The Manual: A Guide to Achievement & Enlightenment in the Urban Community!
In this book, 21 year-old journalist James Bennett Jr. gives an in-depth and personal guide to universal success and achievement. Through a revolutionary approach to goal-setting, Bennett breaks down business strategies and spiritual secrets used by millionaires of the past, present, and future!
Along with his guide to success, Bennett uses the words of eight great young minds of his hometown of Lakeland, Florida. Underground musician Antavio “T.O.” Johnson, Polk State college student body president Juan Soto-Avella, and former Boise State cornerback Antwon Murray illustrate Bennett’s guide with their own personal stories.
Want a path to success? Let The Manual show you the way!
The Plan
Bennett’s plan to goal-setting is based in two key phases. The first is his 5×5 plan. It is a plan that gives readers, a plan that spans from the next five hours, to the next five years of a person’s life.
Level 1: The 5-Hour Plan
Level 2: The 5-Day Plan
Level 3: The 5-Week Plan
Level 4: The 5-Month Plan
Level 5: The 5-Year Plan
The 5×5 plan allows readers to compartmentalize their hopes and dreams into levels that make their goals easier to achieve because of the added foresight the reader receives.
The second phase is the Line of Discernment, a simplified guide to spiritual alignment inspired by Christian mediation experts and contemporary spiritual authors like Eckhart Tolle, and David Deida. The Line of Discernment breaks down the struggles of life into six key battles and illustrates the struggles against a backdrop of the urban community.
Faith, in the Face of Struggle
Bennett’s book is not only a universal guide to success, but also a personal guide to overcoming struggle. Bennett wrote The Manual during one of the toughest times in his life, on trial facing charges that would have put him behind bars for 26 years. Adamant about his innocence, Bennett focuses his efforts on the positives of his ordeal, rather than the negative. Bennett addresses his situation in the beginning of his book and looks beyond his current struggles to his future at Bethune Cookman University:
On Wednesday, October 12th, 2011, I was arrested while working my job as a Personal Trainer at the Lakeland Family YMCA by the Lakeland Police Department and charged with five felonies, including Assault & Battery on a Law Enforcement Officer, Tresspassing, and Resisting Arrest With Violence. During my arrest, I was tased, maced, and choked on the back of a police car. While handcuffed.
As of today, I’m on trial and facing up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
I didn’t throw a single punch.
It’s been almost eight months since my arrest and no witness to the event has been allowed to be questioned by my attorney. As a result of the arrest, I’ve lost my job at the Lakeland Ledger as a Sports Reporter, and my other job at the YMCA as a licensed personal trainer. Because I was arrested, I’m ineligible for unemployment and despite my Associate’s Degree and five years of published work as a journalist; I am currently “unhireable” because of my pending felonies. My last job was as a Delivery Driver for Pizza Hut.
My friends, life ain’t fair.
It is because of these recent events in my life that I write this book. During my free time I’ve had time to sit back and observe life in my humble town of Lakeland, Florida. Instead scrambling from job to job, I now have all the time in the world. At first my faith was shaken. The mark of a felony is one that is devastating and permanent to a man my age, and I had gotten it trying to do nothing but host a charity event at my job that would raise enough money to drop a well in a 3rd world country. A charity project I had worked on for two months was cancelled behind my back with a single email from my boss. When I addressed the issue on the day of a scheduled meeting, I was fired.
But throughout these current trials, God never left me. I realize that this time away from work is time to spend with him. I’ve embraced my faith, nature, music, family, mentoring, reading, and of course, writing.
Because of my arrest, all of my knowledge and experience is now available to you through this book. And that is a blessing that is beyond measure.
So now that the focus is on you…..What’s your plan?
While writing The Manual, Bennett had all felonies against him dropped, and he was able to follow all of the plans he outlined in his book. He attributes his good fortune to God, and to faith.
To everyone who reads my story, my hope is that you will see how God can pick up a soul at its lowest point and lift it to the furthest reaches of the sky. He only requires one thing.
Acceptance of his power.