I have been fascinated by human potential for as long as I can remember. As a youth, my passion manifested in physical skills, pursuing a career in professional tennis, then in martial arts, for example. In my twenties, my interest included the mental and ‘spiritual’ side of life, too. Later, a young family needing to be fed forced me to consider yet another area of life to ‘master’: work and business. With so much of our lives spent in the workplace (a third), it seemed the perfect environment to test all that I had learnt about pushing the boundaries of human potential; mind, body, emotions, and spirit.
I wrote...
How to be a Buddhist Millionaire: 9 practical steps to being happy in a materialist world
Matt Jardine, award-winning author, podcaster, martial arts teacher, and entrepreneur, has spent 20 years seeking the answer to one of life’s conundrums: how to lead an authentic, spiritual and creative life in a relentlessly money-centric world.
In this insightful book, he brings together Buddhist teachings, spiritual lessons, and the advice and experience of a variety of experts and professionals. With a light touch, he dispels the deep-rooted fears and limiting beliefs that hold us back, and forces us to question the very foundations of our lives and what really matters. How to be a Buddhist Millionaire teaches us that money doesn’t have to be a dirty word, and that if you search for happiness rather than the pot of gold, success is more likely to follow.
I’ll start with the way my own journey began: with practical, nuts and bolts ‘physical’ style actions.
For this I recommend Cal Newport’s first book, one of my top three non-fiction titles of all time.
I got so much from Cal’s book that it’s difficult to sum up in a short review, but his advice helped me establish work behaviours and routines that led to the completion of two fiction titles (my debut novels) and another non-fiction title (my third) during the worst of the COVID pandemic.
I recommend you look at all of Cal’s work but begin with Deep Work. You won’t be sorry.
Many modern knowledge workers now spend most of their brain power battling distraction and interruption, whether because of the incessant pinging of devices, noisy open-plan offices or the difficulty of deciding what deserves your attention the most. When Cal Newport coined the term 'deep work' on his popular blog, Study Hacks, in 2012, he found the concept quickly hit a nerve. Most of us, after all, are excruciatingly familiar with shallow work instead - distractedly skimming the surface of our workload and never getting to the important part. Newport began exploring the methods and mindset that foster a practice of…
Although I write within the genre of ‘Self-help’ and ‘Personal Growth’, as a reader, I am put off by titles that are too wishy-washy, saccharine, or worse, untested.
Remember the saying, ‘Don’t walk in the footsteps of the masters, seek what they sought’? This is an important reminder for us to find and test our own truths rather than blindly follow others.
For this reason, I recommend any work by Robert Greene, but particularly Mastery.
Greene is a master at cutting through the hyperbole and getting to the core of what drives human behaviour and improved productivity without the weird bells and whistles.
His well thought-out ideas are based on evidence, road tested, backed-up by interesting case studies and applicable to our lives.
From the bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power and The Laws of Human Nature, a vital work revealing that the secret to mastery is already within you.
Each one of us has within us the potential to be a Master. Learn the secrets of the field you have chosen, submit to a rigorous apprenticeship, absorb the hidden knowledge possessed by those with years of experience, surge past competitors to surpass them in brilliance, and explode established patterns from within. Study the behaviors of Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Leonardo da Vinci and the nine contemporary Masters interviewed for this…
As my journey in personal growth continued, there came a time when I realised that the hard physical, practical approach was just one area I had to master if I was to steer my life to the heights I dreamed for myself.
This is when I thought about meaning and the more intangible areas of success, such as motivation, desire, deeply held beliefs, and limiting thoughts.
It is easy to stumble into the strange and esoteric within this area of literature, therefore I cannot recommend Simon Sinek’s book highly enough.
It is a no-nonsense sensible work that will help you find your ‘meaning’ (your why?) in life. Once you have found this, it’s much easier to find the ‘how’ that will lead to your success.
When pursuing any goal, an inspiring work life, loving relationships, radiant health, abundant free-flowing wealth, whatever it may be, at some stage you may face a hard truth: that much (if not all) of your success and failure is determined by what goes on between your ears.
Honestly, I wish I had picked up Dr. Dweck’s book twenty years earlier. I’m convinced, had I done so, I would have given Roger Federer a run for his money on centre court at Wimbledon some time.
Mindset is a book that my wife (a school headteacher) and I both agree should be mandatory reading for every parent, teenager, or person wanting to release themselves from the tyranny of self-doubt.
And, of course, well written, researched and tried and tested.
World-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, in decades of research on achievement and success, has discovered a truly groundbreaking idea-the power of our mindset.
Dweck explains why it's not just our abilities and talent that bring us success-but whether we approach them with a fixed or growth mindset. She makes clear why praising intelligence and ability doesn't foster self-esteem and lead to accomplishment, but may actually jeopardize success. With the right mindset, we can motivate our kids and help them to raise their grades, as well as reach our own goals-personal and professional. Dweck reveals what all great parents, teachers,…
This is a book I read almost thirty years ago after struggling with confidence following a street attack in my teens. I still dip in and out of it today, albeit for very different guidance.
It may seem strange to some that I have picked books that put so much emphasis on ‘mind-work’ to help one achieve the goal of not only enjoying work so much they leap out of bed in the morning to it, but that also provides an abundant living. Yet, my years of successes and failures have taught me that the mind is the missing link in doing so.
I love the work I do and the life that it affords, and I would love for that to be your experience, too.
Internationally renowned author, Susan Jeffers, has helped millions of people around the globe to overcome their fears and heal the pain in their lives. Such fears may include:
Public speaking; Asserting yourself; Making decisions; Intimacy; Changing jobs; Being alone; Ageing; Driving; Losing a loved one; Ending a relationship.
But whatever your anxieties, Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway will give you the insight and tools to vastly improve your ability to handle any given situation. You will learn to live your life the way you want - so you can move from a place of pain, paralysis and depression…
Neuroscience PhD student Frankie Conner has finally gotten her life together—she’s determined to discover the cause of her depression and find a cure for herself and everyone like her. But the first day of her program, she meets a group of talking animals who have an urgent message they refuse to share. And while the animals may not have Frankie’s exalted human brain, they know things she doesn’t, like what happened before she was adopted.
To prove she’s sane, Frankie investigates her forgotten past and conducts clandestine experiments. But just when she uncovers the truth, she has to make an impossible choice: betray the animals she’s fallen in love with—or give up her last chance at success and everything she thought she knew.
Frankie Conner, first-year graduate student at UC Berkeley, is finally getting her life together. After multiple failures and several false starts, she's found her calling: become a neuroscientist, discover the cause of her depression and anxiety, and hopefully find a cure for herself and everyone like her.
But her first day of the program, Frankie meets a mysterious group of talking animals who claim to have an urgent message for her. The problem is, they're not willing to share it. Not yet. Not until she's ready.
While Frankie's new friends may not have her highly evolved, state-of-the-art, exalted human brain,…
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