BookShop

The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020

2021-02-19T22:09:00.004+05:30

The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020

Hello readers here's we listed best, The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020

10. Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami

A New York Times 'Notable Book of 2020'
One of Elena Ferrante's 'Top 40 Books by Female Authors'
'A sharply observed and heartbreaking portrait of what it means to be a woman, in Japan and beyond' –Time, 'The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020'
'Breathtaking' – Haruki Murakami, author of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

On a hot summer’s day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss of her looks, has travelled to Tokyo in search of breast enhancement surgery. She's accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently stopped speaking, finding herself unable to deal with her own changing body and her mother’s self-obsession. Her silence dominates Natsuko’s rundown apartment, providing a catalyst for each woman to grapple with their own anxieties and their relationships with one another.

Eight years later, we meet Natsuko again. She is now a writer and find herself on a journey back to her native city, returning to memories of that summer and her family’s past as she faces her own uncertain future.

In Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami paints a radical and intimate portrait of contemporary working class womanhood in Japan, recounting the heartbreaking journeys of three women in a society where the odds are stacked against them. This is an unforgettable full length English language debut from a major new international talent.

'Bold, modern and surprising' – An Yu, author of Braised Pork
'Incredible and propulsive' – Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times

9. Where the Wild Ladies Are, Aoko Matsuda

In this "delightfully uncanny" collection of feminist retellings of traditional Japanese folktales (The New York Times Book Review), humans live side by side with spirits who provide a variety of useful services—from truth-telling to babysitting, from protecting castles to fighting crime.

A busybody aunt who disapproves of hair removal; a pair of door-to-door saleswomen hawking portable lanterns; a cheerful lover who visits every night to take a luxurious bath; a silent house-caller who babysits and cleans while a single mother is out working. Where the Wild Ladies Are is populated by these and many other spirited women—who also happen to be ghosts. This is a realm in which jealousy, stubbornness, and other excessive “feminine” passions are not to be feared or suppressed, but rather cultivated; and, chances are, a man named Mr. Tei will notice your talents and recruit you, dead or alive (preferably dead), to join his mysterious company.

With Where the Wild Ladies Are, Aoko Matsuda takes the rich, millenia-old tradition of Japanese folktales—shapeshifting wives and foxes, magical trees and wells—and wholly reinvents them, presenting a world in which humans are consoled, guided, challenged, and transformed by the only sometimes visible forces that surround them.

8. Deacon King Kong, James McBride

One of Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of the Year"

Oprah's Book Club Pick

Named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and TIME Magazine

A Washington Post Notable Novel

From the author of the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water, comes one of the most celebrated novels of the year.

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range.

The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride’s funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird. In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood’s Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.

As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters—caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York—overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion.

Bringing to these pages both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel every bit as involving as The Good Lord Bird and as emotionally honest as The Color of Water. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us.

7. A Burning, Megha Majumdar

For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise-to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies-and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India

This is an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe. They seek to rise-to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies. One is Jivan, a Muslim girl from the slums accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. The second is PT Sir, an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, only to find his own ascent linked to Jivan's fall. And the third is Lovely, an irresistible outcast who has an alibi that can set Jivan free-but at the cost of everything she holds dear. Taut, symphonic, propulsive and riveting right from the outset, A Burning has the force of an epic while being so masterfully compressed that it can be read in a single sitting. Majumdar writes with dazzling assurance, at a breakneck pace, on complex themes that read as the components of a thriller: class, fate, corruption, justice and what it feels like to face profound obstacles while nurturing big dreams in a country spinning towards extremism.

6. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, Laura van den Berg

ONE OF TIME'S 10 BEST FICTION BOOKS OF 2020. Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, the New York Public Library, Library Journal, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and Tor.com

"As enchanting as fairy tales, as mysterious as dreams, these exquisitely composed fictions are as urgent and original as any being written today.” ―Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend, winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction

One of Entertainment Weekly's 50 Most Anticipated Books of 2020 and 30 Hottest Summer Reads, one of O, the Oprah Magazine's 30 Most Anticipated Books of 2020, one of BuzzFeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2020 and 29 Summer Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down, one of Esquire's 20 Must-Read Books of Summer 2020, one of the BBC's Ten Books to Read in 2020, one of TIME's 12 New Books to Read in July one of ELLE's 30 Most Anticipated New Books of Summer 2020, one of Refinery29's 25 Books You'll Want to Read This Summer, one of Time's 45 New Books You Need to Read This Summer, one of Thrillist's 21 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2020, one of Bustle's Most Anticipated Books of July 2020, one of LitHub's 2020 Summer Books, and one of The Millions Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2020

An urgent and unsettling collection of women on the verge from Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, Laura van den Berg’s first story collection since her prizewinning book The Isle of Youth, draws readers into a world of wholly original, sideways ghost stories that linger in the mouth and the mind. Both timeless and urgent, these eleven stories confront misogyny, violence, and the impossible economics of America with van den Berg’s trademark spiky humor and surreal eye. Moving from the peculiarities of Florida to liminal spaces of travel in Mexico City, Sicily, and Iceland, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is uncannily attuned to our current moment, and to the fears we reveal to no one but ourselves.

In “Lizards,” a man mutes his wife’s anxieties by giving her a LaCroix-like seltzer laced with sedatives. In the title story, a woman poses as her more successful sister during a botched Italian holiday, a choice that brings about strange and destructive consequences, while in “Karolina,” a woman discovers her prickly ex-sister-in-law in the aftermath of an earthquake and is forced to face the truth about her violent brother.

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears presents a collection of women on the verge, trying to grasp what’s left of life: grieving, divorced, and hyperaware, searching, vulnerable, and unhinged, they exist in a world that deviates from our own only when you look too closely. With remarkable control and transcendent talent, van den Berg dissolves, in the words of the narrator of “Slumberland,” “that border between magic and annihilation,” and further establishes herself as a defining fiction writer of our time.

5. Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Disgraced and author of American Dervish, an American son and his immigrant father search for belonging -- in post-Trump America, and with each other.

A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a nation in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear, and where the unhealed wounds of 9/11 continue to wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Davos to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan. All the while sparing no one-least of all himself-in order to make better sense of it all.

4. A Children’s Bible, Lydia Millet

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet’s sublime new novel—her first since the National Book Award long-listed Sweet Lamb of Heaven—follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion.

Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group’s ringleaders—including Eve, who narrates the story—decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.

As the scenes of devastation begin to mimic events in the dog-eared picture Bible carried around by her beloved little brother, Eve devotes herself to keeping him safe from harm.

A Children’s Bible is a prophetic, heartbreaking story of generational divide—and a haunting vision of what awaits us on the far side of Revelation.

3. The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel

The long-awaited sequel to wolf hall and bring up the bodies, the stunning conclusion to Hilary mantel’s man Booker Prize-winning wolf hall trilogy. ‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’ England, may 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors.The blacksmith’s son from putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private Army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing br>Henry’s regime to breaking point, cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With the mirror and the light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with wolf hall and bring up the bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and Past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

2. Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart

Winner of the Booker Prize 2020
Shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction 2020
An Observer ‘Best Debut Novelist of 2020’

‘An amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love’ - The judges of the Booker Prize

It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest.

Shuggie is different. Fastidious and fussy, he shares his mother’s sense of snobbish propriety. The miners’ children pick on him and adults condemn him as no’ right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place.

Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. A counterpart to the privileged Thatcher-era London of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, it also recalls the work of Édouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, a blistering debut by a brilliant writer with a powerful and important story to tell.

1. The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett the Wild Ladies Are, Aoko Matsuda

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' story lines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

Praise for Brit Bennett:

'A writer to watch' Washington Post

'Bennett allows her characters to follow their worst impulses, and she handles provocative issues with intelligence, empathy and dark humour' New York Times

'A beautifully written, sad and lingering book' Guardian on The Mothers

IKIGAI The japanese Secret to a Long Happy Life

2020-12-16T10:38:00.000+05:30

IKIGAI
The japanese Secret to a Long Happy Life

Hector Garcia
and Francesc Miralles

Translated by Heather Cleary

Copyright © 2016 by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Ikigai: A mysterious word
I. Ikigai
The art of staying young while growing old
II. Antiaging Secrets
Little things that add up to a long and happy life
III. From Logotherapy to Ikigai
How to live longer and better by finding your purpose
IV. Find Flow in Everything You Do
How to turn work and free time into spaces for growth
V. Masters of Longevity
Words of wisdom from the longest-living people in the world
VI. Lessons from Japan’s Centenarians
Traditions and proverbs for happiness and longevity
VII. The Ikigai Diet
What the world’s longest-living people eat and drink
VIII. Gentle Movements, Longer Life
Exercises from the East that promote health and longevity
IX. Resilience and Wabi-sabi
How to face life’s challenges without letting stress and worry age you
Epilogue
Ikigai: The art of living
Notes
Suggestions for further reading
About the Authors

IKIGAI
The japanese Secret to a Long Happy Life

PROLOGUE
Ikigai: A mysterious word

THIS BOOK FIRST came into being on a rainy night in Tokyo, when its authors sat
down together for the first time in one of the city’s tiny bars.
We had read each other’s work but had never met, thanks to the thousands of
miles that separate Barcelona from the capital of Japan. Then a mutual
acquaintance put us in touch, launching a friendship that led to this project and
seems destined to last a lifetime.
The next time we got together, a year later, we strolled through a park in
downtown Tokyo and ended up talking about trends in Western psychology,
specifically logotherapy, which helps people find their purpose in life.
We remarked that Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy had gone out of fashion among
practicing therapists, who favored other schools of psychology, though people
still search for meaning in what they do and how they live. We ask ourselves
things like:
What is the meaning of my life?
Is the point just to live longer, or should I seek a higher purpose?
Why do some people know what they want and have a passion for life, while
others languish in confusion?

At some point in our conversation, the mysterious word ikigai came up.
This Japanese concept, which translates roughly as “the happiness of always
being busy,” is like logotherapy, but it goes a step beyond. It also seems to be one
way of explaining the extraordinary longevity of the Japanese, especially on the
island of Okinawa, where there are 24.55 people over the age of 100 for every
100,000 inhabitants—far more than the global average.
Those who study why the inhabitants of this island in the south of Japan live
longer than people anywhere else in the world believe that one of the keys—in
addition to a healthful diet, a simple life in the outdoors, green tea, and the
subtropical climate (its average temperature is like that of Hawaii)—is the ikigai
that shapes their lives.

While researching this concept, we discovered that not a single book in the
fields of psychology or personal development is dedicated to bringing this
philosophy to the West.
Is ikigai the reason there are more centenarians in Okinawa than anywhere
else? How does it inspire people to stay active until the very end? What is the
secret to a long and happy life?
As we explored the matter further, we discovered that one place in particular,
Ogimi, a rural town on the north end of the island with a population of three
thousand, boasts the highest life expectancy in the world—a fact that has earned
it the nickname the Village of Longevity.

Okinawa is where most of Japan’s shikuwasa—a limelike fruit that packs an
extraordinary antioxidant punch—comes from. Could that be Ogimi’s secret to
long life? Or is it the purity of the water used to brew its Moringa tea?
We decided to go study the secrets of the Japanese centenarians in person.
After a year of preliminary research we arrived in the village—where residents
speak an ancient dialect and practice an animist religion that features long-haired
forest sprites called bunagaya—with our cameras and recording devices in hand.
As soon as we arrived we could sense the incredible friendliness of its residents,
who laughed and joked incessantly amid lush green hills fed by crystalline waters.
As we conducted our interviews with the eldest residents of the town, we
realized that something far more powerful than just these natural resources was at
work: an uncommon joy flows from its inhabitants and guides them through the
long and pleasurable journey of their lives.
Again, the mysterious ikigai.

But what is it, exactly? How do you get it?
It never ceased to surprise us that this haven of nearly eternal life was located
precisely in Okinawa, where two hundred thousand innocent lives were lost at the
end of World War II. Rather than harbor animosity toward outsiders, however,
Okinawans live by the principle of ichariba chode, a local expression that means
“treat everyone like a brother, even if you’ve never met them before.”
It turns out that one of the secrets to happiness of Ogimi’s residents is feeling
like part of a community. From an early age they practice yuimaaru, or
teamwork, and so are used to helping one another.
Nurturing friendships, eating light, getting enough rest, and doing regular,
moderate exercise are all part of the equation of good health, but at the heart of
the joie de vivre that inspires these centenarians to keep celebrating birthdays and
cherishing each new day is their ikigai.

The purpose of this book is to bring the secrets of Japan’s centenarians to you
and give you the tools to find your own ikigai.
Because those who discover their ikigai have everything they need for a long
and joyful journey through life.
Happy travels!
HÉCTOR GARCÍA AND FRANCESC MIRALLES

Ikigai the japanese secret to a long and happy life review
3.9/5 · Goodreads

Start Where You Are a guide to compassionate living by Pema Chodron

2020-12-11T09:21:00.000+05:30

Start Where You Are a guide to compassionate living by Pema Chodron

Start Where You Are

a guide to
compassionate living

Pema Chödrön

Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

1. No Escape, No Problem 1

2. No Big Deal 12

3. Pulling Out the Rug 20

4. Let the World Speak for Itself 27

5. Poison as Medicine 36

6. Start Where You Are 44

7. Bringing All That We Meet to the Path 60

8. Drive All Blames into One 69

9. Be Grateful to Everyone 77

10. Cutting the Solidity of Thoughts 87

11. Overcoming Resistance 97

12. Empty Boat 109

13. Teachings for Life and Death 115

14. Loving-Kindness and Compassion 124

15. Lighten Up 130

16. Abandon Any Hope of Fruition 136

17. Compassionate Action 144

18. Taking Responsibility for 156

Your Own Actions

19. Communication from the Heart 165

20. The Big Squeeze 175

21. High-Stakes Practice 190

22. Train Wholeheartedly 201

Appendix: The Root Text of the Seven

Points of Training the Mind 207

Bibliography 213

Resources 215

Index of Slogans 219

Start Where You Are a guide to compassionate living by Pema Chodron

Preface

This book is about awakening the heart. If you

have ever wondered how to awaken your genuine compassionate heart, this book will serve as

a guide.

In our era, when so many people are seeking help

to relate to their own feelings of woundedness and

at the same time wanting to help relieve the suffering they see around them, the ancient teachings

presented here are especially encouraging and to

the point. When we find that we are closing down to

ourselves and to others, here is instruction on how

to open. When we find that we are holding back,

here is instruction on how to give. That which is unwanted and rejected in ourselves and in others can

be seen and felt with honesty and compassion. This

is teaching on how to be there for others without

withdrawing.

I first encountered these teachings in The Great

Path of Awakening by the nineteenth-century Tibetan

teacher Jamgön Kongtrül the Great. Called the lojong teachings, they include a very supportive meditation practice called tonglen and the practice of

working with the seven points of mind training

which comes from an old Tibetan text called The

Root Text of the Seven Points of Training the Mind, by

Chekawa Yeshe Dorje. (See appendix.)

Lojong means “mind training.” The lojong teachings are organized around seven points that contain

fifty-nine pithy slogans that remind us how to awaken

our hearts.* Working with the slogans constitutes the

heart of this book. These teachings belong to the

mahayana school of Buddhism, which emphasizes

compassionate communication and compassionate

relationship with others. They also emphasize that

we are not as solid as we think. In truth, there is enormous space in which to live our everyday lives. They

help us see that the sense of a separate, isolated self

and a separate, isolated other is a painful misunderstanding that we could see through and let go.

Tonglen means “taking in and sending out.” This

meditation practice is designed to help ordinary people like ourselves connect with the openness and

softness of our hearts. Instead of shielding and protecting our soft spot, with tonglen we could let ourselves feel what it is to be human. By so doing, we

could widen our circle of compassion. Through this

book I hope others may find such encouragement.

When I first read the lojong teachings I was struck

by their unusual message that we can use our difficulties and problems to awaken our hearts. Rather

than seeing the unwanted aspects of life as obstacles,

Jamgön Kongtrül presented them as the raw material

necessary for awakening genuine uncontrived compassion: we can start where we are. Whereas in

Kongtrül’s commentary the emphasis is primarily on

taking on the suffering of others, it is apparent that in

this present age it is necessary to also emphasize that

the first step is to develop compassion for our own

wounds. This book stresses repeatedly that it is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads naturally to unconditional compassion for others. If we

are willing to stand fully in our own shoes and never

give up on ourselves, then we will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others and never give up on

them. True compassion does not come from wanting

to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but

from realizing our kinship with all beings.

Later I heard these instructions presented in a

more contemporary mode by my own teacher, Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche. (These have now been

published in the book Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness.) Trungpa Rinpoche pointed

out that he had first been given these teachings when

he was quite young and that it was a great relief to

him to find that Buddhism could be so practical and

so helpful in everyday life. He was inspired to find

that we could bring everything we encounter to the

path and use it to awaken our intelligence, our compassion, and our ability to take a fresh look.

In the winters of 1992 and 1993, I led one-month

practice periods, called dathuns, completely dedicated to these lojong teachings and to the meditation

practice of tonglen. Most important, those of us participating wanted to put these instructions into practice continually as the inevitable frustrations and

difficulties of daily life arose. We saw the dathun as a

chance to take the instructions to heart and apply

them in all situations, especially those in which we

usually prefer to blame or criticize or ignore. That is,

we saw it as a chance to use the teachings to relate on

the spot with an open heart and an open mind to the

aggression, the craving, and the denial that we find in

ourselves and in others.

Even for those who are unfamiliar with meditation, the lojong teachings present the possibility of an

entire change of attitude: we could relate compassionately with that which we prefer to push away, and

we could learn to give away and share that which we

hold most dear.

For those who feel prepared to practice sitting

meditation and tonglen meditation and to work with

the lojong slogans in an ongoing way, doing so may be

the beginning of learning what it really means to love.

This is a method for allowing a lot of space, so that

people can relax and open. This is the path of unconditional compassionate living. It is designed especially for people who find themselves living in times

of darkness. May it be of benefit.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the help of Pat

Cousineau and Lynne Vande Bunte, who did most of

the typing, and of Judith Anderson, Marilyn Hayes,

Trime Lhamo, Lynne Vande Bunte, and Helen

Tashima, who did the transcribing. Also thanks to

Pam Gaines, who not only typed but also found people to help, and especially to Migme Chödrön, who

did the first edit of the original manuscript and was a

constant support to me during all the steps of preparing this book. Last but certainly not least, I want

to thank Emily Hilburn Sell of Shambhala Publications. I feel extremely fortunate that she once again

agreed to transform the talks into their final form.

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

2020-12-08T09:20:00.000+05:30

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

Eat That Frog!

21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More
Done in Less Time

Brian Tracy

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Eat That Frog

1 Set the Table

2 Plan Every Day in Advance

3 Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything

4 Consider the Consequences

5 Practice Creative Procrastination

6 Use the ABCDE Method Continually

7 Focus on Key Result Areas

8 Apply the Law of Three

9 Prepare Thoroughly Before You Begin

10 Take It One Oil Barrel at a Time

11 Upgrade Your Key Skills

12 Identify Your Key Constraints

13 Put the Pressure on Yourself

14 Motivate Yourself into Action

15 Technology Is a Terrible Master

16 Technology Is a Wonderful Servant

17 Focus Your Attention

18 Slice and Dice the Task

19 Create Large Chunks of Time

20 Develop a Sense of Urgency

21 Single Handle Every Task

Conclusion: Putting It All Together

Notes

Index

Learning Resources of Brian Tracy International

About the Author

Preface

Thank you for picking up this book. I hope these ideas help you as much as

they have helped me and thousands of others. In fact, I hope this book changes

your life forever.

There is never enough time to do everything you have to do. You are literally

swamped with work and personal responsibilities, endless e-mails, social media,

projects, stacks of magazines to read, and piles of books you intend to get to one

of these days—as soon as you get caught up.

But the fact is that you are never going to get caught up. You will never get

on top of your tasks. You will never get far enough ahead to be able to get to all

those e-mails, books, magazines, and leisure-time activities that you dream of.

And forget about solving your time management problems by becoming more

productive. No matter how many personal productivity techniques you master,

there will always be more to do than you can ever accomplish in the time you

have available to you, no matter how much it is.

You can get control of your time and your life only by changing the way you

think, work, and deal with the never-ending river of responsibilities that flows

over you each day. You can get control of your tasks and activities only to the

degree that you stop doing some things and start spending more time on the few

activities that can really make a difference in your life.

I have studied time management for more than forty years. I have immersed

myself in the works of Peter Drucker, Alec Mackenzie, Alan Lakein, Stephen

Covey, and many, many others. I have read hundreds of books and thousands of

articles on personal efficiency and effectiveness. This book is the result.

Each time I came across a good idea, I tried it out in my own work and

personal life. If it worked, I incorporated it into my talks and seminars and

taught it to others.

Galileo once wrote, “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help

him find it within himself.”

Depending upon your level of knowledge and experience, these ideas may

sound familiar. This book will bring them to a higher level of awareness. When

you learn and apply these methods and techniques over and over until they

become habits, you will alter the course of your life in a very positive way.

Learning from Successful People

Let me tell you something about myself and the origins of this little book. I

started off in life with few advantages, aside from a curious mind. I did poorly in

school and left without graduating. I worked at laboring jobs for several years.

My future did not appear promising.

As a young man, I got a job on a tramp freighter and went off to see the

world. For eight years, I traveled and worked and then traveled some more,

eventually visiting more than eighty countries on five continents.

When I could no longer find a laboring job, I got into sales, knocking on

doors, working on straight commission. I struggled from sale to sale until I

began looking around me and asking, “Why is it that other people are doing

better than I am?”

Then I did something that changed my life. I began to ask successful people

what they were doing that enabled them to be more productive and earn more

money than me. And they told me. I did what they advised me to do, and my

sales went up. Eventually, I became so successful that I was made a sales

manager. As a sales manager, I used the same strategy. I asked successful

managers what they did to achieve such great results, and when they told me, I

did it myself. In no time at all, I began to get the same results they did.

This process of learning and applying what I had learned changed my life. I

am still amazed at how simple and obvious it is. Just find out what other

successful people do and do the same things until you get the same results. Learn

from the experts. Wow! What an idea.

Success Is Predictable

Simply put, some people are doing better than others because they do things

differently and they do the right things right. Especially, successful, happy,

prosperous people use their time far, far better than the average person.

Coming from an unsuccessful background, I had developed deep feelings of

inferiority and inadequacy. I had fallen into the mental trap of assuming that

people who were doing better than me were actually better than me. What I

learned was that this was not necessarily true. They were just doing things

differently, and what they had learned to do, within reason, I could learn as well.

This was a revelation to me. I was both amazed and excited with this

discovery. I still am. I realized that I could change my life and achieve almost

any goal I could set if I just found out what others were doing in that area and

then did it myself until I got the same results they were getting.

Within one year of starting in sales, I was a top salesman. A year later I was

made a manager. Within three years, I became a vice president in charge of a

ninety-five-person sales force in six countries. I was twenty-five years old.

Over the years, I have worked in twenty-two different jobs; started and built

several companies; earned a business degree from a major university; learned to

speak French, German, and Spanish; and been a speaker, trainer, or consultant

for more than 1,000 companies. I currently give talks and seminars to more than

250,000 people each year, with audiences as large as 20,000 people.

A Simple Truth

Throughout my career, I have discovered and rediscovered a simple truth. The

ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well

and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect,

status, and happiness in life. This key insight is the heart and soul of this book.

This book is written to show you how to get ahead more rapidly in your

career and to simultaneously enrich your personal life. These pages contain the

twenty-one most powerful principles on personal effectiveness I have ever

discovered.

These methods, techniques, and strategies are practical, proven, and fast

acting. In the interest of time, I do not dwell on the various psychological or

emotional explanations for procrastination or poor time management. There are

no lengthy departures into theory or research. What you will learn are specific

actions you can take immediately to get better, faster results in your work and to

increase your happiness.

Every idea in this book is focused on increasing your overall levels of

productivity, performance, and output and on making you more valuable in

whatever you do. You can apply many of these ideas to your personal life as

well.

Each of these twenty-one methods and techniques is complete in itself. All

are necessary. One strategy might be effective in one situation and another might

apply to another task. All together, these twenty-one ideas represent a

smorgasbord of personal effectiveness techniques that you can use at any time,

in any order or sequence that makes sense to you at the moment.

The key to success is action. These principles work to bring about fast,

predictable improvements in performance and results. The faster you learn and

apply them, the faster you will move ahead in your career—guaranteed!

There will be no limit to what you can accomplish when you learn how to Eat

That Frog!

Brian Tracy

Solana Beach, California

January 2017

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

Introduction: Eat That Frog

This is a wonderful time to be alive. There have never been more

possibilities and opportunities for you to achieve more of your goals than exist

today. As perhaps never before in human history, you are actually drowning in

options. In fact, there are so many good things that you can do that your ability

to decide among them may be the critical determinant of what you accomplish in

life.

If you are like most people today, you are overwhelmed with too much to do

and too little time. As you struggle to get caught up, new tasks and

responsibilities just keep rolling in, like the waves of the ocean. Because of this,

you will never be able to do everything you have to do. You will never be caught

up. You will always be behind in some of your tasks and responsibilities, and

probably in many of them.

The Need to Be Selective

For this reason, and perhaps more than ever before, your ability to select your

most important task at each moment, and then to get started on that task and to

get it done both quickly and well, will probably have more of an impact on your

success than any other quality or skill you can develop.

An average person who develops the habit of setting clear priorities and

getting important tasks completed quickly will run circles around a genius who

talks a lot and makes wonderful plans but who gets very little done.

The Truth about Frogs

It has been said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog,

you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably

the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely

to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it. It is also the one task that

can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.

The first rule of frog eating is this: If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest

one first.

This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you,

start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first. Discipline yourself

to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go

on to something else.

Think of this as a test. Treat it like a personal challenge. Resist the temptation

to start with the easier task. Continually remind yourself that one of the most

important decisions you make each day is what you will do immediately and

what you will do later, if you do it at all.

The second rule of frog eating is this: If you have to eat a live frog at all, it

doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.

The key to reaching high levels of performance and productivity is to develop

the lifelong habit of tackling your major task first thing each morning. You must

develop the routine of “eating your frog” before you do anything else and

without taking too much time to think about it.

Take Action Immediately

In study after study of men and women who get paid more and promoted faster,

the quality of “action orientation” stands out as the most observable and

consistent behavior they demonstrate in everything they do. Successful, effective

people are those who launch directly into their major tasks and then discipline

themselves to work steadily and single-mindedly until those tasks are complete.

“Failure to execute” is one of the biggest problems in organizations today.

Many people confuse activity with accomplishment. They talk continually, hold

endless meetings, and make wonderful plans, but in the final analysis, no one

does the job and gets the results required.

Develop the Habits of Success

Your success in life and work will be determined by the kinds of habits that you

develop over time. The habit of setting priorities, overcoming procrastination,

and getting on with your most important task is a mental and physical skill. As

such, this habit is learnable through practice and repetition, over and over again,

until it locks into your subconscious mind and becomes a permanent part of your

behavior. Once it becomes a habit, it becomes both automatic and easy to do.

This habit of starting and completing important tasks has an immediate and

continuous payoff. You are designed mentally and emotionally in such a way

that task completion gives you a positive feeling. It makes you happy. It makes

you feel like a winner.

Whenever you complete a task of any size or importance, you feel a surge of

energy, enthusiasm, and self-esteem. The more important the completed task, the

happier, more confident, and more powerful you feel about yourself and your

world.

The completion of an important task triggers the release of endorphins in

your brain. These endorphins give you a natural “high.” The endorphin rush that

follows successful completion of any task makes you feel more positive,

personable, creative, and confident.

Develop a Positive Addiction

Here is one of the most important of the so-called secrets of success. You can

actually develop a “positive addiction” to endorphins and to the feeling of

enhanced clarity, confidence, and competence that they trigger. When you

develop this addiction, you will, at an unconscious level, begin to organize your

life in such a way that you are continually starting and completing ever more

important tasks and projects. You will actually become addicted, in a very

positive sense, to success and contribution.

One of the keys to your living a wonderful life, having a successful career,

and feeling terrific about yourself is to develop the habit of starting and finishing

important jobs. When you do, this behavior will take on a power of its own and

you’ll find it easier to complete important tasks than not to complete them.

No Shortcuts

You remember the story of the man who stops a musician on a street in New

York and asks how he can get to Carnegie Hall. The musician replies, “Practice,

man, practice.”

Practice is the key to mastering any skill. Fortunately, your mind is like a

muscle. It grows stronger and more capable with use. With practice, you can

learn any behavior or develop any habit that you consider either desirable or

necessary.

The Three Ds of New Habit Formation

You need three key qualities to develop the habits of focus and concentration,

which are all learnable. They are decision, discipline, and determination.

First, make a decision to develop the habit of task completion. Second,

discipline yourself to practice the principles you are about to learn over and over

until they become automatic. And third, back everything you do with

determination until the habit is locked in and becomes a permanent part of your

personality.

Visualize Yourself as You Want to Be

There is a special way that you can accelerate your progress toward becoming

the highly productive, effective, efficient person that you want to be. It consists

of your thinking continually about the rewards and benefits of being an actionoriented, fast-moving, and focused person. See yourself as the kind of person

who gets important jobs done quickly and well on a consistent basis.

Your mental picture of yourself has a powerful effect on your behavior.

Visualize yourself as the person you in–tend to be in the future. Your self-image,

the way you see yourself on the inside, largely determines your performance on

the outside. All improvements in your outer life begin with improvements on the

inside, in your mental pictures.

You have a virtually unlimited ability to learn and develop new skills, habits,

and abilities. When you train yourself, through repetition and practice, to

overcome procrastination and get your most important tasks completed quickly,

you will move onto the fast track in your life and career and step on the

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, Reviews

3.9/5Goodreads

4.5/5Amazon.in

How They Started by Carol Tice & David Lester

2020-12-06T09:07:00.000+05:30

How They Started by Carol Tice & David Lester

HOW
THEY
STARTED

How 25 good ideas
became great companies

Carol Tice & David Lester

© Crimson Publishing, 2012

Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter authors
MANUFACTURING
SPANX
MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT
Electronic Arts
Pixar
SERVICES
Zipcar
INTERNET
eBay
Etsy
Groupon
LinkedIn
Match.com
Twitter
TripAdvisor
Zynga
FOOD AND DRINK
Chipotle Mexican Grill
Gatorade
Jamba Juice
Pinkberry
Whole Foods Market
TECHNOLOGY
BlackBerry (RIM)
Dropbox
Google
AMERICAN CLASSICS
The Coca-Cola Company
IBM
The Walt Disney Company
KFC
Microsoft

Acknowledgements
We must first thank all the founders of the businesses featured who
consented to give detailed, frank and insightful interviews about the very
earliest days of their companies. Many revealed stories and information
that have not been shared publicly before.
Many early-stage investors in these brands, founding team members,
and other associates of the founders were also generous in sharing their
memories and knowledge of the fledgling brands we feature in this book.
And we must also thank the companies, many of which are no longer
run or owned by the original founders. These businesses, in numerous
cases, provided additional supporting information and photography that
they have kindly agreed to let us use here.
Finally, it is appropriate to thank those at Crimson Publishing, who
have spent a considerable amount of time putting this book together.
Carol Tice, as co-author, has been instrumental in securing exclusive
interviews and personally authored 11 chapters herself. Her dedication,
resourcefulness and writing ability have ensured that the stories told here
are unique and of the highest quality. But, as she says, “My biggest
thanks go to my husband Larry ... without you, nothing gets written.”

How They Started by Carol Tice & David Lester

Introduction
Most of us have come across an idea we think would make an
awesome business. That sixth sense, this-is-special moment when you’re
standing in a place that’s crying out for a new restaurant/bar/whatever. Or
you get that feeling of boiling frustration with a product or experience and
think “this should be so much better.” Truth is, most of us don’t act on
those would-be killer thoughts.

This book is about the people who did. It tells the remarkable stories of
people who had innovative ideas and built them into some of the hottest
businesses on the planet. From afar, the scorching success these
companies have had makes it look easy. It’s not. The stories themselves
are as compelling as most novels, with more twists and turns than most
founders would have anticipated. It’s probably better they didn’t know
what lay ahead, or they might never have started at all.
We decided to write this book to look much more deeply into why and
how some of America’s most successful companies got started. It seems
much harder to set something up from nothing than to take something
that’s working and grow it. And we’ve found it even more fascinating than
we’d expected.

How we selected the companies featured
Of all the many stand-out companies, how did we come up with this list?
We started with the idea that we wanted to write about companies most
people knew about. That way, the stories are more real, and also more
enjoyable.
We knew we wanted a variety—some of America’s established
corporate giants as well as plenty of more recent, fresh and disruptive
startups, which will be more helpful to anyone currently starting up, or
thinking about doing so. We also knew we wanted a selection of business
types—for all the opportunities and great startups in technology, this
nation is home to many young, game-changing companies in other
sectors, too. And we wanted founders from a variety of cities and
backgrounds. Finally, we wanted entertaining stories—and we weren’t
disappointed.

We hope that after reading this book, many of you will feel more
confident about acting on an idea you might have to start or expand a
small business. That’s part of the job we hope this book does.
But some of you will also be struck by how hard it can be to build a
business to that level. And how risky. If some of you finish this book and
decide that starting up might not be for you after all, then we will still have
accomplished something worthwhile.

We don’t believe everyone should start a business. We are often asked
what it takes to start a company and make it a success. Part of what it
takes is the resilience and commitment to get through the hard times that
almost every startup will face along the way. Not everyone has that.
What else does it take? The stories here give us the same answer as
the hundreds of other entrepreneurs we have interviewed or gotten to
know. Mainly, it takes an innovative idea, passion and commitment. With
enough of that, everything else should follow. The other essential
qualities include a willingness to work unbelievably hard, getting at least
comfortable with simple business finances, and the ability and
determination to focus.

