Sunday, 31 May 2020

Just F*cking Do it | Noor Hibbert

JUST F*CKING DO IT will take you on a mind-altering journey of self discovery and personal transformation using an approach which combines psychological rigour with spiritual power - helping you to become the best version of yourself and create a life of happiness and abundance. True personal development can only be achieved by changing how you think and interact with the world. This book will demonstrate that, alongside purposeful and practical steps to improve your life, you have the power to multiply your success and happiness by harnessing the Law of Attraction. Whatever obstacles you face, this book will show you how to stop thinking small, make positive changes and live the life you deserve.

The first thing I want to tell you is, wherever you are today, right now, is not where you have to be next week or next month or next year.

It’s like owning a gorgeous brand-new Ferrari. You sit in it knowing that it could take you on a wonderful journey but when you start the engine and rev it up, it doesn’t move. You take it to the garage and the engineer informs you that it’s been badly programmed.

You are that Ferrari. You have all the potential, beauty and power to go on any journey and yet you are struggling to move because of faulty programming. It’s time to reprogram you, baby.

Where you are now is not where you can be in a week, month or year.

After all, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

It’s All About the Vibes

Before Ben and Jerry made tubs of delicious, ridiculously high-calorie ice cream came the thought of building an ice cream empire. Everything that is now in the physical world started off as a thought, a daydream or a desire.

If you can see it in your mind, then you have the power to make it a reality.

Thursday, 27 February 2020

Elon Musk | Ashlee Vance

To be honest, Elon Musk's biography is a big disappointment for me. I even could not finish the book. But still, I have some highlights. Here they are:

As his ex-wife, Justine, put it, “He does what he wants, and he is relentless about it. It’s Elon’s world, and the rest of us live in it.”

Musk sampled a handful of ideologies and then ended up more or less back where he had started, embracing the sci-fi lessons found in one of the most influential books in his life: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. “He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask,” Musk said. “Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy."

“The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment,” he said.

I ran out of books to read at the school library and the neighborhood library,” Musk said. “This is maybe the third or fourth grade. I tried to convince the librarian to order books for me. So then, I started to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica. That was so helpful. You don’t know what you don’t know. You realize there are all these things out there.”

Wednesday, 1 January 2020

The Infinite Game | Simon Sinek

From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today's ever-changing world.

How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind.

The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we're in?
In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision...

Here is the passages that I highlighted when I was reading the book:

If there are at least two players, a game exists. And there are two kinds of games: finite games and infinite games.

Tuesday, 3 December 2019

Nine Lies About Work | Marcus Buckingham, Ashley Goodall


You crave feedback. Your organization's culture is the key to its success. Strategic planning is essential. Your competencies should be measured and your weaknesses shored up. Leadership is a thing. These may sound like basic truths of our work lives today. But actually, they're lies. As strengths guru and bestselling author Marcus Buckingham and Cisco Leadership and Team Intelligence head Ashley Goodall tell there are some big lies--distortions, faulty assumptions, wrong thinking--that we encounter every time we show up for work. Nine lies, to be exact. They cause dysfunction and frustration, ultimately resulting in workplaces that are a pale shadow of what they could be. But there are those who can get past the lies and discover what's real. These freethinking leaders recognize the power and beauty of our individual uniqueness. They know that emergent patterns are more valuable than received wisdom and that evidence is more powerful than dogma. With engaging stories and incisive analysis, the authors reveal the essential truths that such freethinking leaders will recognize immediately: that it is the strength and cohesiveness of your team, not your company's culture, that matter most; that we should focus less on top-down planning and more on giving our people reliable, real-time intelligence; that rather than trying to align people's goals we should strive to align people's sense of purpose and meaning; that people don't want constant feedback, they want helpful attention. This is the real world of work, as it is and as it should be. Nine Lies About Work reveals the few core truths that will help you show just how good you are to those who truly rely on you.

Thursday, 14 November 2019

Self Knowledge | Mark Manson


Emotions are not a choice. Behavior is.

Everything is Fucked | Mark Manson

“Values” means we find something important enough to work toward, something better, that’s worth striving for. And “community” means we are part of a group that values the same things we do and is working toward achieving those things. Without a community, we feel isolated, and our values cease to mean anything.

Without values, nothing appears worth pursuing. And without control, we feel powerless to pursue anything. Lose any of the three, and you lose the other two. Lose any of the three, and you lose hope.

This assumption (that we must use our rational mind to dominate our emotions) has trickled down through the centuries and continues to define much of our culture today. Let’s call it the “Classic Assumption.” The Classic Assumption says that if a person is undisciplined, unruly, or malicious, it’s because he lacks the ability to subjugate his feelings, that he is weak-willed or just plain fucked up. The Classic Assumption sees passion and emotion as flaws, errors within the human psyche that must be overcome and fixed within the self.

Sunday, 20 October 2019

How to Win Friends and Influence People | Dale Carnegie

Bernard Shaw once remarked: ‘If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.’ Shaw was right. Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. So, if you desire to master the principles you are studying in this book, do something about them. Apply these rules at every opportunity. If you don’t you will forget them quickly. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.

Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

It takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.

Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent performer at air shows, was returning to his home in Los Angeles from an air show in San Diego. As described in the magazine Flight Operations, at three hundred feet in the air, both engines suddenly stopped. By deft manoeuvring he managed to land the plane, but it was badly damaged although nobody was hurt. Hoover’s first act after the emergency landing was to inspect the aeroplane’s fuel. Just as he suspected, the World War II propeller plane he had been flying had been fuelled with jet fuel rather than gasoline. Upon returning to the airport, he asked to see the mechanic who had serviced his aeroplane. The young man was sick with the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed down his face as Hoover approached. He had just caused the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused the loss of three lives as well. You can imagine Hoover’s anger. One could anticipate the tongue-lashing that this proud and precise pilot would unleash for that carelessness. But Hoover didn’t scold the mechanic; he didn’t even criticise him. Instead, he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and said, ‘To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow.