Jessica Grose’s recent New York Times review of Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation she describes a memoir that wants to be purely personal yet repeatedly drifts into the language of 12-step recovery and spiritual self-help.

Gilbert insists she isn’t offering a program, but her story leans heavily on frameworks that sound like instruction. The result, Grose suggests, is a tension between lived experience and the subtle pressure to turn that experience into a universal guide.

I see that tension everywhere in the world at large, and business world in particular, including my own writing.

The Business Parallel

Too many business and success books follow the same pattern. They begin as genuine stories of discovery and experimentation, but by the final chapters they morph into manuals—checklists, guaranteed formulas, or five-step plans that claim to be for everyone.

Influence culture rewards the idea that if something worked once, it can be codified and repeated endlessly. But business—like life—rarely fits a template. What begins as a nuanced personal insight can be marketed as a one-size-fits-all system and packaged for mass consumption.

Napoleon Hill, wrote in an essay titled – ‘How to Live your Own Life’, that the Creator gave us the complete, unchallengeable right of prerogative over one thing, and only one thing – our own mind.

He elaborated:

It must have been the Creator’s purpose to encourage us to live our own lives, to think our own thoughts, without interference from others. Otherwise we would not have been provided with such a clear dominion over our minds.

Simply by exercising this profound prerogative over your own mind and life, you may lift yourself to great heights of achievement in any field of endeavor you choose. Exercising this prerogative is the only real approach to genius.

Hill’s definition reframes genius.

Genius /ˈdʒiːniəs/ One who has taken full possession of his own mind and directed it toward objectives of his own choosing without permitting outside influences to discourage or mislead him.

This is why it’s so important to honour and protect our genius.
It isn’t rarefied; it’s the birthright of anyone willing to think and act independently.

Every big idea can be treated as a hypothesis, not a commandment.
I rely on a simple, field-tested formula I call CABS:

• Continue what clearly fuels your vision and energy.
• Adjust what shows promise but needs refining.
• Begin only what aligns with your natural strengths.
• Stop what drains purpose or merely copies someone else’s playbook.

Rather than adopting an author’s system wholesale, experiment with it.
Document what works, discard what doesn’t, and let your own data—your lived business reality—drive decisions.

Read Widely, Think Independently

This doesn’t mean ignoring books or refusing outside influence completely.
Quite the opposite. The world is full of clues and sparks hidden in other people’s stories. Sometimes a single sentence unlocks an insight you’ve been circling for months. But you’ll know which ideas belong in your world only when you’re clear about yourself.

And often the most transformative answers are already in plain sight.
CABS isn’t just a testing mechanism; it’s a way to surface the truths you’ve sensed all along but haven’t yet acted on. Sometimes the bravest move isn’t adopting a new system—it’s finally trusting your own instinct.

Why It Matters

Influencers, even well-meaning ones, can homogenize the world. If you let every trend, framework, or “must-do” dictate your moves, you risk muting the very genius that sets you apart. The discipline is not to avoid ideas but to own the filter—to stay curious, read widely, and experiment without surrendering authorship of your story.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

Consider how stories—whether told in a memoir, a management classic, or a viral LinkedIn thread—shape the way you see your own work.

1. Which narratives have subtly defined what you believe is possible or “normal” in business?
2. Where might borrowed language or borrowed expectations still be steering key choices?
3. And how would your strategy shift if you set aside every outside storyline and looked only at the evidence of your own lived experience?

About Giselle

About Giselle – Giselle Hudson is a writer, possibility thinker, Strategic Alignment Facilitator™, and MCODE Legacy Coach whose work revolves around asking the one question Every engagement begins with The One Question Every Business Must Answer™ — the catalyst for every strategic decision we’ll make together.