What about luck? “Be lucky.” “Good luck.” We use phrases like this all
the time. How important is luck to a startup? You will surely make your
own mind up as you read the chapters here. Our sense is that most
entrepreneurs make their own luck. As the saying goes—the harder you
work, the luckier you get. There are occasions when an entrepreneur
gets lucky, but so long as you work hard and do the right things, at some
stage “luck” is likely to happen to you, too. The people who appear
luckiest are usually the ones who have looked around and seen an
opportunity, and have worked their tails off to make it happen.
One surprising theme in the book is education and money—and in
some cases, the lack of both. Sure, both help, but not having a college
degree or wealthy parents is no longer a barrier to starting your own
business. It’s the American Dream—if you work real hard, you can still
come from nothing, build a business of your own, and make it successful.
For over a hundred years, this country has spawned bold and
ambitious companies which have led the world in many different sectors.
And arguably, this has never been more true than now, with American
entrepreneurs leading the world in many fields. And that is no
coincidence.

America is a truly great country for a startup. The culture is unusually
open to new ventures, which means it is cooler and more acceptable to
start a business here than in probably any other country. There is much
better access to financing than anywhere else, too—the business angel
and venture capital communities are better developed and more open to
startups. There are many top-notch business schools and unrivalled
support—magazines, websites and blogs, books, and so on. And right
now, America offers the biggest market in the world; all-accessible with a
common language and robust infrastructure. Taken together, these are
huge advantages. Against that, there is probably more competition here
than any place else, too.

There has probably never been a better time to start a new business—
there is more affordable technology lowering the barriers to entry, new
digital opportunities everywhere and more help and resources to support
entrepreneurs than ever before. Today, you can set up faster and
cheaper than ever before, and access national and international markets
straight away.
We hope that some of you will read this book and be so inspired you
go on to build a great company—and feature in a new edition a few years
from now.
But more than anything else, we hope you enjoy reading this book as
much as we enjoyed creating it.
David Lester (editor) and
Carol Tice (main author)

How They Started: How 25 Good Ideas Became Great Companies, Reviews
3.8/5 · Goodreads

You Are Not Your Brain

2020-12-03T22:43:00.000+05:30

YOU ARE NOT YOUR BRAIN
The 4-Step Solution for Changing Bad Habits, Ending Unhealthy Thinking, and Taking Control of Your Life

Book by Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Rebecca Gladding

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

PART ONE - A Sense of Self

CHAPTER 1 - You Are Not Your Brain

CHAPTER 2 - Using Your Mind to Change Your Brain

CHAPTER 3 - Why Habits Are So Hard to Break

CHAPTER 4 - Why These Sensations Feel So Real

CHAPTER 5 - A New Sense of Self

PART TWO - The Skills

CHAPTER 6 - Ignoring, Minimizing, and Neglecting

CHAPTER 7 - Moving Forward with the Four Steps

CHAPTER 8 - You Can’t Change What You Can’t See

CHAPTER 9 - Changing Your Relationship to Deceptive Brain Messages with

Step 2: Reframe

CHAPTER 10 - Reframing Your Thinking Errors

CHAPTER 11 - The Power Is in the Focus

CHAPTER 12 - Progressive Mindfulness and Step 4: Revalue

PART THREE - Applying the Four Steps to Your Life

CHAPTER 13 - What Is Going On Here?

CHAPTER 14 - Using the Four Steps to Help You Move Forward in Your Life

CHAPTER 15 - Putting It All Together

Acknowledgements

YOU ARE NOT YOUR BRAIN

INTRODUCTION

There are only a few true necessities in life, but for many of us, it doesn’t feel

that way. A lifetime of habits, ingrained by repetition, can seemingly make us

slaves to a not always beneficial master—our own brain.

Nothing is more confusing or painful than when your brain takes over your

thoughts, attacks your self-worth, questions your abilities, overpowers you with

cravings, or attempts to dictate your actions. Have you ever felt that something is

compelling you to “go” places, mentally or emotionally, where you don’t want to

be? Do you find yourself acting in uncharacteristic ways or doing things you

don’t really want to be doing?

The reason is simple: Deceptive brain messages have intruded into your

psyche and taken over your life. Left to its own devices, your brain can cause

you to believe things that are not true and to act in any number of selfdestructive ways, such as:

• Overthinking problems and fretting over things that are out of your

control

• Getting stuck or panicked by unfounded fear and worries

• Blaming and chastising yourself for things that are not your fault

• Engaging in unhealthy behaviors to escape life’s daily stresses

• Reverting to past patterns when you are trying to make a change

The more often you act in these unhealthy ways, the more you teach your

brain that what is simply a habit (a learned behavior) is essential to your

survival. Your brain does not distinguish whether the action is beneficial or

destructive; it just responds to how you behave and then generates strong

impulses, thoughts, desires, cravings, and urges that compel you to perpetuate

your habit, whatever it may be. Unfortunately, more often than not, these

behaviors are not ones that improve your life.

Clearly, the brain can exert a powerful grip on one’s life—but only if you let it.

The good news is that you can overcome the brain’s control and rewire your

brain to work for you by learning to debunk the myths it has been so

successfully selling you and by choosing to act in healthy, adaptive ways. That’s

the mission of this book and the cornerstone of our approach: to share our

innovative, empowering method of learning how to identify and demystify

deceptive brain messages, so that you develop healthy, adaptive brain circuits

that enable you to live a fulfilling life free from these unwanted, unhelpful, and

false intruders.

It will be your life, the life you have chosen, with the brain you have sculpted

—not the old path of troubling actions and behaviors imposed upon you by

deceptive brain messages.

How can you achieve this? With our Four Step method, which teaches simple

skills you can use and practice every day and apply to any unsatisfactory part of

your life. The result will be a lasting change in perspective, courtesy of a source

that has been seriously stifled by the deceptive brain messages: your intelligent,

caring inner guide. This friend will help you counteract deceptive brain

messages and act in concert with your own goals, values, and interests. You will

finally see who you really are—not who your brain has been telling you that you

are—and put your true self in the driver’s seat for the rest of your life.

Sound difficult to accomplish? You won’t think so after you read the stories of

others who have successfully employed our Four Step method to turn their lives

around. You Are Not Your Brain touches on intimate personal journeys of several

people whose lives were once plagued by deceptive brain messages and who

managed to break the cycle—like Sarah, who struggled with depression and selfdoubt; Ed, who was paralyzed by fears of rejection; Steve, who used alcohol to

relieve stress; Liz, who worried about her future; Kara, who felt she was

unlovable unless she was physically perfect; John, who repetitively checked email as a way to assuage his fear that his girlfriend was leaving him; or Abby,

who constantly worried that something bad would happen to someone she loved.

While your situation may not be as dramatic or intense, some form of

deceptive brain messages impacts almost everyone at some point in life. Even if

our lives usually run smoothly, when we are stressed or feeling down these false

thoughts and unhealthy actions find a way to sneak in and cause havoc. They can

shake our confidence, make us find ways to escape reality, use drugs or alcohol,

overeat, spend money we don’t have, avoid people we care about, become angry,

develop excessive expectations of ourselves, not say what we really think or feel,

limit our range of experiences, worry excessively . . . you name it. Even in the

most benign situations, giving in to deceptive brain messages causes us to lose

time that would have been better spent elsewhere. At its worst, we end up acting

impulsively—in ways that are not representative of who we really are—and

falling into grief and regret.

Most encouragingly, however, this powerful approach will help you identify

and deal with the majority of your problems, not just one symptom, because we

focus on the underlying, unifying cause of your distress: deceptive brain

messages. In short, You Are Not Your Brain will empower you to approach life’s

ups and downs in a skillful way, using just four easily learned steps. You will

find that repeated practice with the Four Steps will transform your life—and

your brain—giving you the power to become the person you want to be.

How This Book Is Unique

A critical component to getting better—in the long term—is to understand that

these highly deceptive intruders are coming from the brain (not you!) and that

these false messages are not indicative of who you are or of the life you could

lead. Other popular therapies have failed to focus on this crucial distinction

between who you are and the symptoms you are experiencing. Although some

methods may teach how to change the meaning of your thoughts (as in

cognitive-behavioral therapy) or how to become aware of your thoughts

(mindfulness), they do not emphatically tell you that these brain-based messages

are not representative of who you really are and that you do not have to act on

them.

In contrast, this book combines the best of cognitive-behavioral therapy and

mindfulness while simultaneously helping you bolster your belief that you

deserve to be free of these unwanted intruders. In so doing, you learn that to

truly change your life and your brain, you must reevaluate the deceptive brain

messages and engage your mind to focus your attention on new, healthy actions

and behaviors.

So, not only do we teach you how to notice your deceptive brain messages and

how to change your relationship to the deceptive brain messages, we also

empower you by showing you that you have within yourself an intelligent,

loving guide (your Wise Advocate) that knows that your brain has been the

problem, not you or your mind.

You Are Not Your Brain: The 4-Step Solution for Changing Bad Habits, Ending Unhealthy Thinking, and Taking Control of Your Life, Reviews

4/5Goodreads

4.5/5Amazon.in

The Miracle Morning Summary

2020-12-01T19:55:00.000+05:30

The Miracle Morning Summary

The
MIRACLE
MORNING
THE NOT-SO-OBIVOUS SECRET GUARANTEED TO TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE
BEFORE 8AM

HAL ELROD

A Note to You, the Reader

No matter where you are in your life right now—whether you’re

currently succeeding at the highest level you’ve ever imagined, or

you’re struggling to find your way, there is at least one thing I know

we have in common (probably a lot more than one, but one that I

know for sure). We want to improve our lives, and ourselves. This is

not to suggest that there is anything wrong with us or our lives, but as

human beings we were born with the innate desire and drive to

continuously grow and improve. I believe it’s within all of us. Yet,

most of us wake up every day, and life pretty much stays the same.

As an author, keynote speaker, and success coach, my life’s work

is to teach people how to fulfill the unlimited potential that is within

each of us. As a dedicated student of human potential and personal

development, I can say with absolute certainty, that The Miracle

Morning is the most practical, results-oriented, and life transforming

method I have ever encountered for improving every aspect of your

life.

For high achievers, The Miracle Morning is a total game

changer, allowing you to attain that elusive next level and take your

personal and professional success far beyond what you’ve achieved in

the past. While this can include increasing your income, growing your

business, sales, or revenue, it’s often more about discovering new

ways to experience deeper levels of fulfillment and balance in areas

of your life that you may have neglected. This can mean making

significant improvements with your health, happiness, relationships,

finances, spirituality, or any other areas that are at the top of your

list.

For those who are in the midst of adversity, enduring times of

struggle—be it mental, emotional, physical, financial, or relational

—The Miracle Morning has proven time and time again to be the one

thing that can empower anyone to overcome seemingly

insurmountable challenges, make major breakthroughs and turn their

circumstances around, often in a very short period of time.

Whether you want to make significant improvements in just a

few key areas, or you are ready for a major overhaul which will

radically transform your entire life—so your current circumstances

will soon become only a memory—you’ve picked up the right book.

You are about to begin a miraculous journey using a revolutionary

process that is guaranteed to transform any—or every—area of your

life… all before 8:00 a.m.

The Miracle Morning has already transformed the lives of

thousands of people around the world (including my own), and it can

absolutely be the catalyst to transform yours. I consider it a great

honor to share this with you now, and I have done everything in my

power to ensure that this book will truly be a life-changing

investment of your time, energy, and attention. Thank you for

allowing me to be a part of your life, a miraculous journey together is

about to begin.

With love and gratitude (always).

“Yo Pal” Hal

CONTENTS

A Special Invitation: The Miracle Morning Community

Introduction: My Story, and Why Yours Is The One That Matters

1. It’s Time To Wake Up To Your FULL Potential

2. The Miracle Morning Origin: Born Out of Desperation

3. The 95% Reality Check

4. Why Did YOU Wake Up This Morning?

5. The 5-Step Snooze-Proof Wake Up Strategy (For the Snoozeaholics)

6. The Life S.A.V.E.R.S. - Six Practices Guaranteed To Save You

From a Life of Unfulfilled Potential

6.1 Life S.A.V.E.R.S. - S is for Silence

6.2 Life S.A.V.E.R.S. - A is for Affirmations

6.3 Life S.A.V.E.R.S. - V is for Visualization

6.4 Life S.A.V.E.R.S. - E is for Exercise

6.5 Life S.A.V.E.R.S. - R is for Reading

6.6 Life S.A.V.E.R.S. - S is for Scribing

7. The 6-Minute Miracle (For The Busy People)

8. Customizing Your Miracle Morning To Fit Your Lifestyle and

Achieve Your Highest Goals & Dreams

9. From Unbearable To Unstoppable: The Real Secret To Forming

Habits That Will Transform Your Life (In 30 Days)

10. The Miracle Morning 30-Day Life Transformation Challenge (and

Fast Start Kit)

Conclusion

An Essential Bonus: The Email That Will Change Your Life

Acknowledgements

About the Author

A SPECIAL INVITATION

Fans and readers of The Miracle Morning make up an

extraordinary community of like-minded individuals who wake up

each day on purpose, dedicated to fulfilling the unlimited potential

that is within each of us. As creator of The Miracle Morning, it was

my responsibility to create an online space where readers and fans

could go to connect, get encouragement, share ideas, support one

another, discuss the book, post videos, find an Accountability Partner,

and even swap smoothie recipes and exercise routines.

Just go to www.MyTMMCommunity.com to join The Miracle

Morning Community of inspired, like-minded miracle makers and

achievers. Here you can connect with others who are also practicing

The Miracle Morning—many of whom have been doing it for years—

to get additional support on your journey.

I’ll be moderating the Community and checking in regularly. I

look forward to seeing you there!

If you’d like to connect with me on Twitter, follow @HalElrod,

and on Facebook at Facebook.com/YoPalHal. Please feel free to

send me a direct message, leave a comment, or ask me a question. I

do my best to answer every single one, so let’s connect soon!

There are only two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other

is as though everything is a miracle.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN

Miracles do not happen in contradiction with nature, but in contradiction with what we

know about nature.

—SAINT AUGUSTINE

Life begins each morning.

—JOEL OLSTEEN

The Miracle Morning Summary

INTRODUCTION: My Story, and Why Yours Is The

One That Matters

December 3rd

, 1999—life was good. No, it was great. At 20

years old, my first year of college was behind me. I had spent the last

18 months becoming one of the top-producing distributors for a $200-

million marketing company, earning more money than I had ever

imagined I would be at that age. I had a loving girlfriend, a supportive

family, and the best friends a guy could ask for. I was truly blessed.

You might say I was on top of the world. There was no way I

could have known that this was the night my world would end.

11:32 p.m. / Driving 70 mph Southbound On Hwy 99

We’d left the restaurant, and our friends, behind. It was just the

two of us now. My girlfriend, tired from the evening’s events, was

dozing in the passenger seat. Not me. I was wide-awake—eyes glued

to the road in front, waving my finger in the air like a baton as I

quietly conducted the melodies of Tchaikovsky.

Still in a state of euphoria from the night’s events, sleep was the

furthest thing from my mind. Rocketing down the freeway at 70 miles

per hour in my brand new white Ford Mustang, I was only two hours

removed from giving the best speech of my life. I had received my

first standing ovation, and I was elated. In fact, I desperately wanted

to shout out my feelings of gratitude to anyone that would listen, but

my girlfriend was asleep, so she was no use. I considered calling

Mom and Dad, but it was late; they might already be in bed.

Should’ve called. But I simply had no way of knowing that moment

would be my last opportunity to speak to my parents—or anyone—for

quite some time.

An Unimaginable Reality

No, I don’t recall seeing the headlights of a massive Chevrolet

truck coming directly at me. In an instant of perverse fate, the fullsize Chevy pickup, traveling at an estimated 80 miles per hour,

smashed head on into my undersized, and under-matched Ford

Mustang. The following seconds played out in slow motion,

Tchaikovsky’s commanding melodies orchestrating our wicked

dance.

The metal frames of our two vehicles collided—screaming and

screeching as they twisted and broke. The Mustang’s airbags

exploded with enough force to render us unconscious. My brain, still

traveling at seventy miles-per-hour, smashed into the front of my

skull, destroying much of the vital brain tissue that made up my

frontal lobe.

Upon impact, the tail end of my Mustang was shoved into the

lane on my right, making my driver’s-side door an unavoidable target

for the car behind me. A Saturn sedan, driven by a 16-year-old,

crashed into my door at 70 miles per hour. The door collapsed into the

left side of my body. The frame of the metal roof caved in on my

head, slicing open my skull and nearly severing my left ear. The

bones of my left eye socket were crushed, leaving my left eyeball

dangerously unsupported. My left arm broke, severing the radial

nerve in my forearm and shattering my elbow, while my fractured

humorous bone pierced the skin behind my bicep.

My pelvis was given the impossible task of separating the

Saturn’s front end from my car’s center console, and failed. It

fractured in three separate places. Finally, my femur—the largest

bone in the human body—snapped in half, and one end speared

through the skin of my thigh and tore a hole in my black dress slacks.

Blood was everywhere. My body was destroyed. My brain was

permanently damaged.

Unable to withstand the immense physical pain, my body shut

down, my blood pressure dropped, and everything went black as I

plunged into a coma.

You Only Live… Twice?

What happened next was nothing short of incredible—what

many have called a miracle.

The emergency rescue teams arrived, and, using the jaws of life,

firefighters cut my bloody body from the wreckage. When they did, I

bled out. My heart stopped beating. I stopped breathing.

