we would like things to be different in the future without doing anything different today.

Lewis offers a whole book full of tips to make these changes seem manageable, almost painless ~ baby steps, if you will. The seven-minute concept comes from an epiphany she had during a seminar that changed her thinking about her goals, and her life, as well as from studies showing that people have about seven minutes to concentrate on something before their attention wanders.

But what makes the book so strong is that Lewis herself is there on every page, sharing her journey and her tips with humor and humanity. It is nice to know, for example, that she considers herself disorganized and easily distracted (even though I don't believe it). She comes alive on the page as a terrific coach, which she apparently is, one who would push you to the limit but almost always be nice about it.

At first I found her accomplishments a little intimidating, but as I got to know her I decided that her significant achievement ~ a full, well-ordered, well-balanced life, still in progress ~ was the result of a strong will; that, in other words, she had started out with the same imperfections as the rest of us and simply decided not to let them carry the day. After that realization, I decided to try to become more like her instead of admiring her from a distance, which I suspect was what she intended all along.

The book came at the perfect time for me. Last month I left my job at Time magazine after 20 years and have been working to get my house in order ~ in every sense. I keep Allyson's book on my nightstand, so that on my lazy days, and I have my share, I see her picture, imagine that she is looking back and get busy.

Allyson Lewis plans to speak in Walnut Ridge about her new book in the near future. Beth Bland is the daughter of Virginia Bland of Walnut Ridge and the late Jim Bland Jr. She and husband, Paul Girolamo, live in Brooklyn, N.Y., with sons, James, 14, and Cullen, 10.

2006-05-17

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