Your Personal Owner’s Manual The book, It's Not Your Fault, is about a number of meetings between a man whom we will call Michael and a very special mentor named The Guardian. The discussions and interactions between these two individuals is the means by which the information, concepts, and wisdoms are conveyed to you, the reader. The guardian is the personification of a great intelligences. Michael is the student, representing all of us who want to know. I am the narrator and your guide through this next exciting adventure in your life. They say that, during a military campaign, Napoleon had an ‘idiot’ (the term used at that time for a mentally challenged person) sit on a stool outside the flap of his battle tent. Whenever he prepared orders to be sent to his field marshals and generals (at that point in history, some of the finest military minds in the world), he would have an aide go out and read the orders to the idiot. If the idiot understood the orders and could repeat them back correctly, Napoleon would send them. If the idiot could not understand and repeat the orders, Napoleon would rewrite them. Whatever may be said about Napoleon, the historians will have to agree on one thing: He virtually never had confusion on the battlefield. And his military campaigns have been the source for many a textbook on wartime strategy and tactics. In my experience, the lousiest math teacher is the guy who is gifted in mathematics. The best math teacher is the one who struggles with the “On” switch to his calculator. Because once he has figured out the principles of mathematics so that he could understand them, he saw to it that anyone could follow his pathway to the answer. The subject would become what I call the ‘any idiot program’ for others. I’m Steve Shenk. I will be you guide on the adventure onto which you are about to embark. What are my qualifications to be a good guide for you? Very simply, the battles fought, the struggles experienced, the two-by-fours of necessity across the forehead, the many times being bitten on the south side by the alligators of reality, and the proof of the principles I will be guiding you through to find the “On” switch to the good life. My objective as your guide through this battleground and, ultimately, dreamscape is for you to wake up one morning, look in the mirror, look directly into your eyes of wisdom and understanding and say, “I am grateful for the fact that if it is to be, it’s up to me, because I live a charmed life.” And as you look into your eyes, recall the statement that the eyes are the windows to the soul. And realize that you truly are a magnificent soul.

BUY THE BOOKS

The Book, and its companion journal, My Book of Life, will free you from worry, fear, stress, discouragement, and will make failure a path to success. Once you have learned the principles in It’s Not Your Fault, you will be able to look in the mirror and say to yourself, "if it is to be, it's up to me, because I live a charmed life."