A Mind in Motion

February was a good month for listening, as I was spending half of each day outside, working on trails at Prospect Mountain. Even though Feb. is a short month, I managed ten books.

Mind – Daniel Siegel **.5
Consciousness and the Brain – Stanislas Dehaene ***
Make Your Bed – William H. McRaven **
Avoidant – Jeb Kinnison ****
The Confidence Gap – Russ Harris ****
Words on the Move – John McWhorter ***
Primal Leadership – Daniel Goleman ***
Get Smart – Brian Tracy **
Unconditional Self Acceptance – Cheri Huber ***
Ikigai – Héctor García ***

(if you are not yet an Audible member, you can get one of these books for free, by signing up for a 30 day trial – use this link, and you’ll help support my work as well – Audible Trial Membership)

My strongest recommend for the month is ‘The Confidence Gap’, with ‘Avoidant’ coming in a close second. If you want a good foundational understanding of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), give ‘The Confidence Gap’ a listen. Of all the therapeutic methods out there today, this is the one that I align with the most. It’s honest, grounded, and practical.

If you want a better understanding of why some of your relationships may have gone haywire, or an understanding of why the current ‘person of interest’ in your life, may be causing you some pain and frustration, give ‘Avoidant’ a listen. While this book does not provide a full description of Attachment Theory, it does shed a great deal of light on the avoidant attachment style. I caution though, that this information should not be used to demonize people with an avoidant attachment style, but simply to understand their behavior in light of Attachment Theory.

There were three books that fell into the ‘don’t waste your time or your money’ category – ‘Mind’, ‘Make Your Bed’, and ‘Get Smart’. These books are either over-simplified to the point of being useless, over-complicated to the point of being unintelligible, or simply so obvious, that I wonder why the author spent the time writing it… perhaps they were bored. Regardless of which category each of these books falls into, don’t waste your time… you’ve got better things to do.

Winter tends to slow me down… and this affords me to opportunity to really tune in to the books I’m listening to. Most of the eight books I listened to in January, were experienced while lying in the snow, cutting off trees at ground level with a hand saw… This type of activity, really embeds the words into your full experience.

Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink **.5
Braving The Wilderness – Brené Brown ***.5
The End of Average – Todd Rose ***.5
Deviate – Beau Lotto ****
Ask More – Frank Sesno ***
Stop Saying You’re Fine – Mel Robbins ***
Advice Not Given – Mark Epstein ***
12 Rules for Life – Jordan Peterson ***.5

(if you are not yet an Audible member, you can get one of these books for free, by signing up for a 30 day trial – use this link, and you’ll help support my work as well – Audible Trial Membership)

Of the eight, ‘Deviate’ by Beau Lotto, stands head and shoulders above the rest. Drawing on his experience and research as a neuroscientist, Beau makes the case that we are not meant to perceive the world accurately, but to perceive it usefully. Black and white, are never black and white… we just see them that way. Knowing this, can help you ‘deviate’ from your perceptual tendencies, and open yourself up to a world that is far richer that you realize. Great listen.

While 2017 was lighter than previous years, in total numbers of books completed (87), it was jam packed with great reads. A five star rating is not something I give out easily, as they are in my opinion, near perfect books, at least in their ability to communicate ideas or information that is significantly impactful. Before I give such a rating, I do my best to try and talk myself out of it, and to look for ways in which I might be biased. So if the rating sticks, it means something to me.

All of the books below are ‘must reads’ in my book, but the first three are life changing.

The Knowledge Illusion – Steven Sloman *****
The Secrets of Story – Matt Bird *****
The Upward Spiral – Alex Korb *****
The Art of Power – Thich Naht Hahn ****.5
A General Theory of Love – ****.5
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F%@k – Mark Manson ****.5
You Are Now Less Dumb ****.5
The Ego Tunnel – Thomas Metzinger ****
Messy – Tim Harford ****
Who Are You Really? – Brian Little ****
Don’t Think of an Elephant – George Lakoff ****
The Evolving Self – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ****
Behave – Robert Sapolsky ****
Denial – Ajit Varki, Danny Brower ****
The Lost Art of Listening – Michael P. Nichols ****
The Elements of Eloquence – Mark Forsyth ****
Made to Stick – Dan and Chip Heath ****
Drive – Dan Pink ****
Poke The Box – Seth Godin ****

(if you are not yet an Audible member, you can get one of these books for free, by signing up for a 30 day trial – use this link, and you’ll help support my work as well – Audible Trial Membership)

December was an interesting month, as I finished nine books that came highly recommended to me, but only one of the books (‘Messy’) stood out. The others were good, but felt short of living up to the hype.

The Inner Runner – Jason Karp ***.5
Natural Born Heroes – Christopher McDougal ***
Messy – Tim Harford ****
On Bullshit – Harry Frankfurt ***
Peak Performance – Brad Stulberg, Steve Magness ***
On Power – Robert Caro ***.5
Non-Zero – Robert Wright ***.5
Out of the Wreckage – George Monbiot ***.5
Spark Joy – Marie Kondo ***

(if you are not yet an Audible member, you can get one of these books for free, by signing up for a 30 day trial – use this link, and you’ll help support my work as well – Audible Trial Membership)

Micro-Resilience – Bonnie St. John **
Moral Tribes – Joshua Greene ***
Light Falls – Brian Greene ***.5
Poke The Box – Seth Godin ****
Search Inside Yourself – Chade-Meng Tan ***
Self Reliance – Ralph Waldo Emerson ***