REVIEW: How to Be Like Walt by Pat Williams w/ Jim Denney
Amanda here for another week (shocking, I know). Today I’m reviewing ‘How To Be Like Walt’ by Pat Williams with Jim Denney.
It’s part biography, part motivational speech, part self-help book, part business guide, and utterly captivating. Everyone needs to read this book. Everyone. To assume only Disney fans will enjoy this would be a gross miscalculation. Certainly they will enjoy it the most, but there’s plenty in this book to benefit anyone looking for a good way to conduct business, keep your priorities straight, or even just to believe in yourself.
Pat Williams has done a wonderful job; this contains all of the things you wanted to know about Walt Disney for those Walt Disney fans out there. But even for practical people it provides a wonderful, in-depth look at what made Walt so successful and creative, along with a helpful lesson at the end of each chapter to help you implement such success and creativity into your life. Obviously, there’s no one in the world quite like Walt, and we may not ever come close to the innovative genius he was, but Pat Williams breaks down the ‘how’ and the ‘why’, and all that’s left for us is to ‘do’.
Disney fans will especially cherish the little tidbits revealed about Walt here. I’m something of a Walt Disney fangirl, so I was no stranger to the facts and details of his life, but this book provides a much more in depth look than any other bio I’ve read of Disney. Williams went to painstaking lengths to learn about the real Walt Disney and what made him tick. To quote Art Linkletter, this is may be the most important book ever written about Walt Disney. I believe this is because it doesn’t just tell you about Walt, it shows you.
Chapter 15 had me bawling my eyes out, so you might want to read that one with a box of tissues. On the whole, this book was amazing. It’s well written and insightful, filled with wonderful and motivating quotes, as well as the aforementioned lessons at the end of each chapter. I’m going to make myself a list of these How To Be Like Walt lessons to hang above my desk, because its excellent advice for life, especially if you dream big.
This is a heartwarming book and a great motivator. I already predict I’ll be reading this one every couple of years or so, because hey I’ve got big dreams, and who better to help inspire me than the king of big dreams himself?
Rating: How to Be Like Walt earns five stars from me and an immediate recommendation to anyone reading this review.