Clinically, I was dead.

The paramedics immediately put me on the rescue helicopter and

worked determinedly to save my life. Six minutes later, they

succeeded. My heart started to beat again. I breathed clean oxygen.

Thankfully, I was alive.

I spent six days in a coma, and woke to the news that I might

never walk again. After seven challenging weeks of recovery and

rehabilitation in the hospital, learning to walk all over again, I was

released to my parents’ care—back into the real world. With 11

fractured bones, permanent brain damage, and a now ex-girlfriend

who broke up with me in the hospital, life as I knew it, would never

be the same. Believe it or not, this would turn out to be a good thing.

While coming to grips with my new reality wasn’t easy, and at

times I couldn’t help but wonder—why did this happen to me?—I had

to take responsibility for getting my life back. Instead of complaining

about how things should be, I embraced how things were. I stopped

putting energy into wishing my life were any different—into wishing

bad things didn’t happen to me—and instead focused 100% on

making the best of what I had. Since I couldn’t change the past, I

focused on moving forward. I dedicated my life to fulfilling my

potential and achieving my dreams so I could discover how to

empower others to do the same.

And, as a result of choosing to be genuinely grateful for all that I

had, unconditionally accepting of all that I didn’t, and accepting total

responsibility for creating all that I wanted, this potentially

devastating car accident ultimately became one of the best things that

ever happened to me. Hinging on my belief that everything happens

for a reason—but that it is our responsibility to choose the most

empowering reasons for the challenges, events and circumstances of

our lives—I used my accident to fuel a triumphant comeback.

2000 A year that begins with me lying in a hospital bed—broken,

but not defeated—ends quite differently. Despite not having a car,

even less of a short-term memory, equipped with every excuse in the

world to sit at home and feel sorry for myself, I returned to my sales

position at Cutco. I had the best year in my career, and finished #6 in

the company (amongst over 60,000 active sales reps). All this, while

still recovering—physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially—

from my wreck.

2001 Having learned some invaluable life lessons from my

experience, it was time to turn my adversity into inspiration and

empowerment for others. I started speaking and sharing my story at

high schools and colleges. The responses from students and faculty

were overwhelmingly positive, and I embarked on a mission to

impact youth.

2002 My good friend, Jon Berghoff, encouraged me to write a

book about my accident, to further inspire others. So, I started

writing. As quickly as I started, I stopped. I’m no writer. Essays in

high school were challenging enough, let alone a book. After repeated

attempts that always ended with me staring at my computer screen,

frustrated, it didn’t look like a book was in the cards. I did, however,

finish in Cutco’s Top 10 for the 2

nd year in a row.

2004 To try my hand at management, I accepted the position as

Sales Manager for the Sacramento Cutco office. Our team went on to

finish #1 in the company and break the all-time annual record. That

fall, I also reached my highest personal sales milestone and was

inducted into the company’s hall of fame. Feeling that I’d

accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish with Cutco, it was

time to pursue my dream of becoming a professional

keynote/motivational speaker. I might even write that book that had

been swimming around in my head the last couple of years. I also met

Ursula. We were inseparable and I had this feeling that she could be

the one.

February 2005 Sitting in the audience at what I intended to be

my last Cutco conference, I came to a painful realization: I’ve never

fulfilled my potential. Sure, I’d won some awards and broken a few

records, but watching from my seat as the two top performers collect

the highest annual award that Cutco offers—the coveted Rolex—I

realized that I’d never fully committed, at least, not for an entire year.

I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I left the company before

fulfilling my potential. I had to give it one more year, but this time I

had to give it my all.

2005 Despite the late start to the year, I set a goal to nearly

double my best sales year ever. I was terrified, but committed. I also

concluded that I had an obligation to write that book and share my

story with the world. I worked 365 days straight, selling and writing,

with a level of discipline which eluded me the first 25 years of my

life. I was fueled by passion to do what I had never done before: to

venture from my painfully comfortable realm of mediocrity—from

which I operated my entire life—into the space of being

extraordinary. By the year’s end, I reached both of my goals, more

than doubling my previous best sales year and completing my first

book. It’s official: anything is possible when you are committed.

Spring 2006 My first book, Taking Life Head On: How to Love

the Life You Have While You Create the Life of Your Dreams hit #7 on

the Amazon bestseller list. Then, the unthinkable happened. My

publisher fled the country with 100% of my best-selling royalties and

was never heard from again. My parents were devastated; I was not. If

there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my car accident, it’s that

there is no point in dwelling on or feeling bad about the aspects of our

lives that we can’t change. So, I didn’t. I’ve also learned that, by

focusing on what we can learn from our challenges and how we use

them to add value to the lives of others, we can turn any adversity into

an advantage. So, I did.

2006 Without almost zero knowledge of what the profession

entails, I accidentally became a life and business Success Coach when

a forty-something financial advisor asked me if I would coach him. I

agreed. I ended up loving it. My first client saw measurable results in

his life and business, and I was passionate about helping others, as

their coach. At just 26, the odds of me succeeding as a professional

coach were probably slim to none, but it’s so in line with my purpose

in life, I went for it anyway. My coaching business took off, and I

went on to coach hundreds of entrepreneurs, salespeople, and business

owners.

Shortly after, I gave my first paid speech when I was hired by the

Boys and Girls Clubs of America to be the featured keynote speaker at

their national conference. Although I’d been speaking to large

business audiences made up of primarily salespeople and managers,

since 1998, with my spiky hair, (somewhat) youthful appearance, and

nickname “Yo Pal” Hal, impacting young people was the way to go. I

started speaking and sharing my story at local high schools and

colleges.

2007 The year my life fell apart. The United States economy

crashed. Overnight, my income was cut in half. My clients couldn’t

afford coaching. I couldn’t pay my bills, including my house

payment. I was $425,000 in debt, and devastated. Mentally,

physically, emotionally, and financially—I hit rock bottom. Never in

my life have I felt so hopeless, overwhelmed, and depressed. At a loss

for how to fix my life yet again, I desperately sought answers to

insurmountable problems. I read self-help books, attend seminars,

even hired a coach—but nothing worked.

2008 The year my life began to turn around. I finally confessed

to a close friend how bad things had gotten (which I had successfully

kept a secret up until this point). His question: Are you exercising?

My answer: I can barely get out of bed in the morning—so, no. “Start

running,

” he said. “It’ll help you feel better and think clearer.” Ugh, I

hate running. I was desperate, though, so I took his advice and went

for a run. The realizations I had on this run became a turning point in

my life (details in Chapter 2: The Miracle Morning Origin – Born

Out of Desperation), and I had the inspiration to create a daily

personal development routine that I hoped would enable me to

develop into the person I needed to be to solve my problems and turn

my life around. Incredibly, it worked. Virtually every area of my life

transformed so fast I called it my “Miracle Morning.”

Fall 2008 I continued developing my Miracle Morning,

experimenting with various personal development practices and sleep

schedules, and researching how much sleep we really need. My

findings completely shattered the paradigms and perceptions held true

by most people, including me. Loving the results, I shared it with my

coaching clients, who loved it just as much. They told their friends,

family, and co-workers about it. Unexpectedly, I began seeing people

I’d never met posting on Facebook and Twitter about their Miracle

Mornings (more on that later).

2009 My best year yet. I married the woman of my dreams. We

got pregnant and gave birth to our daughter (can I say “we” or is that

more of a she thing?) My coaching business was thriving; I had a

waiting list for clients. My speaking career took off. I was giving

talks and keynote messages at high schools, colleges, and corporate

and non-profit conferences. The Miracle Morning spread like

wildfire. I got emails every day from people telling me it was

changing their life. I knew it was my responsibility to share it with

the world, and that writing a book was the best way to do that. Slowly,

I began to write again. Make no mistake, I’m still no writer—but I am

committed. As my good friend Romacio Fulcher always says,

“There

is always a way… when you’re committed.”

Taking YOUR Life Head On

I share my story with you to offer evidence of what can be

overcome and achieved, no matter how difficult your challenges are.

If I could go from being found dead, told I would never walk again,

going broke and feeling so depressed that I didn’t want to get out of

bed in the morning, to creating the life of my dreams, there are no

legitimate excuses for you not to overcome any limitations that have

held you back from achieving everything you want for your life.

None. Zip. Nada.

I believe it is crucial for us to embrace the perspective that

anything another person has overcome or accomplished is simply

evidence that anything—and I mean anything—you need to overcome

or want to accomplish is possible for you, no matter what your past or

current circumstances. It begins with accepting total responsibility for

every aspect of your life and refusing to blame anyone else. The

degree to which you accept responsibility for everything in your life

is precisely the degree of personal power you have to change or create

anything in your life.

It is important to understand that responsibility is not the same

as blame. While blame determines who is at fault for something,

responsibility determines who is committed to improving things.

Thinking back to my accident, while I wasn’t at fault for the crash, I

was responsible for improving my life—for making my circumstances

what I wanted them to be. It really doesn’t matter who is at fault—all

that matters is that you and I are committed to leaving the past in the

past and making our lives exactly the way we want them to be,

starting today.

It’s Your Time, This is Your Story

Know that wherever you are in your life right now is both

temporary, and exactly where you are supposed to be. You have

arrived at this moment to learn what you must learn, so you can

become the person you need to be to create the life you truly want.

Even when life is difficult or challenging—especially when life is

difficult and challenging—the present is always an opportunity for us

to learn, grow, and become better than we’ve ever been before.

You are in the process of writing your life story, and no good

story is without a hero or heroine overcoming their fair share of

challenges. In fact, the bigger the challenges, the better the story.

Since there are no restrictions and no limits to where your story goes

from here, what do you want the next page to say?

The good news is that you have the ability to change—or create

—anything in your life, starting right now. I’m not saying you won’t

have to work for it, but you can quickly and easily attract and create

anything you want for your life by developing into the person who is

capable of doing so. That’s what this book is about—helping you

become the person you need to be to create everything you have every

wanted for your life. There are no limits.

Grab a Pen

Before you read any further, please grab a pen or pencil so you

can write in this book. As you read, mark anything that stands out

which you may want to come back to later. Underline, circle,

highlight, fold the corners of pages and take notes in the margins so

you can come back and quickly recall the most important lessons,

ideas, and strategies.

Personally, I used to struggle with this, because I am a bit of an

obsessive-compulsive perfectionist, and anal about keeping my things

looking clean and neat. Then I realized that I needed to get over it,

because the purpose of a book like this is not for it to remain

untouched, but rather to maximize the value we extract from it. Now,

I mark up all of my books so I can revisit them anytime and quickly

recapture all of the key benefits, without having to read the entire

book again.

Okay, with your pen in hand, let’s get started! The next chapter

of your life is about to begin…

The Miracle Morning review

3.9/5 · Goodreads

one arranged marriage murder by chetan bhagat

2020-11-30T09:19:00.001+05:30

One Arranged Marriage Murder by Chetan Bhagat

One
Arranged
Marriage
Murder

CHETAN BHAGAT

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events,

and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used

fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual

events is purely coincidental.

Contents

Acknowledgements, and a Note for My Readers

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 5 2

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

LOVED ONE ARRANGED MURDER?

Acknowledgements, and a Note for My Readers

Hi all,

Congratulations—you picked up a book! You left YouTube, Instagram,Facebook or whatever exciting stuff we have on our phones and picked up a book.And you picked up my book—so thank you for that.It is never just my book, though. It belongs to a lot of people who helped me through the process of writing it.My readers, who support me despite the digital invasion. I am fortunate to have so many readers who shower me with love and encourage me to do better. Shinie Antony, my editor, friend and first reader— thanks for your invaluable help, not only for this book, but over a seventeen-year association. The group of early readers who gave wonderful feedback on the manuscript (alphabetically): Anjali Khurana, Anusha Bhagat, Ayesha Raval, Bhakti Bhat, Mahua Roy, Prateek Dhawan, Ranodeb Roy, Shameeli Sinha, Virali Panchamia and Zitin Dhawan—thank you all for your help and suggestions.

The editors at Westland. The entire marketing, sales and production teams at Amazon and Westland. The online delivery boys and girls who put the book in my readers’ hands. Thank you for your hard work. My social media followers. Those who love me. Those who don’t.

Everyone contributes in their own way. My family—a pillar of support in my life. My mother Rekha Bhagat, my wife Anusha Bhagat, and children Shyam and Ishaan. Thank you for being

there. Life never goes as planned. Neither do arranged marriages.Thank you R¿ddler for making this ePub With that, you are invited to one arranged murder.

One Arranged Marriage Murder by Chetan Bhagat

Ever since you found Prerna, I lost my best friend is what I told Saurabh.

Hi, this is Keshav,and Saurabh,my best friend,flatmate,colleague and business partner,wasn't talk to me. Beacouse I made fun of him and his fiance.

Saurabh and Prerna will be getting married soon.It is an arranged marriage. However,there is more cheesy romance between them than any love marriage couple.

On Karva Chauth,she fasted for him.She didn"t eat all day.In the evening, she called him and waited on the terrace for the moon and for Saurabh to break fast.Excited Saurabh ran up the steps of her three-storey house.

but when he reached....

Welcome to One Arranged Marriage Murder, an unputdownable thriller from India's highest-sellling author.A story about love,friendship,family and crime. One Arranged Marriage Murder will keep you entertained and hooked right till the end.

One Arranged Marriage Murder by Chetan Bhagat Review

3.6 - Goodreads

Brain Rules by John Medina

2020-11-29T09:54:00.006+05:30

Brain Rules by John Medina

Brain
Rules

12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving

at Work,home and School

JOHN MEDINA

BRAIN RULES. Copyright © 2008 by John J. Medina.

Contents
introduction

exercise

Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.
Our brains love motion ~ The incredible test-score booster ~ Will you age like
Jim or like Frank? ~ How oxygen builds roads for the brain
survival

Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too.
What’s uniquely human about us ~ A brilliant survival strategy ~ Meet your
brain ~ How we conquered the world
wiring

Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.
Neurons slide, slither, and split ~ Experience makes the difference ~ Furious
brain development not once, but twice ~ The Jennifer Aniston neuron
attention

Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things.
Emotion matters ~ Why there is no such thing as multitasking ~ We pay great
attention to threats, sex, and pattern matching ~ The brain needs a break!
short-term memory

Rule #5: Repeat to remember.
Memories are volatile ~ How details become splattered across the insides of our
brains ~ How the brain pieces them back together again ~ Where memories go
long-term memory

Rule #6: Remember to repeat.
If you don’t repeat this within 30 seconds, you’ll forget it ~ Spaced repetition
cycles are key to remembering ~ When floating in water could help your memory
sleep

Rule #7: Sleep well, think well.
The brain doesn’t sleep to rest ~ Two armies at war in your head ~ How to
improve your performance 34 percent in 26 minutes ~ Which bird are you? ~
Sleep on it!
stress

Rule #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.
Stress is good, stress is bad ~ A villain and a hero in the toxic-stress battle ~ Why
the home matters to the workplace ~ Marriage intervention for happy couples
sensory integration

Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses.
Lessons from a nightclub ~ How and why all of our senses work together ~
Multisensory learning means better remembering ~ What’s that smell?
vision

Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.
Playing tricks on wine tasters ~ You see what your brain wants to see, and it
likes to make stuff up ~ Throw out your PowerPoint
gender

Rule #11: Male and female brains are different.
Sexing humans ~ The difference between little girl best friends and little boy best
friends ~ Men favor gist when stressed; women favor details ~ A forgetting drug
exploration

Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers.
Babies are great scientists ~ Exploration is aggressive ~ Monkey see, monkey do
~ Curiosity is everything
acknowledgements

index

Brain Rules by John Medina
Introduction
Go ahead and multiply the number 8,388,628 x 2 in your head.Can you do it in a few seconds? There is a young man who can double that number 24 times in the space of a few seconds. He gets it right every time. There is a boy who can tell you the precise time of day
at any moment, even in his sleep. There is a girl who can correctly determine the exact dimensions of an object 20 feet away. There is a child who at age 6 drew such lifelike and powerful pictures, she got her own show at a gallery on Madison Avenue. Yet none of these
children could be taught to tie their shoes. Indeed, none of them have an IQ greater than 50.

The brain is an amazing thing. Your brain may not be nearly so odd, but it is no less extraordinary. Easily the most sophisticated information-transfer system on Earth, your brain is fully capable of taking the little black squiggles on this piece of bleached wood and deriving meaning from them. To accomplish this miracle, your brain sends jolts of electricity
crackling through hundreds of miles of wires composed of brain cells so small that thousands of them could fit into the period at the end of this sentence. You accomplish all of this in less time than it takes you to blink. Indeed, you have just done it. What’s equally incredible,
given our intimate association with it, is this: Most of us have no idea how our brain works.

