The Indispensable Element: Six Keys to Lead Yourself to Success in Your Life, Work, and Relationships Book Review

Full disclosure: I was given an ARC of this book from Stress Free Book Marketing in exchange for an honest review.

It’s been awhile since I reviewed a self-help book. Yes, I listed Buy My Book, Not Because You Should, But I’d Like Some Money by John Marszalkowski as one, but it’s not a traditional title in that genre. To make it a true self-help book, one has to do two things. 1. The author has to talk about how they overcame their struggles and 2. They have to describe how one can do the same. Today’s title The Indispensable Element: Six Keys to Lead Yourself to Success in Your Life, Work, and Relationships by Micah E. Huggins, Esq. does those things in an active and engaging manner even if the religious tone can turn off some people.

The Indispensable Element: Six Keys to Lead Yourself to Success in Your Life, Work, and Relationships lays out the framework to become a better version of one’s self. Attorney, pastor, and author Micah E. Huggins teaches one to identify the things that are holding one back in life as well as how to step up and lead in relationships, work, and one’s personal life. If one is looking to become the leader God created them to be, great leadership starts with guiding one’s self. Specifically, one will learn how to do the following:

• Naturally attract followers and supporters.
• Strengthen your personal and professional relationships.
• Position yourself for new and better career opportunities.
• Break unproductive habits and develop habits that serve you.
• Become confident enough to pursue your biggest dreams.

To sum up, the book believes that the indispensable element to become successful in life is the ability to lead. After all, dreams don’t always come true just by wishing for them. Huggins argues that one has to actively pursue them in order for them to become reality. This involves creating the plan and goals along the way as well as getting to know people with similar mindsets.

However, Huggins is very clear about what leadership actually is. He defines leadership as “the use of your gifts and talents to create positive influence and increase the value other people contribute to society and humanity for the greater good, while also fulfilling your calling and purpose” (p.9).

In other words, true leadership is all about helping others to develop their skills and taking into consideration how one’s actions can affect others. On the contrary, there’s an influencer. In Huggins’s mind, this person can “convince other people to change their beliefs and behaviors…based solely on what’s best for you [the influencer]” (p.12).

A leader can be an influencer, but an influencer can’t be a leader because they are mainly making decisions based on self-interest for good or worse. 

As one can tell from the quotes from the book, Huggins uses jargon that anybody can understand. In fact, this is not the only way he makes it highly accessible. Each of the six keys – gifts, vision, integrity, people, discernment, and faith – gets their own chapter, which are no more than 15 pages. They start off with a story drawn from the author’s own life to make his point about each of the essential aspects of becoming a leader and end with “Indispensable Action Steps.” These are a set of exercises that involve answering questions related to each of the six elements. Huggins actively encourages readers to answer them in a notebook or journal using the Assess-Decide-Act method. This is how invested he is in ensuring that people develop their ability to lead while reading this book.

On top of that, the author makes some excellent points. In the Vision chapter, he recounts how he had to take the bar exam not once, not twice, but four times in order to pass despite the many hours he spent studying and the money he paid to take it. His goal was to become an attorney, and to make that happen, he had to create a plan or a vision. After all, he states, “A leader cannot lead without a vision” (p.44).

In another example, in the “Discernment” chapter, Huggins asserts, “True discernment requires [one] to assess [the] choices based on what’s right for everyone involved and the season [one is] in at that time” (p.88). 

He illustrates this point by recalling a time, when he – as a public defender – was offered the opportunity to buy his boss’s law firm as a franchise. Instead of thinking it over and consulting with his loving and trusting wife Lauren, he took the deal, believing it would make him rich. However, he had to pay a franchise fee and a percentage of gross, not net, sales to his boss. This resulted in the author struggling to stay afloat, and it didn’t help that the staff was still loyal to his former employer. He eventually was able to get out, but had he considered more of that deal, he probably wouldn’t have taken it in the first place.

Huggins makes The Indispensable Element a very effective self-help book, but there’s one aspect that may turn off some readers. You see, he is a pastor as well as a lawyer. He doesn’t shove his religious views down people’s throats, yet his beliefs are still on display because they are part of his life. While I enjoyed his pastor-related stories, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the passages, which he discussed about putting one’s faith into God. Now, this is a me problem since I’m agnostic, but I know that other people might have a stronger reaction with so much religious talk. Surprisingly, this is my second Christian self-help book that I’ve reviewed on this website (the first one was The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity by Matthew Kelly). This is the better of the two because it doesn’t have any inflammatory language, and Huggins spends plenty of time examining his own personal relationship with God, which hasn’t always been perfect.

With that being said, I feel that people of any faith can read this. A lot of values that Christianity espouses can be found in other religions. So if people are able to switch certain words to fit with their beliefs, they would still be able to enjoy it the same as a Christian.

Overall, The Indispensable Element: Six Keys to Lead Yourself to Success in Your Life, Work, and Relationships by Micah E. Huggins, Esq. is a great traditional self-help book for Christians and other religious people. The author is able to communicate his ideas and thoughts in an accessible manner, and he’s actively encouraging his readers to develop their abilities to lead. All of it feels genuine. Even the cover, which features Huggins sitting on a stool, communicates that this man has faith in you to become a great leader. On the other hand, readers who aren’t religious may have a bit of a hard time getting into it due to the devout-like content, yet one could switch some words, and the point would still come across well. The book is out now, so go get it! It’s one of the better Christian self-help books that I’ve read.

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