3 Mind-Blowing Books That Restored My Past and Reshaped My Future
About how to hit play again and restart from zero.
Who didn’t hate their mothers when they forced you to read?
Reading forcibly is a traumatic experience for a child. At that time, I hated my mom. She was bullying me with these strange objects we call books.
If I had nine friends calling for me, I was needed to complete the 5x5 soccer game. Why should I be grounded at home, with a book in my hands and my mother right beside me?
It was probably one of the most challenging times of my life.
As you can imagine, now my life doesn’t have any meaning without books.
At my house, they’re everywhere. I don’t have a room that doesn’t have a book. I need them around. I need to have that feeling that the author is right beside me. If I need to be with him for a while, I just have to stretch my arm.
Books have that magical power. They are always there, waiting to be defoliated. The author’s thoughts stay in the same form as they were typed. Some of them in the old typewriters, recent ones in a more sophisticated digital format. But they don’t go anywhere.
Books are little time machines. When we open the first page, we go back in time to that special place the author wants us to be- ten, a hundred, or a thousand years ago. We just go, in trans dimensional supersonic transportation, landing in the first paragraph.
We look around, and it’s just the author and us. Sometimes he puts us right in the middle of an action-packed scene. We have only tackled and are already flying in a spaceship, chased by 5 enemy ships.
On other occasions, we’re transported to a field of gorgeous flowers. Places where the peace, quietness, and silence go beyond our most conservative dreams.
We never know what will happen when we open to page one.
And it’s that mystery that makes books unique.
You navigate inside the author’s brain, like Christopher Columbus on the high seas. Suffering all the turbulence that a story can cause us. And without knowing if we will sink or continue rowing, or even if we finally reach land.
That mystery and mistic are what keep us go to libraries or book stores. We feel that ancestral burden and weight, but also the responsibility. We are the only ones who have the power to share words from inside of a book into the real world.
Good Books Are Irrefutable, and Bad Books Refute Themselves
The more books you read, the more you grow your level of requirements.
You know instantly if the book fits you or not by reading the intro or the index. You have to manage your time effectively if you want to read 30 to 40 books a year.
But what I realized at the beginning of 2020 is that my time and mental energy are too precious to be wasted on bad books.- Sinem Günel
It’s crucial to have a rapid analysis matrix to see if a book can burn part of our precious time.
Book analysis matrix
So, three questions must be made:
- How can I use this book?
- Why should I use this book?
- When will I use this book?
The first refers to make use of what you learn. The second it’s about relevance — the third about timing.
If you don’t master these 3 issues, you’re wasting your priceless time. We’re facing an era of effective time management. The requests are immense, and the content enters our homes like a tsunami.
That’s why it’s so vital to select the books that really make the difference. Books that answer your Hows, your Whys, and your Whens.
If knowledge is power, learning is your superpower.- Jim Kwik
‘The Seasons Of Life’ by Jim Rohn
This book was first printed in April 1981. Talks about life itself. Life’s principles. And so simple they are.
Written by Jim Rohn, the Seasons of Life seems to be a simple book. And it is. Probably too simple. Rohn starts to give examples, paraphrasing John Kennedy and Winston Churchill. Talks also about Cicero and Daniel Webster.
Then turns into the depth of his own character. His ability to reawakening the sleeping spirit within us is overwhelming. We are filled with ideas on goals, personal development, leadership skills, and the value of effective communications.
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.- Jim Rohn
When I started to read his books, I thought it was just another coach trying to sell his product in any way he could. But a friend told me Jim was different: the way he writes about things is unique, you should read him. He has everything to do with you.
The intellectual honesty that Jim Rohn put in his words is something distinctive and clarifying.
