#read4life

End of Week 72: Book 71 Completed: Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki

Robert Kiyosaki shares unconventional yet powerful perspective to look at money, how it works, and we must make it work for us, rather than working for it, if we ever want to attain financial well-being.

Robert shares what he learnt from his two dads about money, One Rich (His friend’s dad) and One Poor (His real dad). Though both were successful in their respective work, one flourished financially and one struggled.

Although both men had tremendous respect for education and learning, they disagreed about what they thought was important to learn.

Robert claims one of the reasons the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class struggles in debt is that the subject of money is taught at home, not in school.

Few 🔑 Points –

• People’s lives are forever controlled by two emotions: fear and greed. The fear of not having enough money to survive, and once they have money, greed, desires take over and keep the person trapped in rat race. Get up, go to work, pay the bills.

• Robert’s Definition of Asset & Liability: An asset puts money in my pocket. A liability takes money out of my pocket. Rich people acquire assets. The poor and middle class acquire liabilities that they think are assets.

• Mind Your Own Business -He suggests to build and keep asset column strong. Once a dollar goes into it, never let it come out. Think of it this way: Once a dollar goes into your asset column, it becomes your employee. Keep your day job, be a great hardworking employee, but keep building that asset column.

• The key to becoming wealthy is the ability to convert earned income into passive income or portfolio income as quickly as possible.

Few 📌 Quotes –

1. The talented poor people struggle financially or earn less than they are capable of, not because of what they know, but because of what they do not know.

2. Most people want everyone else in the world to change but themselves, whereas, it’s easier to change ourselves than everyone else.

3. As proper physical exercise increases your chances for health, and so, proper mental exercise increases your chances for wealth.

Book 📘83 Completed😊: Can’t Hurt Me – David Goggins

David through his personal story shares an idea of becoming what are truly capable of. Irrespective of our past, we can take control of our life at any moment and change everything for good.

This is one of the best self-help books I have read in recent times. The book captures pain David has gone through, especially physical pain and what he had accomplished in armed forces, and in multiple ultra- races and records that he has set.

He has poured his heart out in book sharing everything he learnt and encourages to embrace pain and use it as fuel rather than shying away from challenges and give in at the slightest sign of difficulties.

Few 🔑 Points –

• Accountability Mirrors – David encourages to be hard on self while taking inventory of present situation, take complete ownership and get to work. If you are fat, call yourself out. You need to change it, no one is coming.

• Everything in life is a mind game! Whenever we get swept under by life’s dramas, large and small, we are forgetting that no matter how bad the pain gets, no matter how harrowing the torture, all bad things end.

• Cookie Jar Concept – Tapping in the feeling of past wins, achievements, success, blessing, feeling grateful for everything so far in life can help us ride through any tough time.

• No matter what you or I achieve, in sports, business, or life, we can’t be satisfied. Life is too dynamic a game. We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse.

• We are all fighting the same battle. All of us are torn between comfort and performance, between settling for mediocrity or being willing to suffer to become our best self, all the time.

Few 📌 Quotes –

1. Your entitled mind is dead weight. Cut it loose. Don’t focus on what you think you deserve. Take aim on what you are willing to earn.

2. You can tolerate doubt as a backseat driver, but if you put doubt in the pilot’s seat, defeat is guaranteed.

3. The ticket to victory often comes down to bringing your very best when you feel your worst.

4. The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself.

End of Week 67: Book📘 66 Completed😊: What You Think of Me is None of My Business – Terry Cole-Whittaker

Even if the title sounds bold or bit of arrogant, Terry shares liberating Idea of taking other’s opinion as what it is, “An Opinion”. This book is a reminder of the Power within ourselves and how we give it away by giving way too more importance to other’s opinion of us.

Once realized, it can empower us to be comfortable in our own skin, take other’s opinion as opinion and not let our life run by it. We give away our power to others by depending on their approval.

