Spilling the Five Secrets

Suddenly, everything’s a bucket list. In fairness to him, author John Izzo might not merely be jumping on this bandwagon. As the author of Second Innocence and the co-author of Awakening Corporate Soul -- bestsellers both -- Izzo understands exactly the path you want to take. After all, as his bio tells us, he’s “spoken to over one million people on four continents about living more purposeful lives.” That’s a lot of speaking. A lot of souls.

If Izzo is trying to keep The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die (Berrett-Koehler) an actual secret, he’s doing a terrible job. The press material that arrived with January’s copy of the book had them all lined up, one through five. Plus you don’t even have to read the book to figure out what they are: chapters three through seven are secrets one through five.

In the interest of spilling our guts and helping you get the fast track to everlasting happiness (and who the hell doesn’t want that?) here they are:

• Secret One: Be true to yourself
• Secret Two: Leave no regrets
• Secret Three: Become love (clearly that’s a tricky one if you haven’t also read the accompanying chapter.)
• Secret Four: Live the moment
• Secret Five: Give more than you take

Obviously, this is one of those deals where you don’t benefit from just reading the secrets. Heck: I just typed them and I’m not feeling any better.

Despite the fact that I am, here, having a little bit of fun, in his prologue, Izzo warns us that the title of the book “was not chosen lightly. The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die has two key elements. The first is the idea that there are indeed ‘secrets’ to life .... The second element, ‘before you die,’ reminds us that there is urgency to discovering what really matters.”