This has strange consequences. We try to talk on our cell phones and drive at the same time, even though it is literally impossible for our brains to multitask when it comes to paying attention. We have created high-stress office environments, even though a stressed brain is significantly less productive. Our schools are designed so that most real learning has to occur at home. This would be funny if it weren’t so harmful. Blame it on the fact that brain scientists rarely have a conversation with teachers and business professionals, education
majors and accountants, superintendents and CEOs. Unless you have the Journal of Neuroscience sitting on your coffee table, you’re out of the loop.This book is meant to get you into the loop.12 brain rules

My goal is to introduce you to 12 things we know about how the brain works. I call these Brain Rules. For each rule, I present the science and then offer ideas for investigating how the rule
might apply to our daily lives, especially at work and school. The brain is complex, and I am taking only slivers of information from each subject—not comprehensive but, I hope, accessible. The Brain Rules film, available at www.brainrules.net/dvd, is an integral part of
the project. You might use the DVD as an introduction, and then jump between a chapter in the book and the illustrations online. A sampling of the ideas you’ll encounter:
• For starters, we are not used to sitting at a desk for eight hours
a day. From an evolutionary perspective, our brains developed
while working out, walking as many as 12 miles a day. The brain
still craves that experience, especially in sedentary populations like

our own. That’s why exercise boosts brain power (Brain Rule #1) in
such populations. Exercisers outperform couch potatoes in longterm memory, reasoning, attention, and problem-solving tasks. I am convinced that integrating exercise into our eight hours at work or school would only be normal.

• As you no doubt have noticed if you’ve ever sat through a typical PowerPoint presentation, people don’t pay attention to boring things (Brain Rule #4). You’ve got seconds to grab someone’s attention and only 10 minutes to keep it. At 9 minutes and 59 seconds, something
must be done to regain attention and restart the clock—something emotional and relevant. Also, the brain needs a break. That’s why I use stories in this book to make many of my points.
• Ever feel tired about 3 o’clock in the afternoon? That’s because your brain really wants to take a nap. You might be more productive if you did: In one study, a 26-minute nap improved NASA pilots’ performance by 34 percent. And whether you get enough rest at night affects your mental agility the next day. Sleep well, think well
(Brain Rule #7).

• We’ll meet a man who can read two pages at the same time, one with each eye, and remember everything in the pages forever. Most of us do more forgetting than remembering, of course, and that’s why we must repeat to remember (Brain Rule #5). When you understand
the brain’s rules for memory, you’ll see why I want to destroy the notion of homework.

• We’ll find out why the terrible twos only look like active rebellion but actually are a child’s powerful urge to explore. Babies may not have a lot of knowledge about the world, but they know a whole lot about how to get it. We are powerful and natural explorers (Brain Rule #12), and this never leaves us, despite the artificial environments we’ve built for ourselves.
no prescriptions The ideas ending the chapters of this book are not a prescription.

They are a call for real-world research. The reason springs from what I do for a living. My research expertise is the molecular basis of psychiatric disorders, but my real interest is in trying to understand the fascinating distance between a gene and a behavior. I have been
a private consultant for most of my professional life, a hired gun for research projects in need of a developmental molecular biologist with such specialization. I have had the privilege of watching countless research efforts involving chromosomes and mental function.

On such journeys, I occasionally would run across articles and books that made startling claims based on “recent advances” in brain science about how to change the way we teach people and do business. And I would panic, wondering if the authors were reading some literature totally off my radar screen. I speak several dialects of brain science, and I knew nothing from those worlds capable of dictating best practices for education and business. In truth, if we ever fully understood how the human brain knew how to pick up a glass of water, it would represent a major achievement.

There was no need to panic. You can responsibly train a skeptical eye on any claim that brain research can without equivocation tell us how to become better teachers, parents, business leaders, or students. This book is a call for research simply because we don’t know enough
to be prescriptive. It is an attempt to vaccinate against mythologies such as the “Mozart Effect,” left brain/right brain personalities, and getting your babies into Harvard by making them listen to language tapes while they are still in the womb. back to the jungle

What we know about the brain comes from biologists who study brain tissues, experimental psychologists who study behavior, cognitive neuroscientists who study how the first relates to the second, and evolutionary biologists. Though we know precious little about how the brain works, our evolutionary history tells us this: The brain appears to be designed to solve problems related to surviving

in an unstable outdoor environment, and to do so in nearly constant motion. I call this the brain’s performance envelope. Each subject in this book—exercise, survival, wiring, attention,
memory, sleep, stress, sense, vision, gender, and exploration— relates to this performance envelope. Motion translates to exercise. Environmental instability led to the extremely flexible way our brains are wired, allowing us to solve problems through exploration. Learning from our mistakes so we could survive in the great outdoors meant paying attention to certain things at the expense of others, and it meant creating memories in a particular way. Though we have been stuffing them into classrooms and cubicles for decades, our brains actually were built to survive in jungles and grasslands. We have not outgrown this.

I am a nice guy, but I am a grumpy scientist. For a study to appear in this book, it has to pass what some at The Boeing Company (for which I have done some consulting) call MGF: the Medina Grump Factor. That means the supporting research for each of my points must first be published in a peer-reviewed journal and then successfully replicated. Many of the studies have been replicated dozens of times. (To stay as reader-friendly as possible,
extensive references are not in this book but can be found at (www.brainrules.net.)

What do these studies show, viewed as a whole? Mostly this: If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over. In many ways, starting over is what this book is all about.

Brain Rules john Medina Review

4/5 · Goodreads

Think Like A Monk by Jay Shetty

2020-11-27T09:23:00.003+05:30

Think Like A Monk by Jay Shetty

THINK LIKE
A MONK

TRAIN YOUR MIND for PEACE
and PURPOSE EVERY DAY

JAY SHETTY

Copyright

Thorsons

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SEI 9GF

First published in the US by Simon & Schuster 2020

This UK edition published by Thorsons 2020

@ Jay R. Shetty 2020

Cover design by Jackie Seow

Cover photograph @ Steve Erle

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction

PART ONE

LET GO

1.IDENTITY

1 Am What 1 Think I Am

2.NEGATIVITY

The Evil King Goes Hungry

3.FEAR

Welcome to Hotel Earth

4.INTENTION

Blinded by the Gold

MEDITATION: Breathe

PART TWO

GROW

5.PURPOSE

The Nature of the Scorpion

6.ROUTINE

Location Has Energy; Time Has Memory

7.THE MIND

The Charioteer's Dilemma

8.EGO

Catch Me If You Can

MEDITATION: Visualize

PART THREE

GIVE

9.GRATITUDE

The World's Most Powerful Drug

10.RELATIONSHIPS

People Watching

11.SERVICE

Plant Trees Under whose Shade You Do Not Plan to Sit

MEDITATION: Chant

Conclusion

Appendix: The Vedic Personality Test

Acknowledgments

Author's Note

Notes

Next Steps

List of Searchable Terms

About the Publisher

Think Like A Monk by Jay Shetty

"Thinking like a monk" posits another way of viewing and approaching life. A way of rebellion, detachment, rediscovery, purpose, focus, discipline—and service. The goal of monk thinking is a life free of ego, envy, lust, anxiety, anger, bitterness, baggage. To my mind, adopting the monk mindset isn't just possible—it's necessary. We have no other choice. We need to find calm, stillness, and peace.

I vividly remember my first day of monk school. I had just shaved my head but I wasn't wearing robes yet, and I still looked like I was from London. I noticed a child monk—he can't have been more than ten years old—teaching a group of five-year-olds. He had a great aura about him, the poise and confidence of an adult.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"We just taught their first class ever," he said, then asked me, "Why did you learn in your first day of school?"

"I started to learn the alphabet and numbers. 1%at did they learn?" "The first thing we teach them is how to breathe." "WHY?" I asked.

"Because the only thing that stays with you from the moment you're born until the moment you die is your breath. All your friends, your family, the country you live in, all of that can change. The one thing that stays with you is your breath."

This ten-year-old monk added, "M€men you get stressed—what changes? Your breath. 1%en you get angry—what changes? Your breath. We experience every emotion with the change of the breath. 1%en you learn to navigate and manage your breath, you can navigate any situation in life."

Already I was being taught the most important lesson: to focus on the root of things, not the leaf of the tree or symptoms of the problem. And I was learning, through direct observation, that anybody can be a monk, even if they're only five or ten years old.

When we're born, the first thing we must do is breathe. But just as life gets more complicated for that newborn baby, sitting still and breathing can be very challenging. What I hope to do in this book is to show you the monk way—we go to the root of things, go deep into self-examination. It is only through this curiosity, thought, effort, and revelation that we find our way to peace, calm, and purpose. Using the wisdom I was given by my teachers in the ashram, I hope to guide you there.

In the pages ahead, I will walk you through three stages of adapting to the monk mindset. First, we will let go, stripping ourselves from the external influences, internal obstacles, and fears that hold us back. You can think of this as a cleansing that will make space for growth. Second, we will grow. I will help you reshape your life so that you can make decisions with intention, purpose, and confidence. Finally, we will give, looking to the world beyond ourselves, expanding and sharing our sense of gratitude, and deepening our relationships. We will share our gifts and love with others and discover the true joy and surprising benefits of service.

Along the way, I will introduce you to three very different types of meditation that I recommend including in your practice: breathwork, visualization, and sound. All three have benefits, but the simplest way to differentiate them is to know that you do breathwork for the physical benefits—to find stillness and balance, to calm yourself; visualization for the psychological benefits—to heal the past and prepare for the future; and chanting for the psychic benefits—to connect with your deepest self and the universe, for real purification.

You don't have to meditate to benefit from this book, but if you do, the tools I give you will be sharper. I would go so far as to say that this entire book is a meditation—a reflection on our beliefs and values and intentions, how we see ourselves, how we make decisions, how to train our minds, and our ways of choosing and interacting with people. Achieving such deep self-awareness is the purpose and reward of meditation.

How would a monk think about this? That may not be a question you ask yourself right now— probably isn't close at all—but it will be by the end of the book.

Think Like A Monk by Jay Shetty, Reviews Book by Jay Shetty

4.3/5Goodreads

4.5/5bookGeeks

4.8/5flipkart.com

This book will make you kinder

2020-11-26T09:45:00.005+05:30

This Book Will Make You

Kinder

An Empathy Handbook
HENRY JAMES GARRETT

SOUVENIR

PRESS

Copyright@by Henry James Garrett, 2020

Contents

Introduction

1 Why ask, "Why are we kind?" 2 We are kind because of empathy 3 Empathy evolved

4 Empathy has an off switch

5 The unequal distribution of empathy-limiting mistakes

6 Mistakes that can turn empathy off

7 Exercising empathy

Conclusion

This book will make you kinder
Introduction

This book will make you kinder. I'm not picking on you; it's just that you're the one reading it. This book will hopefully make anyone who reads it kinder and will hopefully be read by loads of people.

I've found that I have to write a book that makes people kinder.

The reason I have to do that has something to do with the fact that I suffer from anxiety. Anxiety sufferers vary a lot; what triggers

paralyzing fear in one can be very different from what terrifies another. Some people are stressed by large, open spaces; others, by confined ones; some unfortunate people are stressed by both.

One of the many things that I find anxiety-inducing is unkindness, including my own. My whole body seizes up in panic when I notice the most minor inadvertent hurts people cause one another. You can imagine the stress that a populist backlash against basic forms of human decency is causing me.

I want the world to be less cruel so that I can find it a less stressful place to live (an ironically selfish motive for creating a better world).

But thanks to the aforementioned anxiety, I'm terrified by many of the routes I might take to make the world kinder. Most of the ways one could go about changing things involve meeting people and talking with them face-to-face. And, stressful though unkindness is, I find interacting with strangers even more so.

I'm caught between a rock and a terrifying social situation: desperate to make people kinder, but stressed out by actually having to talk to them about it.

So a book seems the best route forward for me. If I can sit here, on my own, in my slippers, and write something that will drastically increase your kindness—without us ever having to actually meet—that's the dream scenario for me. This is that book.

(Secretly, I'm hoping that billions of people read this book and that they all suddenly become as kind as the kindest person I know. Then I can sneak off and live in a tree house with my partner and feel like I did my bit. I don't think ifs particularly likely, but it's worth a shot.)

There's one thing I need you to know from the start: I'm not writing this book because I think I'm particularly kind. I don't. I'm not writing from a place of kindness superiority. I've just spent a lot of time thinking about kindness and its limits, because I spend so much of my time stressed out by all the cruelty. And I was lucky enough to get a chance to mite those thoughts down.

In fact, this book represents my second attempt to mite down these very musings. The first was a few years ago. I had thought for some reason that the best place to go to write stuff that would make people kinder was an academic philosophy department.

So, I started a philosophy PhD (on the subject of empathy and metaethics). My goal was to become a professor who wrote papers so compelling that they left the academic sphere and convinced everyone to be more moral. Instead, it was I who left academia. My anxiety (compounded, perhaps, by those unrealistic aspirations) forced me to drop out of my studies.

At that point, I began working in earnest on these drawings. I needed a way to feel I was contributing to a kinder world, as well as a job that my anxiety would allow me to do, and I was spending most of my time with my dog, Billie, who's always cared for me when I've been unwell. Hence, Drawings of Dogs—and my peculiar cartooning career—was born (I've since branched out from just drawing dogs).

I draw anthropomorphized animals, plants, and inanimate objects chatting verbosely and try to make gentle, Trojan-horse points about how humans mistreat one another.

I feel ecstatic and incredibly grateful that things have somehow come a weird full circle. Those cartoons (and the generous, beautifully loyal people who've connected with them) have led me here, to m•iting this book. And what I'm trying to write is a jargon-free version of what I intended to mite as a philosopher (with the benefit of everything I've learned in the intervening years as well as a much wider audience): an illustrated book that makes its reader kinder.

YOU + THIS BOOK

YOU, But KINDER

when I talk about making you kinder, I don't just mean the everyday kindness of taking out your neighbor's bins—although I'd hate to downplay the importance of small acts. I also mean the strong, courageous, moral Kindnesses of fighting injustice or sacrificing something for a worthy cause; I mean the hard work of self-reflection and self-improvement that is the only path to challenging the ways we've been conditioned by our society to be cruel to certain groups en masse. I plan to make you kinder in this sense; I mean to cover all the good and bad that we do to one another (I did say it was an unrealistically ambitious book).

In talking about kindness, I'm also talking about all of morality. And you'll notice that I flit back and forth, using those words nearly synonymously. That's because in my view, morality is

the domain of thought in which we inquire as to which Kindnesses and abstentions from cruelty we owe to and can expect from one another. (The language of morality is often used more broadly than this. People use immoral to capture a wide range of prohibitions on behaviors that they find yucky, threatening, or distasteful. But that's not what morality, as I believe it should be understood, is about.)

In my view, to say that something is morally right is just to say that it's a form of kindness that is required of you. To describe something as morally wrong is to say that it's a form of cruelty you mustn't commit.

So, along with making you kinder, this book's going to help you get a firm handle on that most slippery of subjects: morality:

A book that could make everyone kinder, in this sense, is desperately needed right now (although, it's doubtful there's ever been a time it hasn't). Unkindness has been given new energy and legitimacy in recent years. Long-brewing fear and resentment have been redirected from the powerful toward the most powerless people in our society. Cruelty has stepped from the shadows, has rebranded, and now occupies many of the world's highest political offices.

So, how could a book possibly make you kinder? My strategy will be to answer two questions:

why are we kind?

why aren't we kinder?

Working out why humans are kind at all is a good place to start. If we can't agree on why humans are a bit kind, we're unlikely to agree on the best route to making them all a bit kinder. And I don't think we do agree on the basic source of human kindness.

There are a number of explanations on offer, and they suggest different acceptable limits to

our kindness and different routes to expanding those limit'.-I'll present a specific account of human kindness and morality, one that gives empathy a central role/ and build from there in getting us all to step it up a gear.

EXPLANATION OF
HUMAN KINDNESS

(A quick aside: I want it to be clear that what I offer here is one account among many of the foundations of morality. Many people will disagree with it, and that's OK. Although I sincerely believe this account to be in some sense the truth about morality, and I'd quite like you to agree, I also recognize that other people believe alternative accounts just as sincerely, that I don't have privileged access to the truth of the matter, and that one group trying to enforce its of morality on another is morally reprehensible—and has, ironically, been the pretext for many atrocities. All of this should go vyithout saying, but it's the fault of people who have tended to look like me that it does not.)

I want to engage you in these abstract questions because it's my view that this is where our moral discrepancies get their foothold, though we tend not to notice it. Arguments about politics, morality, and how we should live rarely end in anyone changing their mind. How often have you felt you're wasting your time in an ethical dispute, like you're a pair of monolingual UN diplomats and all the translators are on strike, leaving you ardently talking past one another in different languages?

People talk past each other on moral matters because their tme disagreement exists elsewhere; the real source of disagreement is often that those involved arrived with different ideas about what and how much we owe to one another. V%en one person's starting point is a far more limited conception of what morality can demand than the other's, there's little chance of them seeing eye-to-eye on specific moral questions. But we never move the conversation further back, to the abstract questions about what morality demands—or what morality even is.

Those who hold narrow views of our duties to one another are wrong, in my view. Those who think, for example, that as long as you're not breaking the law, you can't be acting immorally simply don't get morality.

We owe each other far more than we tend to recognize. But we need to have that conversation head-on. My hope is that when we do, well see that we are far from doing enough. This book v.'ill help everyone who reads it reset their threshold for how much kindness is owed, leaving you with the realization that we've all been falling short for some time (that's OK, though; it's what we do with that realization that matters).