As individuals, we are the final authorities on everything in our lives. After all, who else can be the expert on our life? Who else can say what we feel and want? There is no other person, no place, no system, no philosophy, no organization that knows more about us than we do.

Few 🔑Points –

• Terry explains most of the choices we make are unconscious and it is also the purpose of book to heighten consciousness, self-awareness, so that we can choose consciously. She teaches to become beneficiary of Change rather than victim of it.

• if you argue for your limitations long enough, sure enough, they are yours. Start arguing in favor of what you want and recognize that persistence is the key.

• Loved this small yet powerful sentence – “Pray to God, but row to shore.” Meaning have faith that you received what you want, while continuously working for it.

Few📌 Quotes –

1. The hard-to-accept fact is that health is a by-product of your mental and spiritual attitude. It can be a well by-product or an ill by-product.

2. Lying is such an accepted way of life on this planet that telling the truth requires great courage.

3. Before we can have a complete relationship with another, we must first have a complete relationship with ourselves.

4. When you give up blame, you create a context in which change can happen.

Book #109: - Completed: The Buddha and the Badass – Vishen Lakhiani

This is the second book from Vishen after the code of extra-ordinary mind. He starts with disclaimer that ideas in the book may challenge the reader’s existing long held beliefs.

Awareness sets you free. New ideas that you never even had a clue of, are gateways to becoming a bigger, better, more powerful version of yourself.

I found Vishen’s claim accurate that more than business this book is about transforming the way you work from the inside out—and how that internal change can ripple out to change the world.

Few Key Points –

Two Worlds Outer & Inner – We pay way too much emphasis on the outer like our jobs, careers, culture, rituals, and shared meaning with others and pay way too less attention to inner world like our hopes, fears, aspirations, dreams, daily cascade of emotions.

Mental Models – Mental model is made up of your beliefs. And your beliefs are the master switch for your life. That’s because reality is subjective.

We don’t need to know how to achieve an outcome. Forget knowing HOW. All we need to know is WHY and WHAT for doing it or at least to begin.

Three Questions while building Goals – 1) What Experiences do I want to have? 2) How do I want to grow? 3) What can I contribute from my experiences and growth?

Real success is actually much simpler than most of us have been led to believe. There is nothing you have to get to or be in order to have finally made it. The secret formula is this.  Growth = Success

Few Quotes –

As long as you are growing (by your own measure) you’ll be fulfilled.

Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds meaning. – Viktor Frank

Book #107: – The Knowing-Doing Gap – Jeffrey Pfeffer & Robert I. Sutton

Knowing what to do, and not doing the same is as good as not knowing what to do – Robin Sharma

As the above adage goes, most of the time we know what we are supposed to do for anything we want to accomplish, yet we find ourselves not doing it or worse, doing the opposite.

The Knowing-doing Gap shares a few important ideas about why we don't act on what we know, and more importantly how we can close or narrow the gap.

The book discusses the knowing-doing gap mainly keeping corporates in mind; however, it applies to individuals equally and we can learn from it.

Few Key Points –

• One of the main barriers to turning knowledge into action is the tendency to treat talking about something as equivalent to actually doing something.

• One of the main recommendations is to engage more frequently in thoughtful action. Spend less time just contemplating and talking about the problems.

• Competitive advantage comes from being able to do something others can’t do. Anyone can read a book. The trick is in turning the knowledge acquired into action.

• The author makes a good point in differentiating the smart talker and the better performer. As talk is immediate and action is later. We often don’t have time to follow through on what people do, we often judge people on what they say or know, which barely assures a good performance.

• Fear is one of the reasons, people often hesitate to act on their knowledge, as the outcome may not be well received if it is not as expected.

• Knowing comes from doing and teaching others how – Knowing by doing develops a deeper and more profound level of knowledge and virtually by definition eliminates the knowing-doing gap.

Few Quotes –

1. Taking action will generate experience from which you can learn.

2. If You Know by Doing, There Is No Gap Between What You Know and What You Do.