“Education is a lifelong journey whose destination expands as you travel”
Jim Strovall - The Ultimate Gift
- Finance -
“Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn't, pays it” - Albert Einstein
Book Review – The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
John Bogle
This book by John Bogle is a fascinating eye opener about some of the misconceptions in the world of investing and a powerful source of education for new investors. He was the creator of Vanguard and of the world’s first index mutual fund. This edition of the book contains data updated to year 2017 which provides an enriching view of various events that have impacted investors’ decisions and the U.S. economy. Bogle also mentions throughout the book the importance of costs in portfolio’s performance and offers some advice on how to think strategically about it.
Book Review: Unshakeable
Tony Robbins and Peter Mallouk
Unshakeable is the latest book by Tony Robbins and Peter Mallouk, it became a #1 New York Times Bestseller. He collated in the book a number several facts to support some ideas about how to think about money investing and financial freedom. Most of the data and some of the strategies are applicable to the United States, however, the common lessons he learned from expert investors are applicable to almost any investor.
Your Money or Your Life
Vicki Robin
In this books the authors present a model that aims to assist the readers to change completely their relation and psychology with money and wealth. The present very practical and fundamental actions that can be easily implemented to get out of debt and plan for the future.
Their approach includes tracking personal expenses, acquiring knowledge, converting unnecessary belongings into cash, rethinking our relationship with the environment, defining financial independence for us and dedicating our lives to something that we love.
One radical idea in the book is to calculate the of working in a job, often we ignore the cost and time of commuting, working overtime, preparation for work and after work needed relaxation.
Book & Seminar Review: Motivated Money
Peter Thornhill
This book, Motivated Money, written and published by the financial adviser and speaker Peter Thornhill. He is well recognised in the investing and financial independence movement in Australia for his approach to dividends focused investing. I strongly recommend this book for those who are working on designing their financial future and goals.
He uses a lot of wit in his written words and speaking style, which I find very entertaining, particularly in his seminar.
Book Review – The Intelligent Investor
Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham wrote what is considered today one the classics on investing The Intelligent Investor. He provides deep and insightful principles on stock analysis, assets allocation, business analysis but more importantly behavioural advice on attitude towards investing in the stocks market.
The book was written mostly in the U.S. context of the sixties and seventies however with the information overload existing today in TV channels, online news portals and social media it is important to go back to basic principles and stay focused on our own plan, strategy and goals.
Book Review – The Millionaire Next Door
Thomas J. Stanley
The Millionaire Next Door is the result of a 20-year research conducted in the United States on how millionaires became wealthy. This book stayed in the New York Times Best Seller list for 179 consecutive weeks and describes the conclusions of the data collated from interviews and surveys to over 14,000 millionaires. The study shows how they make decisions on how they spend their money, time, energy, their choice of spouse, career, how they educate their children and various habits.
- Health and Well-being -
Mind Over Medicine
Lissa Rankin
Lissa Rankin presents a mind expanding approach to health and healing. She describes her own journey of what became her new philosophy for practicing medicine.
Lissa provides her findings on a number of variables that impact our health and wellbeing. She talks about the power of relationships and how they can impact our health, also having a purpose or working in something that we love can be a determining factor between health and illness. Other factors include sexuality, spirituality, money, the environment and physical activity.
The Brain that Changes Itself
Norman Doidge, M.D.
The book is about Neuroplasticity, the capacity of the brain to change as a result of thinking, behaviour and activity.
Norman Doidge presents numerous and inspiring cases of people who have been able to recover from brain injuries and explains how the brain adapts to continue its function.
He explains the importance on neuroplasticity in learning for kids and adults, mastering skills, sex, language learning and debunks myths about the learning capacity in adults.
The book contains brilliant tips on how to enhance our brain function and prevent cognitive decline.
How To Make Disease DissaPpear
Dr. Rangen Chatterjee
In this easy-to-ready book Dr. Rangan Chatterjee presents four pillars to achieve optimal health and well-being: Relax, Eat, Move and Sleep.
He combines science and facts with suggestions and practical exercises for readers to implement in a short time.
He breaks information that we may already know at a very high level about health and statistics of diabetes, Alzheimer and other conditions which makes it easy for the reader to comprehend. He makes emphasis on the fact that prevention is the best solution.
- Mindset -
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body” - Joseph Addison
The Subtle Art Of Not Giving a F*ck
Mark Manson
THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A FUCK IS THE ACTUAL TITLE OF THIS BOOK BY MARK MANSON. HE PRESENTS IN A RADICAL WAY HIS APPROACH TO DEALING WITH THE PERCEIVED OVERWHELMING INFLUX OF PROBLEMS INTO OUR LIVES, FROM THE PERSONAL ONES TO THE WORLD'S BIG ISSUES.
Mark questions some of paradigms that we learn from society and then talks about the fact that we may not have control over everything that happens in our lives but we do have control over our perspective, and this can make our lives simpler.
Although I lost count of the number of times he says 'Fuck' in the first chapter, from chapter 2 he goes deeper and illustrates his ideas with great examples, some of those from his own life.
Mindset
Carol Dweck
The book Mindset is developed around the contrast between having a FixedMindset vs a GrowthMindset.
The author, Carol Dweck, prompts the readers to ask themselves questions about different areas of life –parenting, relationships, business and school- in order to develop the Growth mindset. She presents several stories to exemplify these concepts and provides great advice.
One specific idea she presents for parents is to praise children for their effort and not for the outcome of any task they work on.
The book also is an invitation to question our traditional thinking and what we believe we are capable of learning. We can challenge ourselves to develop the skills we need to achieve our goals.
THE VALUES FACTOR
John Demartini
This book was written by one of the mentors with the greatest impact on my life. His teachings have been life transforming.
