I knew Leonardo Da Vinci was a great painter and a brilliant inventor, but I really had no idea of how curious and brilliant he was until I read this book. Walter Isaacson does a great job of taking you through Leonardo’s life and gives an insight into this amazing man who was curious beyond belief and possibly a little ADD or ADHD. He never finished a book. He often did not finish paintings. He carried the Mona Lisa around with him for 13 years…adding a touch here…a brush stroke there until his death. His list of unfinished paintings and projects is extensive.
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Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life. By Gregg Levoy
Wow. This is a very thought-provoking book about the various aspects of finding your passion in the world.
From paying attention to the voice in our heads, to having the courage to act upon that voice, and the journey that it often takes to get there. Gregg is a bright guy that has so much to say about this topic and how hard it was for him to find his passion that ultimately led to his life writing this book, doing passion retreats, and speaking around the world. As I try to summarize this book I am skimming the 100’s of sentences and paragraphs that I have highlighted looking for nuggets to share here.
If you have read my blogs you’ll see how serendipity and trusting hunches is important to me and in Callings, he devotes a chapter to synchronicity, another way to create luck in your search for your new career path. Synchronicity is a coincidence…a meaningful coincidence that can inform us, primarily through intuition. A few times Gregg was on one of his journey’s looking for a change in work (to find that passion), he would find a Queen of Hearts playing card. One of his friends said it was telling him he was on the right path. I love those stories.
This book is a journey and one that I encourage you to take if you find yourself searching for something better. My book is filled with highlights and notes and my morning journal has even more thoughts from this book scattered throughout.
A Blaze of Glory by Jeff Shaara
Shaara does another great job of bringing me to the Civil War with all the sounds, emotions, personalities that war brings. This book is about the western front and the Battle of Shiloh. This was a battle I knew little about but one thing he confirmed with me is that wars are won and lost on luck so often as well as poor decisions. It does NOT feel like one General is smarter than the other, just poor decisions, political struggles, and luck.
The loss of lives in this battle were staggering and so sad. Families against each other. Officers against each other who attended West Point together. Brutal war.
Another great book by Shaara.
The Power of Story: Change Your Story, Change Your Destiny in Business and in Life. By Jim Loehr
Reviewed by Scott Woodard
Loehr is a psychologist who runs the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, FL. He works with world-class athletes, business executives and other high achievers to hone their stories so that they perform at optimal levels. His premise is that we tell ourselves stories that help us navigate through life because they provide structure and direction. The stories we tell ourselves give our lives meaning.
Because the stories we create and tell about ourselves form the “only reality we will ever know in this life…and since it’s our destiny to follow our stories, it’s imperative that we do everything in our power to get our stories right” (Loehr’s emphasis). Most of us, he asserts, get our stories wrong; or more accurately, tell a story that’s really someone else’s – our parents, our bosses, our spiritual advisors and others who have influenced us throughout our lives.
Launch. By Jeff Walker
I have been focused on my website and e-marketing lately and someone recommended Launch. This book is about Jeff’s “secret formula to sell almost anything online“, he calls it his Product Launch Formula (PLF). He breaks the launch into 4 parts.
Pre-Prelaunch- where you begin to build anticipation with your community and can also be used to make tweaks to your product by using the feedback you get here.
Prelaunch- this is a series of emails over 5- 12 days that gives some value to your community while activating mental triggers such as: authority, social proof, community, reciprocity, and anticipation.
Launch – this is the day you open your product to the community and usually has a finite number of days. [Read more…] about Launch. By Jeff Walker
Career Judo. The Martial Art of the Mindful Career. By John Long with Erin Newman
I really like this book which uses Judo as a way to describe the career process. Judo uses control, wisdom, and patience. Your career development requires this as well.
John lays out the various steps required to find your next job with concrete examples of what you should do. Not only that, he describes why you should do it. He starts with helping you discover what makes you unique and moves to how to capture that in all forms of communication from your resume, cover letter, to your online professional presence, all the way through the interview.
Tying Judo quotes throughout the chapters to make his point, is done mindfully and powerfully. In one of the final chapters that speaks to staying positive (with great tips on how to do that), I found this quote,
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