Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
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start summary
Start Summary and Review
by Jon Acuff
Has Start by Jon Acuff been sitting on your reading list?
Pick up the key ideas in the book with this quick summary.
how to edit your life of elements that don’t bring you joy; andhow to deal with haters who try to get in the way of your ultimate success.
We all want to escape the average and the humdrum.
If you’re tired of being like everyone else and are ready to start being awesome, this book summary are the path that will get you there.
Importantly, you’ll learn how to get past the most difficult block to your amazing new life’s journey: the very start.
Find out how to overcome the fear that holds you back from living your dreams and start your own personal journey to being awesome!
In this summary of Start by Jon Acuff, you’ll also learn:
why sometimes you have to be illogical to be awesome;
Start Key Idea #1: Escape the average and become awesome by punching your fear in the face.
Do you dream of escaping the average?
Do you want to become awesome and exceptional, but don’t know where to start?
Here’s a tip: If you want to become awesome, you have to punch fear in the face.
Fear can alienate you from your dreams.
It goes without saying that you shouldn’t let it, but to beat fear, you have to understand how it works.
Fear prevents you from chasing your dreams by convincing you that they’re impractical or unattainable.
But don’t buy into that kind of defeatist thinking.
Instead, write down your fears and then exaggerate them ridiculously, to show yourself how silly those fears actually are.
For example, if you’re afraid that starting a new project will cause you to lose your job and stay unemployed, write that down.
And then let yourself go farther.
Imagine you’ll end up on the street with a scraggly beard, sleeping on top of garbage bags and talking to stray cats.
Does that seem likely?
Probably not, which is why you need to write it down.
That way you can see how illogical your fears really are, and thus prevent them from controlling you.
Luckily, there’s one more effective way to deal with fear’s mind games: Just start doing whatever you’re scared of.
You have no control over the eventual result, but that won’t ever change.
You’ll never know how things will end up, but at least you can control the outset.
If you want to do something, do it!
For example, consider the Segway.
When it was first introduced, people thought it might spark a transportation revolution.
And yet, since its launch the Segway hasn’t been such a great success.
Still, the Segway people deserve respect.
They risked failure and pursued their awesome dream of developing weird, two-wheeled electric transporters.
Start Key Idea #2: Be realistic about where you are now, but dream big to figure out where you want to go.
If you want to be awesome, you have to get comfortable with tension.
You have to be a realist and a dreamer, practical and impractical, logical and illogical – all at the same time.
To start your journey, you need to find out which parts of your life feel average.
Do this by examining key areas of your life – social, intellectual, professional – and writing down which ones you want to improve.
Here’s where the tension comes in.
Although you should dream big, it’s also important to be realistic.
List current debts, responsibilities (are you a husband, a father, a coach?) and assets (university degrees or social connections) that would affect your ability to pursue your dream.
For example, the author wanted to start an ad agency with a friend.
They agreed to build a website for their first client, a church.
After a few months of effort, the author faced some tough realities: He had no idea how to run a business.
Also, he’d never built a website before, and neither he nor his partner had any programming skills.
In the end, they decided to quit the project and refund the church.
What went wrong here?
Well, the author had been wildly unrealistic.
Learn from his mistakes.
Your current reality doesn’t have to be a cage, but it is a jumping-off point.
If the author had been realistic about his lack of experience, maybe he would have started a smaller project and managed to complete it successfully.
Still, acknowledging your reality shouldn’t prevent you from dreaming big! Write down every crazy dream you have – even if you’ve never played an instrument, but want to rock a major festival.
Next to your dreams, write down a list of first steps that could get you there.
Then pick one and get going!
Start Key Idea #3: Stop waiting around to find your purpose in life and start living with purpose instead.
What is it with people needing to find their purpose?
Most people use finding their purpose as a smokescreen to avoid doing anything.
Don’t be like them: Forget about finding a purpose.
Think about all the pressure you put on yourself when you say that you want to find your one and only, true reason for being.
That much pressure is going to prevent you from doing anything, much less what you were meant to do.
This is especially important advice if you’re young.
Many teenagers and twenty-somethings freak out because they haven’t figured out a life path.
They shouldn’t worry.
Scientists believe that our brains continue developing well into our twenties, so how is a not-yet-fully-formed teenager or a fresh college graduate supposed to figure out a purpose to guide the rest of his or her life?
Besides, waiting around until you find your purpose later will only prevent you from living with purpose today.
So stop waiting for some big epiphany.
Wherever you happen to be now, start living with purpose.
When you go to work, for instance, do it with purpose: Write those thank-you notes for employees and colleagues by hand today.
Love your partner with purpose: Buy tickets for a show you’ll both enjoy, and make dinner reservations for your favorite restaurant beforehand.
You can even vacation with purpose by only checking your email once a day.
Do you really need to be available for emergencies around the clock?
Instead of living for someone else, take your vacation into your own hands!
So, now that you’re ready to start being awesome, it’s time to get familiar with the five stages of success.
Start Key Idea #4: The first stage of success is all about learning!
Try many new things to gain experience.
How do you get to the magical land of awesomeness?
There are five stages, and the first one is all about learning – that is, trying many different things and gaining experience.
After all, how can you know what you want to do if you haven’t tried a bunch of different things?
Think about it like this: When a scientific experiment fails, the scientist isn’t deemed a failure.
We understand that even if the experiment didn’t work, the scientist still learned something valuable.
This gradual learning process is what allows people to become awesome.
After all, no one is born an expert.
Consider Tiger Woods: He won the Masters when he was only 21 years old.
That might seem young, but remember, he had been practicing for 18 years to get to that point!
So, to start the learning process, ask yourself this question: If you died tomorrow, what would you most regret having never done?
Are you doing that thing now?
Why not?
And then just start doing it!
But start small.
For example, if you want to learn Chinese, find 30 minutes a week to sit down and get a feel for the basics.
Studies have shown that taking these kinds of small steps will prevent you from getting exhausted and giving up.
Take Roy Baumeister’s famous 1998 experiment.
Participants were divided into two groups – one group had permission to eat delicious cookies and the other was only allowed radishes.
Then both groups were given a tricky geometry exercise.
The group that had eaten cookies made a concerted effort to solve the puzzle; meanwhile, the group that was only allowed radishes quickly gave up, because they had used up all their willpower denying themselves cookies.
The point is, your willpower is finite.
So plan to tackle the most difficult tasks in the morning and not late at night, when your willpower is mostly depleted by a day’s worth of self-control.
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