Most of the books that aim to make you kinder do so by getting specific. They get down to the nitty-gritty in a particular area of politics, applied ethics, or social justice; they fry to show you specifically what you've

been getting wrong, and how you ought to change your actions going forward. We need books like that; I've read some incredible ones and have had my behavior changed by them.3

But with this book, I'm aiming to get a bit more meta. I want to go beyond the specifics, further back than any particular kindness question, and see if we can find some solid ground. I want us to move closer to a world in which we arrive at political disputes with a shared background assumption that we owe one another an awcful lot, so that we can focus on the problem of how to act on that assumption.

With this book, I'm going to argue that you are kind because of empathy,4 and the only reason you aren't kinder is because you make mistakes that switch that empathy off.

THROUGH EMPATHY, You SHARE IN THE FEELINGS OF OTHERS.

Our evolved capacity for empathy—our capacity to experience those feelings we witness in others—is in my view (and hopefully in yours, by the end of this book) the source of human kindness and the foundation of morality.

Our automatic tendency to empathetically partake in the pain and pleasure of others is a sufficient explanation of our concern for people's well-being and our motivation to act kindly. But if the empathy you experience right now were the beginning and end of the kindness discussion, there wouldn't be much point in this book.

Turns out, our empathy malfunctions when we make certain types of mistakes.

V%en you don't know enough about others and how your choices affect them, or when you hold false beliefs that similarly obscure the lived consequences of your actions, it's impossible for your empathy to motivate you to act as it othervvise would. Certain kinds of ignorance can result in you witnessing someone in pain and feeling no part of that pain. Ignorance can swcitch your empathy off.

Therefore, it's not your actual, currently occurring empathy that counts; it's the empathy you would feel if you weren't making any mistakes. It's empathy in the absence of empathy-limiting ignorance that matters, morally speaking.

Empathy — ignorance = morality (or, the kindness we owe one another).

Making someone kinder, then, has more to do 'with getting rid of the bad reasons they have for limiting their kindness than it does v,ith providing new reasons to be kind. Ultimately this book is about helping you become better at spotting empathy-limiting mistakes and less prone to making new ones; to that end we'll explore a taxonomy of common types of mistakes.

We must also be mindful of the fact that the ignorance that makes humans cruel is not evenly distributed. And that's because power is not evenly distributed. A large chunk of empathylimiting mistakes have as their subject members of an oppressed group or marginalized community. It's more likely that people (like me) from more privileged groups will hold those beliefs and maintain that ignorance, which enables us to be cruel to oppressed folk, than vice versa.

Not everyone is equally responsible for the "empathy and I'm at pains to make sure that no one finishes this book thinking that was my message. I'm not claiming that everyone needs to strengthen their empathy toward everyone else; that, for example, survivors of men's sexual violence need to find a way to empathize more wholly with violent men. Not in the slightest.

Oppressed people are already doing a good enough job of empathizing with their oppressors.' Our society is set up to encourage only some forms of empathy-limiting ignorance: those that justify and therefore cement power. It's set up that way not through some mysterious conspiracy but because only certain types of stories get told; we learn a lot about some groups' experiences and are encouraged in our ignorance of others'.

It follows that the best defense against some of the most common empathy-limiting mistakes is listening to marginalized people directly. If you seek out those voices that have been actively silenced and listen to and believe what they have to say, youll be far less likely to make a mistake that stops you from empathizing. To be clear, by listening, I don't just mean partaking in audible conversation (in the sense used here, deaf people are able to listen); by listening, I mean an active effort to receive what someone is communicating, through any medium, to you.

I don't want you to think that this book is exclusively about political forms of cruelty; the same principles apply in our personal relationships (the dichotomy between personal and political is flawed, but I hope you can see the contrast I'm getting at). In our personal lives we make empathy-limiting mistakes that are uniquely our own. This book 'VA-ill hopefully help us to spot and unmake those too. But when we're talking about those mistakes that are widely shared, we V.ill tend inevitably to be talking about power and identity.

This book v.ill make you kinder in two main ways: It give you a firm understanding of the foundation of your kindness, which Will legitimize and strengthen your moral resolve; and it will provide some tools and a framework to spot those mistakes that limit your empathy and thereby your kindness.

You are kind because of empathy, but your empathy has been unduly limited. I'm hoping to convince you that you owe others at least that kindness you would extend to them if you had talked with them, listening to and believing what they had to say, and were fully aware of their lived experience and how your actions might affect them.

You ought to be as kind as you would be if you knew vividly about every sentient being's life and how you might help—or harm—them. And that would be very kind indeed.

We all already have the capacity for a radically inclusive and demanding form of empathy. My hope is that if we look head-on at what holds us back, the walls around our kindness will crumble.

Why ask, "Why are we kind?"
Abstract questions

To make people kinder, I'm setting out to answer these two questions:

why are we kind?

why aren't we kinder?

At this point, I fear you might be thinking this all sounds a little too abstract. Perhaps you're looking around at the volume of socially condoned cruelty in our society and thinking moves not the time for philosophizing. Aren't these theoretical questions just intellectual curiosities, inappropriate in a time when what we really need are practical actions we can take to resist a rising tide of violence?

I want to convince you that the most abstract moral questions and our answers to them matter.

Usually when we disagree on some isolated moral question—when we can't decide what the kind thing to do is or whether a certain act of kindness is required of us—we conduct our argument on a superficial level.

lets say you're arguing with one of your friends because you disagree on what your duties are when someone who is street-homeless asks for money to buy a hot drink. One of you might suggest that the money be put to better use if donated to a homeless shelter, while the other might point out that one of the many dehumanizing aspects of being street-homeless is that

everyone you meet thinks they*re better placed than you to decide what's in your best interest. Maybe there's also a third friend who says that, though it would be generous to use your money in either of these ways, ultimately it's your hard-earned money and you have no duty whatsoever to do anything about homelessness with it (we're not a fan of this guy).

It's unlikely, I think, that you'd move the argument further back and look for a more abstract origin for your disagreement. Perhaps if you did, you'd find that you have different takes on what justifies the existence and maintenance of private property rights. Maybe one friend believes those rights are built into the fabric of the universe and the other thinks there an essential legal construct for a functioning economy, while you recognize these rights as contingent features of our current economic system that allow the wealthy to exploit others. And perhaps it's here that the divergence in your views really lies.

This is a problem that crops up a lot. In fact, it's everywhere I look. People are arguing about the particular, talking to shape one another's views on specific issues, without checking if there's any agreement on the premises they brought to these conversations. However you want to cut it —left versus right, social justice warrior versus fascist, snowflake versus realist—our views on particular, substantive moral questions seem to be decided before we even arrive at those questions.

You can probably bring to mind many of your acquaintances and accurately predict where they will stand on moral issues about which you've never conversed. That's because our views on the right thing to do are determined higher up, or further back. Those views follow from the stances we have implicitly adopted on more abstract moral questions (such as "M.mat sorts of beings are worthy of moral consideration?"), which in turn follow from answers to even more abstract questions (such as do we even mean by 'moral'?").

Imagine a group of friends playing a board game. One of them rolls the dice, gets a six, and goes to move their piece, but an argument breaks out over where it should now be. One person thinks it should move six places forward; another, that it should move twenty places back.

This Book Will Make You Kinder: An Empathy Handbook, Reviews

Book by Henry James Garrett

5/5Amazon.in

4.5/5Goodreads

4.3/5Barnes & Noble

the three mistakes of my life

2020-11-25T09:07:00.007+05:30

The Three Mistakes

of My Life

A Story about Business, Cricket and Religion

Chetan Bhagat

Rupa & Co

Acknowledgements

My readers, you that is, to whom I owe all my success and motivation. My

life belongs to you now, and serving you is the most meaningful thing I can do with my

life. I want to share something with you. I am very ambitious in my writing goals.

However, I don't want to be India's most admired writer. I just want to be India's

most loved writer. Admiration passes, love endures.

To Shinie Antony, a friend who has been with me all these years and who

critically reviews my work and ensures that it is fit for my reader's consumption. My

family, which continues to support me in all my ventures. Specially, my brother Ketan

Bhagat for his critical feedback from Sydney and cricket freak brother-in-law Anand

Suryanaryan who told me more about cricket than anyone else would have.

The people of Gujarat, in particular Ahmedabad, where I spent some of the most

wonderful and formative years of my life.

My publishers Rupa and Co, who have fulfilled all my dreams and continue to

pursue the goal of making India read.

My friends in the film industry, who have given me a new platform to tell my

stories from, and who teach me new things everyday, in particular Atul Agnihotri, Raju

Hirani, Alvira Khan, Sharman Joshi, Vipul Shah, Imtiaz Ali, Shirish Kunder, Farah Khan and

Salman Khan.

The Madras Players and Evam Theatre Group, who turned my stories into wonderful

plays.

My friends in the media, especially those who have understood my intentions for my

country and are with me.

My colleagues at Deutsche Bank, my friends in Mumbai and Hong Kong.

God, who continues to look after me despite my flaws.

Prologue

It is not everyday you sit in front of your computer on a Saturday morning and get

an email like this:

From: Ahd_businessman@gmail.com Sent: 12/28/2005 11.40 p.m.

To: info@chetanbhagat.com

Subject: A final note

Dear Chetan

This email is a combined suicide note and a confession letter. I have let people down

and have no reason to live. You don't know me. I'm an ordinary boy in Ahmedabad who

read your books. And somehow I felt I could write to you after that. I can't really tell

anyone what I am doing to myself - which is taking a sleeping pill everytime I end a

sentence - so I thought I would tell you.

I kept my coffee cup down and counted. Five full stops already

I made three mistakes; I don't want to go into details.

My suicide is not a sentimental decision. As many around me know, I am a

good businessman because I have little emotion. This is no knee-jerk reaction. I

waited over three years, watched Ish's silent face everyday. But after he refused my

offer yesterday, I had no choice left.

I have no regrets either. Maybe I'd have wanted to talk to Vidya once more –

but that doesn't seem like such a good idea right now.

Sorry to bother you with this. But I felt like I had to tell someone. You have

ways to improve as an author but you do write decent books. Have a nice weekend.

Regards

Businessman

17, 18, 19. Somewhere, in Ahmedabad a young 'ordinary' boy had popped

nineteen sleeping pills while typing out a mail to me. Yet, he expected me to have a

nice weekend. The coffee refused to go down my throat. I broke into a cold sweat.

‘One, you wake up late. Two, you plant yourself in front of the computer first

thing in the morning. Are you even aware that you have a family?' Anusha said.

In case it isn't obvious enough from the authoritative tone, Anusha is my wife.

I had promised to go furniture shopping with her – a promise that was made

ten weekends ago.

She took my coffee mug away and jiggled the back of my chair. ‘We need

dining chairs. Hey, you look worried?’ she said.

I pointed to the monitor.

`Businessman?' she said as she finished reading the mail. She looked pretty

shaken up too.

And it is from Ahmedabad,' I said, 'that is all we know.' `You sure this is

real?' she said, a quiver in her voice. `This is not spam,' I said. `It is addressed to

me.'

My wife pulled a stool to sit down. I guess we really did need write extra

chairs.

`Think,' she said. `We've got to let someone know. His parents maybe.'

`How? I don't know where the hell it came from,' I said. And who do we

know in Ahmedabad?'

`We met in Ahmedabad, remember?' Anusha said. A pointless statement, I

thought. Yes, we'd been classmates at IIM-A years ago. ‘So?’

`Call the institute. Prof Basant or someone,' she sniffed and left the room.

'Oh no, the daal is burning.'

There are advantages in having a wife smarter than you. I could never be a

detective.

I searched the institute numbers on the Internet and called. An operator

connected me to Prof Basant's residence. I checked the time, 10.00 a.m. in Singapore,

7.30 a.m. in India. It is a bad idea to mess with a prof early in the morning.

`Hello?' a sleepy voice answered. Had to be the prof.

`Prof Basant, Hi. This is Chetan Bhagat calling. Your old student, remember?'

`Who?' he said with a clear lack of curiosity in his voice. Bad start.

I told him about the course he took for us, and how we had voted him the

friendliest professor in the campus. Flattery didn't help much either.

'Oh that Chetan Bhagat,' he said, like he knew a million of them. You are a

writer now, no?'

'Yes sir,' I said, 'that one.'

'So why are you writing books?'

'Tough question, sir,' I stalled.

'Ok, a simple one. Why are you calling me so early on a Saturday?'

I told him why and forwarded the email to him.

'No name, eh?' he said as he read the mail.

'He could be in a hospital somewhere in Ahmedabad. He would have just

checked in. Maybe he is dead. Or maybe he is at home and this was a hoax,' I said.

I was blabbering. I wanted help – for the boy and me. The prof had asked a

good question. Why the hell did I write books – to get into this?

'We can check hospitals,' Prof said. 'I can ask a few students. But a name

surely helps. Hey wait, this boy has a Gmail account, maybe he is on Orkut as

well.'

'Or-what?' Life is tough when you are always talking to people smarter than

you.

'You are so out of touch, Chetan. Orkut is a networking site. Gmail users

I heard him clicking keys and sat before my own PC. I had just reached the

Orkut site when Prof Basant exclaimed, 'Aha, Ahmedabad Businessman. There is a

brief profile here. The name only says G. Patel. Interests are cricket, business,

mathematics and friends. Doesn't seem like he uses Orkut much though.'

'What are you talking about Prof Basant? I woke up to a suicide note,

written exclusively to me. Now you are telling me about his hobbies. Can you

help me or...'

A pause, then, 'I will get some students. We will search for a new young

patient called G. Patel, suspected of sleeping pill overdose. We will call you if we

find anything, ok?

'Yes, sir,' I said, breathing properly after a long time.

'And how is Anusha? You guys bunked my classes for dates and flow forget

me.'

'She is fine, sir.'

'Good, I always felt she was smarter than you. Anyway, let's find your boy,'

the prof said and hung up.

Besides furniture shopping, I had to finish an office presentation. My boss,

Michel's boss was due from New York. Hoping to impress him Michel asked me

to make a presentation of the group, with fifty charts. For three consecutive

nights last week I had worked until 1:00 a.m., but had gotten only halfway.

'This is a suggestion. Don't take it the wrong way. But do consider taking a

bath,' my wife said.

I looked at her.

'Just an option,' she said.

I think she is overcautious sometimes. I don't bite back.

'Yes, yes. I will,' I said and stared at the computer again.

Thoughts darted through my head. Should I call some hospitals myself?

What if Prof Basant dozed off again? What if he could not collect the

students? What if G. Patel was dead? And why am I becoming so involved

here?

I took a reluctant shower. I opened the office presentation, but found myself

unable to type a single word.

I refused breakfast, though regretted it moments later – as hunger and anxiety

did not go well together.

My phone rang at 1.33 p.m.

`Hello,' Prof Basant's voice was unmistakable. 'We have a match at Civil Hospital.

His name is Govind Patel, twenty-five years of age. A second-year student of mine

found him.'

‘And?'

‘And he is alive. But won't talk. Even to his family. Must be in shock.’

‘What are the doctors saying?’ I said.

'Nothing. It is a government hospital. What do you expect? Anyway, they will

flush his stomach and send him home. I won't worry too much now. Will ask a student

to check again in the evening.'

'But what is his story? What happened?'

All that I don't know. Listen, don't get too involved. India is a big country.

These things happen all the time. The more you probe, the more the chances of the

police harassing you.'

Next, I called the Civil Hospital. However, the operator did not know about the

case and there was no facility to transfer the line to the ward either.

Anusha, too, was relieved that the boy was safe. She then announced the plan for

the day – the dining chair hunt. It would begin at Ikea on Alexandra Road.

We reached Ikea at around three o'clock and browsed through the space-saving

dining sets. One dining table could fold four times over and become a coffee table –

pretty neat.

'I want to know what happened to the twenty-five-year-old businessman,' I

muttered.

'You will find out eventually. Let him recover. Must be one of those crazy reasons of

youth – rejection in love, low marks or drugs.' I stayed silent.

'C'mon, he just emailed you. Your ID is on your book cover. You really don't need

to get involved. Should we take six or eight?' She moved towards an oak-wood set.

I protested that we rarely had so many guests at home. Six chairs would be

enough.

'The marginal capacity utilisation of the two chairs would be less than ten

per cent,' I said.

'You men are least helpful,' she tossed back and then selected six chairs.

My mind strayed back to the businessman.

Yes, everyone was right. I shouldn't get involved. But yet, of all the people

in the world, this boy had sent me his last words. I couldn't help but get involved.

We ate lunch in the food court next to Ikea.

'I have to go,' I told my wife as I played with my lemon rice. 'Where? To

the office. Ok, you are a free man now. I did my shopping,' my wife said.

'No. I want to go to Ahmedabad. I want to meet Govind Patel.' I did not

meet her eye. Maybe I was sounding crazy.

‘Are you nuts?’

I think it is only in my generation that Indian women started slamming

their husbands.

'My mind keeps going back,' I said.

'What about your presentation? Michel will kill you.'

'I know. He won't get promoted unless he impresses his boss.' My wife

looked at me. My face was argument enough. She knew I would not talk sense until I

had met the boy.

'Well, there is only one direct flight at 6 p.m. today. You can check the

tickets.' She dialled the Singapore Airlines number and handed me the phone.