For most, we remain forever in one of two categories- either poor, seeking to become wealthy or wealthy, seeking always to rediscover the happiness we had while we were poor.- Jim Rohn
I recently watched some compelling videos of Benjamin Hardy, Ph.D., about redesigning our future self’s mindset. And look what I’ve found in Jim Rohn’s book written 40 years ago:
What happened even as recently a yesterday is no longer any consequence unless we choose to allow it to be.- Jim Rohn
He died on 5 December 2009 and left an untold legacy of principles the best coaches still use in their daily work.
‘Principles’ by Ray Dalio
Before I begin telling you what I think, I want to establish that I’m a ‘dumb shit’ who doesn’t know much relative to what I need to know. Whatever success I’ve had in life has had more to do with learning how to deal with my not knowing than anything I know.- Ray Dalio
Ray is an American billionaire hedge fund manager. A philanthropist who has served as co-chief investment officer of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates.
In his 70s, he decided to share his principles worldwide.
We generally think about these kinds of men as greedy people.
But not Ray.
In Principles, he left a legacy of pillars for every human being about life itself. Not about business nor billions, but only about life.
School typically doesn’t prepare young people for real-life- unless their lives are spent following instructions and pleasing others. In my opinion, that’s why so many students who succeed in school fail in life.- Ray Dalio
Dalio was a significant person in his field. He could solve some vast issues about the stock markets. Things that influenced the functionality of the macro-economy globally.
In the last innings of his life, he and his wife made the benevolent decision to give everything back to society. Their philanthropism in local communities, especially in education, is their fingerprint.
There are particular days that I need to be objective, to see things in a very simplistic way. So, I grab Principles and start reading some topics. When I notice, I’m reading for one hour and shaking my head. That’s it.
Look to nature to learn who reality works.- Ray Dalio.
‘Start With Why’ by Simon Sinek
Why is Apple so innovative? Year after year, they are more creative than all the competition. And they are just a computer company, right? There must be something else.
As it turns out, there is a pattern. People like Steve Jobs, Martin Lutter King, or the Wright brothers had something in common, and it’s the complete opposite of everybody else.
Every single organization on the planet knows what they do.
Some know how they do it.
Very few people from organizations know why they do it.
By asking why Simon Sinek means their purpose, what’s their cause, or their belief.
People don’t buy what you do; people buy why you do it.
Sinek explains it simply, through Apple’s example. Everything we do, and we believe, challenge the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. We make our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly. We just happen to make computers. Are you ready to buy one of our computers?
Apple won the highly competitive race by asking why in the first place.
People don’t buy what you do. People buy why you do it.- Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek challenged my innermost instincts.
It’s all grounded in the depths of biology, he says.
The human brain is broken into three sections. Our newest brain, our homo sapiens brain, and our neo-cortex brain correspond to the what level.
The middle two sections make our limbic brains. And our limbic brains are responsible for our feelings, like trust and loyalty. And they can’t communicate.
That’s why sometimes we make decisions and say: I know I should choose this, but it doesn’t feel right. I’m gonna go to that one. We don’t know why, but our in-depth brain dominates our decisions because we believe them.
As the brain that controls decision-making doesn’t contain language, we sometimes don’t buy something because it doesn’t feel right.
Start With Why is not a book; it’s a disruptive piece of art. It was a game-changer to those who read it because it clarified the way our brain works. It showed us that believing is much more overpowering than wanting.
There are only two ways to influence human behavior; you can manipulate it or inspire it.- Simon Sinek
Final Thought
If we don’t read, we don’t have the privilege to know the authors.
They are the ones that bring new and disruptive concepts to the street. They have the power to invert the status quo.
They are the ones who call into question the laws that most condition us. They question the rules that bind us the most, and the principles that most influence us.
If we don’t read books, we stop questioning the world. Our lives become a mere and unpretentious art of passing the time without grace or curiosity.
Books are the ancestral hardware that contains powerful software that rules the world. It’s an endless asset that will live through time and space.
Without books and human beings, life on earth doesn’t have any meaning. There’s no story to tell about what happened in the past and what may happen in the future.
We must survive to tell the story.
We are the messengers.
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