He developed the concept of Values, from a perspective that is different from common socially accepted or corporate values. Values contain the information about your inspiring mission and in this book he explains how to determine them and the impact on other areas of life.
Fluent Forever
Gabriel Wyner
Fluent Forever was one of the essential tools I used when I decided to learn French in 2015. Instead of going for the typical approach of enrolling myself in a language course I decided to study first the most efficient strategies to learning a language effectively.
The use of frequency dictionaries and linking new words to personal experiences were two very eye opening concepts for me. I took a sufficiency test 12 months after and to my surprise was able to attain a B2 level (in European standards) in speaking and reading comprehension, and even went to Paris and communicated with French people.
One of the most important lessons was that our brains have an unmeasurable capacity when we have a big why.
-Social Leadership-
Elon Musk
Ashlee Vance
Elon Musk’s biography not only describes facts of his upbringing, his personal life and how he became such an influential business man, it also explores aspects of his character and the way he tackles challenges. His vision of making humans a multi-planetary species is inspiring and invites the readers to think beyond anything we have created so far.
He describes himself as being optimistic with respect to the timing on some of his projects, and has a unique capacity to learn through reading, solve problems and run various large scale companies.
He’s known for asking for project plans detailed to the minute and more importantly he loves what he does.
The Promise of a Pencil
Adam Braun
In this beautiful story he presents how he found his life purpose and how he made the decision to listen to his inner voice and do what he felt he had to do against all the people who tried to put him down, it seemed like he needed no validation from anyone he was determined to impact the world in the best possible way, expand his vision and keep growing.
It was amazing to see how the more he focused his energy and attention to his purpose everything started to fall into place, as if the universe brought to him the people and the events that helped him to make his dream true.
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius’ meditations were not intended to be made a book but a personal diary for him to note his thoughts and insights as a roman emperor.
It is remarkable how this book can take the reader back to the times of the roman empire and the same time provide so many life lessons that stand the test of time.
A message that he reinforces along the book is that we all have a power within to control our perceptions, and not to worry about the noise in the outside world.
He also notes that life is short and that we could ask ourselves if everything we do daily is worth doing, meaningful and benefit others.
- Spirituality -
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough” - Meister Eckhart
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying
Bronnie Ware
IN THIS BOOK BRONNIE WARE TALKS ABOUT HOW HER JOURNEY FROM WORKING FOR MONEY TO WORKING FOR MEANING, SHE FOUND HERSELF IN A CORPORATE JOB THAT DID OFFER FINANCIAL SECURITY BUT SHE WASN'T WORKING FROM HER HEART AND WENT ON TO DO SOME TRAVELING AROUND AUSTRALIA AND OVERSEAS.
She then decided to work in palliative care without formal qualifications and based on her conversations with the people she cared for she started to blog about the most common regrets they expressed at the end of their lives.
A New Earth
Eckhart Tolle
Eckhart Tolle brings great insights in this book about consciousness and awakening life purpose as opposed to finding somewhere else outside of ourselves.
He promotes the idea of observing ourselves, our behaviour and the feeling that comes with our actions, this a way of understanding ourselves deeper. He also talks about how religions have been used for some people in ways that divide people instead of bringing them together.
He describes a way of achieving true freedom by practicing Nonattachment, Nonjudgement and Nonresistance.
Man’s Search For Meaning
Viktor Frankl
In this book the Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl describes his experience living in concentration camps and details how their days went, the food they ate and how people died.
This book has been influential for decades because he explains how different people living in those concentration camps reacted to all that they were exposed every day.
His powerful message in this book is that a man has the spiritual freedom to decide the meaning and attitude towards external circumstances and suffering, and that nobody can that away from him.
Having a purpose in life makes us endure any difficult situation.
- Vocation and Business -
“When the voice and the vision on the inside is more profound, and more clear and loud than opinions on the outside, you've begun to master your life" - John Demartini
BOOK REVIEW - SHOW YOUR WORK
Austin Kleon
The book in 3 sentences:
Identify something that you love, learn more about it and share the process with others.
Let the process of doing and mastering your work speak for you. It’s not necessary to try hard to impress others in any other way.
Persevere and be consistent with sharing because you don’t know what people could like, what they could learn from you, and even if your work is good, it could be just a matter of time.
The 4-Hour Workweek
Tim Ferriss
Tim Ferriss’ core message of this book is that ‘reality is negotiable’.
He invites the reader to challenge all assumptions that we have about how life is supposed to be and presents multiple strategies and practical tools and resources about productivity, eliminating what’s not important, automating what we can and giving ourselves permission to live those experiences that we keep saying that one day we will do after we leave out 9 – 5 job.
I find brilliant the idea of defining and deciding how and where we want to live, wherever that is and putting a dollar value to it. It’s a great resource to reflect on how much we live by other’s expectations.
The One Thing
Gary Keller
This brilliant book by Gary Keller initially seems to be about time management but in reality, it’s about Priorities Management.
He explains that what in holding us back from achieving extraordinary results in life is the lack of focus and attempting to do multiple things at the same time (multi-tasking).
The book is based on research and observations that he and team made and provides facts, examples and practical tools that we can apply to regain focus.
This book is relevant today more than ever when we have so much access and exposure to information and distractions.
High Performance Habits
Brendon Burchard
The best-selling author Brendon Burchard presents in this book the result of this study and research of the habits of what he calls High Performers and what makes them achieve high levels of performance.
He observed that there were multiple habits that High Performers had in common and he selected the top 6.
One key insight from the book is the idea of having clarity about what we want in ALL areas of life and setting high standards so that all our plans and actions are in alignment with the same purpose.
Also, he also explains that almost any skill can be learned if we commit to it and that we need to plan the skills we want to acquire.