I entered the room the nurses had led me to. The eerie silence and the

darkness made my footsteps sound loud. Ten different instruments beeped and LED

lights flickered at regular intervals. Cables from the instruments disappeared into

the man I had travelled thousands of miles to see – Govind Patel.

I noticed the curly hair first. He had a wheatish complexion and bushy

eyebrows. His thin lips had turned dry because of the medicines.

`Hi, Chetan Bhagat ... the writer you wrote to,' I said, unsure if he could

place me.

`O ... How did ... you find me?' he said, finding it difficult to speak.

`Destined to, I guess,' I said.

I shook hands and sat down. His mother came into the room. She looked so

sleep-deprived, she could use a sleeping pill herself. I greeted her as she went out to

get tea.

I looked at the boy again. I had two instant urges – one, to ask him what

happened and two, to slap him.

`Don't look at me like that,' he said, shifting in his bed, 'you must be angry.

Sorry, I should not have written that mail.'

‘Forget the mail. You should not have done what you did.'

He sighed. He took a hard look at me and then turned his gaze sideways.

`I have no regrets,' he said.

`Shut up. There is nothing heroic in this. Cowards pop pills.' `You would

have done the same, if you were in my place.' `Why? What happened to you?'

`It doesn't matter!

We fell silent as his mother returned with tea. A nurse came in and told his

mother to go home, but she refused to budge. Finally, the doctor had to intervene.

She left at 11.30 p.m. I stayed in the room, promising the doctor I would

leave soon.

`So, tell me your story,' I said, once we were alone.

`Why? What can you do about it? You can't change what happened,' he

said tiredly.

`You don't just listen to stories to change the past. Sometimes, it is

important to know what happened.'

`I am a businessman. To me, people only do things out of self-interest.

What's in it for you? And why should I waste my time telling you anything?'

I stared at the soft-skinned face that hid such hardness inside. `Because I will

want to tell others,' I said. There, that was my incentive.

And why would anyone care? My story is not trendy or sexy like the IITs

and call centres.'

He removed the quilt covering his chest. The heater and our conversation

kept the room warm.

`I think they will care,' I said, 'a young person tried to kill himself. That does not

seem right.'

`No one gives a fuck about me.'

I tried, but found it difficult to be patient. I considered slapping him again.

`Listen,' I said, pitching my voice to the maximum allowed in a hospital.

'You chose to send your last mail to me. That means at a certain level you

trusted me. I located you and flew out within hours of your mail. You still

question if I care? And now this cocky attitude, this arrogance is part of your

business? Can't you talk to me like a friend? Do you even know what a friend is?'

A nurse came peeking into the room on hearing my loud voice. We became

quiet. The clock showed midnight.

He sat there stunned. Everyone had behaved nicely with him today. I stood

up and turned away from him.

‘I know what a friend is,' he said at last.

I sat down next to him.

‘I do know what a friend is. Because I had two, the best ones in the world.'

The Three Mistakes of my life book review

3/5 · Goodreads

Heaven is for Real : A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

2020-11-23T09:17:00.012+05:30

Heaven Is for Real

A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven
and Back

Todd Burpo
with Lynn Vincent

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue: Angels at Arby’s

1. The Crawl-A-See-Um

2. Pastor Job

3. Colton Toughs It Out

4. Smoke Signals

5. Shadow of Death

6. North Platte

7. “I Think This Is It”

8. Raging at God

9. Minutes Like Glaciers

10. Prayers of a Most Unusual Kind

11. Colton Burpo, Collection Agent

12. Eyewitness to Heaven

13. Lights and Wings

14. On Heaven Time

15. Confession

16. Pop

17. Two Sisters

18. The Throne Room of God

19. Jesus Really Loves the Children

20. Dying and Living

21. The First Person You’ll See

22. No One Is Old in Heaven

23. Power from Above

24. Ali’s Moment

25. Swords of the Angels

26. The Coming War

27. Someday We’ll See

Epilogue

Timeline of Events

Notes

About the Burpos

About Lynn Vincent

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In telling Colton’s story, we have been afforded the chance to not just work

with dedicated professionals but with real and caring people. Sure, we

have been impressed with their expertise, but Sonja and I have been more

delighted by their character and their hearts.

Phil McCallum, Joel Kneedler, Lynn Vincent, and Debbie Wickwire have

not just invested their own lives into the making of this book; they have also

enriched our family. Without their enormous efforts and sensitive spirits, Heaven Is For Real would have never developed so wonderfully. We thank God daily for assembling these gifted and talented people to

help us tell Colton’s story. Each one has been a blessing to us.

Sonja and I count it a wonderful privilege to call them our friends.

Heaven Is for Real A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

PROLOGUE

Angels at Arby’s

The Fourth of July holiday calls up memories of patriotic parades, the

savory scents of smoky barbecue, sweet corn, and night skies bursting

with showers of light. But for my family, the July Fourth weekend of 2003

was a big deal for other reasons.

My wife, Sonja, and I had planned to take the kids to visit Sonja’s

brother, Steve, and his family in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It would be our

first chance to meet our nephew, Bennett, born two months earlier. Plus,

our kids, Cassie and Colton, had never been to the falls before. (Yes, there

really is a Sioux Falls in Sioux Falls.) But the biggest deal of all was this:

this trip would be the first time we’d left our hometown of Imperial,

Nebraska, since a family trip to Greeley, Colorado, in March had turned

into the worst nightmare of our lives.

To put it bluntly, the last time we had taken a family trip, one of our

children almost died. Call us crazy, but we were a little apprehensive this

time, almost to the point of not wanting to go. Now, as a pastor, I’m not a

believer in superstition. Still, some weird, unsettled part of me felt that if we

just hunkered down close to home, we’d be safe. Finally, though, reason—

and the lure of meeting little Bennett, whom Steve had told us was the

world’s cutest baby—won out. So we packed up a weekend’s worth of

paraphernalia in our blue Ford Expedition and got our family ready to head

north.

Sonja and I decided the best plan would be to get most of the driving

done at night. That way, even though Colton would be strapped into his car

seat against his four-year-old, I’m-a-big-kid will, at least he’d sleep for most of the trip. So it was a little after 8 p.m. when I backed the Expedition

out of our driveway, steered past Crossroads Wesleyan Church, my

pastorate, and hit Highway 61.

The night spread clear and bright across the plains, a half moon white

against a velvet sky. Imperial is a small farming town tucked just inside the

western border of Nebraska. With only two thousand souls and zero traffic

lights, it’s the kind of town with more churches than banks, where farmers

stream straight off the fields into the family-owned café at lunchtime,

wearing Wolverine work boots, John Deere ball caps, and a pair of pliers

for fence-mending hanging off their hips. So Cassie, age six, and Colton

were excited to be on the road to the “big city” of Sioux Falls to meet their

newborn cousin.

The kids chattered for ninety miles to the city of North Platte, with Colton

fighting action-figure superhero battles and saving the world several times

on the way. It wasn’t quite 10 p.m. when we pulled into the town of about

twenty-four thousand, whose greatest claim to fame is that it was the

hometown of the famous Wild West showman, Buffalo Bill Cody. North

Platte would be about the last civilized stop—or at least the last open stop —we’d pass that night as we headed northeast across vast stretches of

cornfields empty of everything but deer, pheasant, and an occasional

farmhouse. We had planned in advance to stop there to top off both the

gas tank and our bellies.

After a fill-up at a Sinclair gas station, we pulled out onto Jeffers Street,

and I noticed we were passing through the traffic light where, if we turned

left, we’d wind up at the Great Plains Regional Medical Center. That was

where we’d spent fifteen nightmarish days in March, much of it on our

knees, praying for God to spare Colton’s life. God did, but Sonja and I joke

that the experience shaved years off our own lives.

Sometimes laughter is the only way to process tough times, so as we

passed the turnoff, I decided to rib Colton a little.

“Hey, Colton, if we turn here, we can go back to the hospital,” I said. “Do

you wanna go back to the hospital?”

Our preschooler giggled in the dark. “No, Daddy, don’t send me! Send

Cassie . . . Cassie can go to the hospital!”

Sitting next to him, his sister laughed. “Nuh-uh! I don’t wanna go either!”

In the passenger seat, Sonja turned so that she could see our son,

whose car seat was parked behind mine. I pictured his blond crew cut and

his sky-blue eyes shining in the dark. “Do you remember the hospital,

Colton?” Sonja said.

“Yes, Mommy, I remember,” he said. “That’s where the angels sang to me.”

Inside the Expedition, time froze. Sonja and I looked at each other,

passing a silent message: Did he just say what I think he said?

Sonja leaned over and whispered, “Has he talked to you about angels

before?”

I shook my head. “You?”

She shook her head.

I spotted an Arby’s, pulled into the parking lot, and switched off the

engine. White light from a street lamp filtered into the Expedition. Twisting

in my seat, I peered back at Colton. In that moment, I was struck by his

smallness, his little boyness. He was really just a little guy who still spoke

with an endearing (and sometimes embarrassing) call-it-like-you-see-it

innocence. If you’re a parent, you know what I mean: the age where a kid might point to a pregnant woman and ask (very loudly), “Daddy, why is that

lady so fat?” Colton was in that narrow window of life where he hadn’t yet

learned either tact or guile.

All these thoughts flashed through my mind as I tried to figure how to

respond to my four-year-old’s simple proclamation that angels had sung to

him. Finally, I plunged in: “Colton, you said that angels sang to you while

you were at the hospital?”

He nodded his head vigorously.

“What did they sing to you?”

Colton turned his eyes up and to the right, the attitude of remembering.

“Well, they sang ‘Jesus Loves Me’ and ‘Joshua Fought the Battle of

Jericho,’” he said earnestly. “I asked them to sing ‘We Will, We Will Rock

You,’ but they wouldn’t sing that.”

As Cassie giggled softly, I noticed that Colton’s answer had been quick

and matter-of-fact, without a hint of hesitation.

Sonja and I exchanged glances again. What’s going on? Did he have a

dream in the hospital?

And one more unspoken question: What do we say now?

A natural question popped into my head: “Colton, what did the angels

look like?”

He chuckled at what seemed to be a memory. “Well, one of them looked

like Grandpa Dennis, but it wasn’t him, ’cause Grandpa Dennis has

glasses.”

Then he grew serious. “Dad, Jesus had the angels sing to me because I

was so scared. They made me feel better.”

Jesus?

I glanced at Sonja again and saw that her mouth had dropped open. I

turned back to Colton. “You mean Jesus was there?”

My little boy nodded as though reporting nothing more remarkable than

seeing a ladybug in the front yard. “Yeah, Jesus was there.”

“Well, where was Jesus?”

Colton looked me right in the eye. “Iwas sitting in Jesus’ lap.”

If there are Stop buttons on conversations, that was one of them right

there. Astonished into speechlessness, Sonja and I looked at each other

and passed another silent telegram: Okay, we really need to talk about

this. We all piled out of the Expedition and trooped into Arby’s, emerging a

few minutes later with a bag of grub. In between, Sonja and I exchanged

whispers.

“Do you think he really saw angels?”

“And Jesus?!”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it a dream?”

“I don’t know—he seems so sure.”

Back in the SUV, Sonja passed out roast beef sandwiches and potato

cakes, and I ventured another question.

“Colton, where were you when you saw Jesus?”

He looked at me as if to say, Didn’t we just talk about this?

“At the hospital. You know, when Dr. O’Holleran was working on me.”

“Well, Dr. O’Holleran worked on you a couple of times, remember?” I

said. Colton had both an emergency appendectomy and then an

abdominal clean-out in the hospital, and later we had taken Colton to have

some keloid scarring removed, but that was at Dr. O’Holleran’s office. “Are

you sure it was at the hospital?”

Colton nodded. “Yeah, at the hospital. When I was with Jesus, you were

praying, and Mommy was talking on the phone.”

What?

That definitely meant he was talking about the hospital. But how in the

world did he know where we had been?

“But you were in the operating room, Colton,” I said. “How could you

know what we were doing?”

“’Cause I could see you,” Colton said matter-of-factly. “I went up out of my body and I was looking down and I could see the doctor working on my

body. And I saw you and Mommy. You were in a little room by yourself,

praying; and Mommy was in a different room, and she was praying and

talking on the phone.”

Colton’s words rocked me to my core. Sonja’s eyes were wider than

ever, but she said nothing, just stared at me and absently bit into her

sandwich.

That was all the information I could handle at that point. I started the

engine, steered the Expedition back onto the street, and pointed us toward

South Dakota. As I hit I-80, pasturelands unrolled on either side, dotted

here and there with duck ponds that glinted in the moonlight. By then, it was

very late, and soon everyone else was snoozing as planned.

As the road hummed underneath me, I marveled at the things I had just

heard. Our little boy had said some pretty incredible stuff—and he had

backed it up with credible information, things there was no way he could

have known. We had not told him what we were doing while he was in

surgery, under anesthesia, apparently unconscious.

Over and over, I kept asking myself, Howcould he have known? But by

the time we rolled across the South Dakota state line, I had another

question: Could this be real?

Heaven is for Real : A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back Review

4/5

Goodreads

THE 5 SECOND RULE TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE, WORK, AND CONFIDENCE WITH EVERYDAY COURAGE

2020-11-21T09:15:00.003+05:30

THE 5 SECOND RULE
TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE, WORK, AND CONFIDENCE
WITH EVERYDAY COURAGE

MEL ROBBINS

THIS IS THE TRUE STORY OF
THE 5 SECOND RULE

WHAT it is, WHY it works, and HOW people around the world are

using it to change their lives in five simple seconds.

The events described in this book are real.

No names have been changed.

The social media posts that appear throughout this book are the

actual posts.

I cannot wait to share this book with you and watch you unlock the

power of you.

5...4...3...2...1...GO!

TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE, WORK, AND CONFIDENCE
WITH EVERYDAY COURAGE

PART 1

THE 5 SECOND RULE

1. Five Seconds To Change Your Life

2. How I Discovered the 5 Second Rule

3. What You Can Expect When You Use It

4. Why The Rule Works

PART 2

THE POWER OF COURAGE

5. Everyday Courage

6. What Are You Waiting For?

7. You’ll Never Feel Like It

8. How To Start Using the Rule

PART 3

COURAGE CHANGES YOUR BEHAVIOR

How to Become the Most Productive Person You

Know

9. Improve Your Health

10. Increase Productivity

11. End Procrastination

PART 4

COURAGE CHANGES YOUR MIND

How to Become the Happiest Person You Know

12. Stop Worrying

13. End Anxiety

14. Beat Fear

PART 5

COURAGE CHANGES EVERYTHING

How To Become the Most Fulfilled Person You

Know

15. Building Real Confidence

16. Pursuing Passion

17. Enrich Your Relationships

THE POWER OF YOU

Everyday Courage

Courage is the ability to do things that feel

difficult, scary, or uncertain.

It isn’t reserved for just a chosen few.

Courage is a birthright. It’s inside all of us.

And it’s waiting for you to discover it.

One moment of courage can change your day.

One day can change your life. And one life can

change the world.

That’s the true power of courage; it reveals you.

The greatest version of you.

Discover your courage, and you will be capable of

accomplishing and experiencing anything you

dream about.

Yes, even changing the world.

CHAPTER ONE
FIVE SECONDS TO CHANGE YOUR
LIFE

You are about to learn something remarkable—it takes just five seconds to

change your life. Sounds like a gimmick, doesn’t it? It’s not. It’s science. I’ll

prove it to you. You change your life one five-second decision at a time. In fact, it’s

the only way you change.

This is the true story of the 5 Second Rule: what it is, why it works, and how it

has transformed the lives of people around the world. The Rule is easy to learn and

its impact is profound. It’s the secret to changing anything. Once you learn the Rule,

you can start using it immediately. The Rule will help you live, love, work, and speak

with greater confidence and courage every day. Use it once and it’ll be there for you

whenever you need it.

THE 5 SECOND RULE TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE, WORK, AND CONFIDENCE
WITH EVERYDAY COURAGE RATINGS

4.5/5

Amazon.in

3.9/5

Goodreads

Give and Take: why helping others drives our success

2020-11-19T09:08:00.008+05:30

Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

GIVE
and
TAKE

A REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO SUCCESS

ADAM GRANT

VIKING Published by the Penguin Group

PRAISE FOR ADAM GRANT’S

Give and Take

“Give and Take just might be the most important book of this young century. As insightful and

entertaining as Malcolm Gladwell at his best, this book has profound implications for how we

manage our careers, deal with our friends and relatives, raise our children, and design our

institutions. This gem is a joy to read, and it shatters the myth that greed is the path to success.”

—Robert Sutton, author of The No *sshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss

“Give and Take is a truly exhilarating book—the rare work that will shatter your assumptions about

how the world works and keep your brain firing for weeks after you’ve turned the last page.”

—Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind

“Give and Take is brimming with life-changing insights. As brilliant as it is wise, this is not just a

book—it’s a new and shining worldview. Adam Grant is one of the great social scientists of our time,

and his extraordinary new book is sure to be a bestseller.”

—Susan Cain, author of Quiet

“Give and Take cuts through the clutter of clichés in the marketplace and provides a refreshing new

perspective on the art and science of success. Adam Grant has crafted a unique, must-have toolkit for

accomplishing goals through collaboration and reciprocity.”

