Self-Development

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Self-Development

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The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy

Author: Jon Gordon

Subjects: Self-Development

The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy by Jon Gordon is just that – a book that outlines 10 tips on how to get the most in your work and home life with positive energy. Written in a fictions manner, the book starts out with George, overwhelmed by all the stresses in his work and home life, being faced by a flat tire and having to take the bus to work. There he meets a unique kind of bus driver who, over the course of two weeks, shares the 10 rules with him. These 10 rules talk about how to overcome negativity and adversity to create success, negativity that is overcome by positive energy consisting of vision, trust, optimism, enthusiasm, purpose, and spirit that defines great leaders and their teams.

Anyone wanting to know how to bring about positive energy into their daily lives and into anything and everything they would wish to pursue should read this book. Positive energy can change the outcome of daily tasks into making them more meaningful.

I Can Do It: How to Use Affirmations to Change Your Life

Author: Louise L. Hay

Subjects: Self-Development

I Can Do It: How to Use Affirmations to Change Your Life by Louise Hay is a book about affirmations – how to properly understand and use affirmations to change and improve all aspects of life. Hay explains how our self talks, thoughts and every word we speak is an affirmation that may be limiting our ability to create the experiences we want. In each chapter she discusses a topic such as health, work, love, and creativity, and how we might be hindering our outcomes. Each chapter is followed by a list of affirmations we can use in our daily lives.

Positive affirmations and positive self-talk can benefit not only the person doing it but those around them as well. It shifts the focus from the negative to the positive and can have an impact on the simplest to the more intricate and complicated aspects of life. This book is a simple and short read and is a good first book to read to get a glimpse into affirmations and how to use them.

The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying

Author: Bronnie Ware

Assigned Reading Age: Young adult/Adult

Subjects: Death, Self-Development

Most of us know people who have passed away. How many of them have shared their regrets with us? What were some things they wished they had done in life? Specific things, not just being more ‘good’ and ‘pious’. At the time of death, most people have a clarity of vision which the still- living do not have. Their perspective changes, and they gain a type of wisdom, which albeit is a little late for themselves. However, there is much for others to learn from it.

Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, cared for patients in the last weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying words in a blog called Inspiration and Chai. She has now published a book called The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying.

Her books has many insights on life, as observed by those who are about to leave it. There is much to gain from them in the form of practical advice on how to make the most of life. Their regrets are what we should pay attention to, so we don’t have the same regrets on our deathbed.

Here are their thoughts, along with Ware’s observations:

  • “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
  • “This was the most common regret of all.”
  • “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
  • “This came from every male patient I nursed.”
  • “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
  • “Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming.”
  • “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
  • “Many had been so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years.”
  • “I wish that I had let myself be happier.”
  • “Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice.”

If death were to come just now, what 5 things would you wish you had done in life? It’s an interesting question. Not just interesting, but life changing really. Realizing these possible regrets at the death-bed creates a sense of urgency to do them. We must learn form those before us, so we don’t make the same mistakes. As Imam Ali (a) says: Fortunate is he who takes lesson from others, while unfortunate is he who fell victim to his desires

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

Author: Michael A. Singer

Publisher: New Harbinger Publications

Assigned Reading Age: Adult

Subjects: Self-help/Transformation

The Untethered Soul is the beginning of a truly unique journey into our inner selves. In an attempt to find and explore the true “self,” it begins with introducing us to our innermost thoughts and how these affect our inner energies and experiences of the world.

It sheds particular light on certain repetitive mental patterns that have formed within us based on past experiences and how these can function to limit both our consciousness and our ability to experience life at its highest level. After bringing awareness to these habits, Singer teaches the reader, through the use of mindful practices how to break these damaging habitual patterns and demonstrates a life that can be lived fully in the present.

This book is particularly noteworthy as it explains these complex and deep concepts in a beautifully simplistic way. For such a fantastic and game-changing book, it is quite thin, as Singer explains concepts in a very efficient and simple manner.

Further, it brings a great awareness to the “voice inside your head” and how our own inner thoughts of what is happening outside of us is tainting the image of what is really happening. In an attempt to make us feel safe, the mind filters the world through these thoughts that have formed over our lives, but in effect we are actually not seeing and experiencing the world for what it truly is. When the realization dawns upon you, that these thoughts are not only hurting you but can be stopped, there is a profound empowerment that follows.

The book helps you understand how our reactions to the world are often on autopilot and sometimes work to block off the flow of love and energy into our lives. We have built defences and walls to “protect” ourselves but as a consequence we are often caging ourselves in through these processes. We are proceeding through life with “closed hearts.” However, in essence, we are free beings and have the ability to be free if we are ready to let go of these habitual patterns and embrace life for what it really is.

The Greatness Guide

Author: Robin Sharma

Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers Ltd

Assigned Reading Age: Young Adult- Adult

Subjects: Personal Development

The Greatness Guide by Robin Sharma serves as an efficient and useful handbook pertaining to both personal and business excellence. It is split up into 101 short principles that encompass both Sharma’s personal practices and those used by leading CEOs, entrepreneurs and celebrities. Within the book, you find intriguing concepts such as “Drinking coffee with Gandhi,” and “Learning or Decaying” where he explains the great value in a good book, diving deep into the minds of monumental people and being devoted to consistently learning.

This book was particularly enjoyable because each principle is explained simply but if put into practice can be immensely effective. Sharma writes with heart and his viewpoint is not only valuable in the business world but also in everyday life. His books depict an integrated lifestyle that needs to be adapted.

The Greatness Guide addresses living at your very best and performing only world-class level work while doing so with integrity. It does not simply explain how to be the best mechanically but to work from a place of heart and soul. Sharma articulates valuable points such as the necessity to: value relationships, rise early, schedule our most important events and to treat every day like it could be our last. The book, in effect, reminds the reader that living to our greatest potential requires both discipline and authenticity.