—William P. Lauder, executive chairman, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

“Give and Take is a pleasure to read, extraordinarily informative, and will likely become one of the

classic books on workplace leadership and management. It has changed the way I see my personal

and professional relationships, and has encouraged me to be a more thoughtful friend and colleague.”

—Jeff Ashby, NASA space shuttle commander

“With Give and Take, Adam Grant has marshaled compelling evidence for a revolutionary way of

thinking about personal success in business and in life. Besides the fundamentally uplifting character

of the case he makes, readers will be delighted by the truly engaging way he makes it. This is a must

read.”

—Robert Cialdini, author of Influence

“Give and Take is a brilliant, well-documented, and motivating debunking of ‘good guys finish last’!

I’ve noticed for years that generosity generates its own kind of equity, and Grant’s fascinating

research and engaging style have created not only a solid validation of that principle but also

practical wisdom and techniques for utilizing it more effectively. This is a super manifesto for getting

meaningful things done, sustainably.”

—David Allen, author of Getting Things Done

CONTENTS

Praise for Give and Take

Title Page

Dedication

1 Good Returns

The Dangers and Rewards of Giving More Than You Get

2 The Peacock and the Panda

How Givers, Takers, and Matchers Build Networks

3 The Ripple Effect

Collaboration and the Dynamics of Giving and Taking Credit

4 Finding the Diamond in the Rough

The Fact and Fiction of Recognizing Potential

5 The Power of Powerless Communication

How to Be Modest and Influence People

6 The Art of Motivation Maintenance

Why Some Givers Burn Out but Others Are On Fire

7 Chump Change

Overcoming the Doormat Effect

8 The Scrooge Shift

Why a Soccer Team, a Fingerprint, and a Name Can Tilt Us in the Other Direction

9 Out of the Shadows

Actions for Impact

Acknowledgments

References

Index

Give and Take: why helping others drives our success, ACTIONS FOR IMPACT

If you’re interested in applying the principles in this book to your work or your life, I’ve compiled a

set of practical actions that you can take. Many of these actions are based on the strategies and habits

of successful givers, and in each case, I’ve provided resources and tools for evaluating, organizing,

or expanding giving. Some of the steps focus on incorporating more giving into your daily behaviors;

others emphasize ways that you can fine-tune your giving, locate fellow givers, or engage others in

giving.

Give and Take why helping others drives our success, review

4.1/5 · Goodreads

BOUNDARIES When to Say YES When to Say NO To Take Control of Your Life

2020-11-18T08:59:00.013+05:30

BOUNDARIES When to Say YES When to Say NO To Take Control of Your Life

BOUNDARIES
When to Say YES
When to Say NO
To Take Control
of Your Life

Dr. Henry Cloud
Dr. John Townsend

Contents

Acknowledgments 7

PART I: WHAT ARE BOUNDARIES?

1. A Day in a Boundaryless Life 11

2. What Does a Boundary Look Like? 25

3. Boundary Problems 47

4. How Boundaries Are Developed 59

5. Ten Laws of Boundaries 81

6. Common Boundary Myths 101

PART II: BOUNDARY CONFLICTS

7. Boundaries and Your Family 121

8. Boundaries and Your Friends 135

9. Boundaries and Your Spouse 148

10. Boundaries and Your Children 165

11. Boundaries and Work 191

12. Boundaries and Your Self 206

13. Boundaries and God 226

PART III: DEVELOPING HEALTHY BOUNDARIES

14. Resistance to Boundaries 237

15. How to Measure Success with Boundaries 267

16. A Day in a Life with Boundaries 285

Notes 295

About the Authors 297

Excerpt from other books

by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend 298

About the Publisher 356

BOUNDARIES When to Say YES When to Say NO To Take Control of Your Life

The New York Times bestselling book Boundaries has helped millions understand that being a loving Christian does not mean never saying no. This newly updated and expanded companion workbook provides practical exercises for setting boundaries in marriage, parenting, business, and friendships in a digital age. Following the newly updated and expanded edition of Boundaries chapter-by-chapter, this interactive workbook helps you look at specific relationships in your own life. With those situations in mind, you can ask and answer: Why do I feel guilty about setting clear boundaries? What if the boundaries I set hurt the other person? Is it difficult for me to hear no from others? What are examples of legitimate boundaries at work and home? How can I have good boundaries online? How can I stay connected while still setting boundaries with my phone? In what ways do I need to set better boundaries with social media? Boundaries Workbook gives a biblical foundation and practical tools for helping others respect your boundaries-whether you are not responding to a text message immediately or saying no when someone asks you to volunteer for one more activity. Discover firsthand how good boundaries give you the freedom to live as the loving, generous, fulfilled person God created you to be.

Acknowledgments

Scott Bolinder and Bruce Ryskamp caught the vision for this

book from the very beginning. They arranged for a retreat on

Lake Michigan, where we passed this vision on to other Zondervan staff members.

Sandy Vander Zicht directed the editorial process and finetuned the manuscript into a book that is more graceful, more

precise, and easier to read and understand. Dan Runyon cut the

book down to a manageable size.

Dave Anderson translated this book into a video curriculum.

Sealy Yates encouraged and supported us throughout the

whole process, from contract to finished book.

Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life, Reviews

4.2/5Goodreads

4.9/5Christian Book Distributors

Life is What You Make it

2020-11-17T09:44:00.004+05:30

Life is
What You
Make it

Books by the same author

34 Bubblegums and Candies

Tea for Two and a Piece of Cake

The Secret Wishlist

The One You Cannot Have

Preeti Shenoy

Preeti Shenoy

A story of love, hope and how to determination can overcome even destiny.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the

product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance

to any actual person living or dead, events and locales is entirely coincidental.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or

otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form,

in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may

be made without written permission of the publishers.

Life is What You Make it, quotes

“I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

― Preeti Shenoy

“If I pretended to be "normal" and behaved just like everybody else, if I masked my emotions and smiled a lot, even if I felt disconsolate, nobody would be able to tell”

― Preeti Shenoy

“The world is indeed a better place when there is love, friendship, acceptance and hope. Powered by these you can indeed overcome anything including destiny.”

― Preeti Shenoy

“Physical pain is far easier to bear than mental agony.”

― Preeti Shenoy

“We are what our thoughts have made us. So take care what you think. Thoughts live. They travel far.”

― Preeti Shenoy

“Once you know what direction to take, finding the path to it becomes easy.”

― Preeti Shenoy

Contents

Dedication

Invictus

Prologue

A new world

Nothings gonna stop us now

Election Selection

Girl on a Motorcycle

Life is what you make it

The needle swings

Destiny changes in moments

Ready to fly

Never Belittle Love

Racing ahead

Dancing in the dark

The descent

A stop gap relationship

The day something died

Deeper down the bottomless pit

The ink blots

The light goes out

A plan for a final exit

No way out

A tiny ray of hope

Faith is a powerful thing

One step at a time

I am the master of my fate

Epilogue

Author's Notes

INVICTUS

William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

Life is What You Make it, "Prologue"

I wait my turn on the chair outside the doctor's office. The psychiatrist, to be

precise. The so-called expert. We have travelled all the way from Bombay to

Bangalore to make this trip. Getting an appointment here is like getting an

appointment to meet the Pope at the Vatican City. I don't know how many months

one has to wait to get an appointment for that. I am told many months. For this

visit, dad had to pull a whole lot of strings. Finally one of his oldest friends

managed to get it. It is one of the best mental health care centres in India. Or so I

have been told. Perhaps it is. Every magazine and every newspaper seems to

mention it and quote its expert doctors on anything to do with mental health.

The drive to this place itself is beginning to seem ominous. The road lined with

large trees, spreading their branches covering the place with gloom, as our hired car

makes its way, it makes me want to get down and run. But I do no such thing. I sit

and watch my surroundings. There is a blue board with large white letters

proclaiming the name of the mental health institute, which is spread over a

sprawling campus of ten acres, full of old buildings with fading yellow paint, dingy

corridors, trees, bushes, even a cafeteria and scores of vehicles in which patients

arrive with their families in search of hope. In me, there is none left. There is only

despondency and an increasing feeling of frustration.

We pass a large building brandishing a board which proclaims it is some kind of

a guest house. I notice the peeling paint again. The car passes the other buildings,

the Psychiatry ward, the Casualty and Emergency services, the De-addiction centre,

the General ward, the Observation ward and the pale yellow cottages called units

for some in-house patients. It looks like any other hospital and there is nothing to

suggest that it is a mental hospital, except of course if you observe the signs and the

people. I hate it all. It fills me with a kind of dread. I don't belong here. I ought not

to even be here in the first place. But I am, and there is nothing I can do about it.

The driver parks the car and we enter a building which is an out-patient

screening block. It has more than a hundred people and their families, all waiting.

The faint stench of human odour which emanates when bodies are packed

together, hits my nostril and I hold my breath involuntarily. My dad approaches the

counter and joins the serpentine queue which seems to be inching forward at the

pace of a snail and I read the board at the entrance on which the following is

written in bold letters:

“Patients visiting National Mental Health Institute for the first time are

requested to register themselves at this block for consultation/ treatment.

Registration is carried out between 8:00 A.M and 11:00 A.M on all days except

Sundays and certain specific holidays.

Please observe queue.”

I realize with a sinking feeling that the patient now refers to me. I feel helpless. I

feel lost. I feel angry.

And in my mind I think that the whole mental health institute thing is bull shit.

Hype. They talk nonsense and have no clue as to what they are doing or saying. I

don't want to be here. I don't want to see any psychiatrist or doctor. My opinion

now does not matter anymore. I had my chance and I screwed it up badly. Now I

have no choice except to listen to my parents and go along with whatever they

suggest. So much for my attempts at being independent. So much for my attempts

at being an adult.

I sit between my mother and father. I feel like a kid but I am 21, a full grown

adult. At least technically. The chair is made of metal and feels cold. I try to hide

the scars on my wrist, and adjust the broad leather strap of my watch, out of habit.

Curious stares and worse, the looks of pity irk me. I don't want any of it. Especially,

not now. Especially, not today. I don't regret my past actions at all. Physical pain is

far easier to bear than mental agony. To be really honest, if I had another chance I

think I would do it again. I look at the anguish on my dad's face and the look of

constant worry on my mother's brow, just like those unwanted notices stuck on the

roadside walls. I don't feel sorry for them at all, though I am supposed to be. I don't

even wish I could erase them. I don't want to comfort them or make them feel

better. I am helpless. Beyond caring. I don't give a damn. I want it all to end. I don't

want to see yet another doctor. I am tired of it all. What is this doctor going to tell

me that others haven't?

I loathe them all. The whole lot of them. They know nothing. My face is

expressionless. I am incapable of feeling empathy. It is as though my heart has

turned to wood. Rotting, festering wood that gnaws at the core of my being and

threatens to drag me in. I was not like this. But that was then and this is now.

I look at the other patients waiting their turns outside. There are at least one

hundred and sixty or maybe more. The waiting room is actually a long cavernous

hall about fifty feet by thirty feet and there are iron chairs arranged in rows, one

behind the other. It seems like the waiting room at a railway station and just as

crowded too. There is a guy sitting on the chair with his arms round his legs,

rocking back and forth, back and forth. There is a girl who looks around my age

staring listlessly outside. “I am not like you. I won elections in my college. I used to

be the Secretary of the Arts Association. I was doing my management from a fine

business school. I am not like you all.” I want to scream at all of them. I want to tell

them that I am a somebody, at least in my world which consists of college, home,

friends, fun, movies—the normal world, not this hospital where people who cannot

cope come to seek help. I am ‘educated’, superior, knowledgeable, and smart. The

pathetic, helpless situation that I am finding myself in is somehow making me want

to prove that I am better than all of them. But it feels like somebody has stuffed a

cloth in my mouth to prevent me from talking. I am unable to say anything. At the

back of my mind I also realize that in reality, maybe I am in no way better than

them. I am a nobody. Here I am just a patient, waiting in turn with scores of others,

waiting simply to see the doctor.

My gaze becomes transfixed on a middle aged man who cannot stop making

small circulatory motions with his thumb. The air is dry, suffocating and oppressive.

Outside, it is bright but shady. The psychiatrist inside will assess me and decide the

next course of action

What does he know? Can he look into my head? Does he even know what I am

going through? Does medical school teach you to feel another's pain or step into

their shoes? Most of the doctors I have spoken to are impersonal and clinical. They

are trained to be so. I highly doubt if this one is going to be any different.

Eventually, the nurse calls out my patient number. No one gives a damn about

my name or what I used to be. I rise to enter his office. So do my parents. The

doctor speaks to us. My dad is explaining my ‘symptoms’. I wince. That is not how

it is, I want to scream. But I don't want them to think that I am out of control. So I

dig my finger nails into my skin to prevent me from talking. I grit my teeth and

listen. The doctor asks my dad and mom to wait outside.

Then he looks at me. He looks nice. He is young. He seems kind but that does

not fool me. He is just a professional asshole being paid to assess me. I decide to

co-operate. It is the best way.

Then he starts asking questions. I detest someone prying into my life like this. I

hate having to go through all this, again.

He starts off with mundane questions. Childhood, School, College.

I look at him dully. I don't feel like telling him anything.

“Look,” he says. “I need to enter all this info here. Do you want to tell me or do

you want me to ask your parents?”

I feel trapped, cornered, exasperated and suddenly very tired. I just want it to

end.

So I start to answer

Author’s note

This book is a work of fiction but it is based on

some real life experiences. However, all names of persons, Institutions and few

other details have been changed to protect identities.

The book is not just about bipolar disorder. It is a story of courage,

determination and growing up. It is also about how life can take a totally different

path from what is planned, and yet how one can make a success out of it. It is a

story of faith, belief and perseverance too and charting your own destiny.

Mental health issues are still a big taboo, especially in India. In the west, there is

more awareness on this condition and it is elevated to almost a status of a ‘celebrity

disorder’ with several people such as Kurt Cobain, Sinead O Connor, Mel Gibson,

Axl Rose and Ozzy Osbourne, to name a few, having admitted to have it. In India,

people still prefer not to talk about it and even if anybody suffers from it, it is

usually hushed up, like anything to do with mental health is .

Bipolar disorder is a serious brain disorder that causes dramatic shifts in moods,

energy levels, attitudes and ability to carry out everyday tasks. It is very different

from the normal mood changes that everybody goes through from time to time. It

develops typically in late adolescence or early adulthood. The symptoms are very

severe and it is usually hard to diagnose, as it is not easy to spot when it starts. The

symptoms may often seem like very normal personality changes which a person

undergoes, in the course of day to day living.

Bipolar disorder can be so severely crippling that it can result in damaged

relationships, poor job or academic performance and even suicide. It has also been

associated with creativity. People with this disorder experience intense emotional

states which alternate between a ‘high episode’ called manic episode and it is

followed by a ‘low episode’ called a depressive episode. During a manic state, the

person feels overly happy, outgoing and is bursting with high energy levels.

Creativity is at an all time high. There is a huge increase in goal directed activities

and the person is usually restless and needs very little sleep. The person is very

energetic, optimistic and enthusiastic about everything.

In contrast, during a low period, there is an increasing feeling of worthlessness

or emptiness which is hard to describe. The person feels exhausted and has trouble

concentrating or remembering things and making decisions. There is a loss of

interest in everything that the person once enjoyed including sex. Often the person

thinks of death and suicide attempts are not uncommon.

There are several variations of bipolar disorder. For more information on these

please log on to the website of National Institute of Mental Health (Web site:

http://www.nimh.nih.gov), from which the above information too has been

condensed.

In India and China alone, there are at least 12-15 million people who suffer from

Bipolar disorder. (Source: Bipolar statistics quoted by the Depression and bipolar

support alliance.)

The message that I also wanted to convey through this book, is that having a

condition like Bipolar disorder does not mean that the person is ‘crazy’ or a ‘lunatic’

which are terms which people use without even a second thought. Having a

disorder like that does not mean it is the end of the world either. It can be managed

in a number of ways and people affected can lead very positive and complete lives.

Writing, by its very nature, is such an intense and a lonely exercise. It was not

easy, writing this kind of a book, without getting into the skin of the characters,

which would often leave me drained and emotionally exhausted.

This book could never have been written without the support of my spouse

Satish Shenoy (who I consider one of my closest friends) and I feel blessed to be

married to him. He would completely take over the practical aspects in running the

house, would look after the children and would give me my space and time without

which I would never have been able to cope with being a full time mother, wife,

writer and artist rolled into one. When he finally sat down to read the entire book, I

was rewarded when I saw that he was totally engrossed in it and just couldn't stop

reading it, till he had completely finished it in just a single sitting. That was a big

compliment to me as the biggest critics are usually the ones closest to you.

I also wish to mention the role of one of my closest friends, Ajay Chauhan who

was extremely encouraging and supportive .

He would keep sending me mails, asking me when I would write the next

chapter and he compelled me to keep writing. He made me feel like I am the

greatest writer on Earth. He was there for me throughout, unfailingly when I

needed him and he remains a rock-solid, dependable pal. I am grateful and happy to

have him in my life.

My closest friend Cherrisa Castellino's help proved invaluable as she read

through numerous drafts and re-drafts. I cannot imagine life without her and she

remains one of my biggest emotional anchors.