reading – Page 2

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“A swell movie adaptation always sends me to the source material, so Arrival had me pick up Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others: lean, relentless, and incandescent.” —Colson Whitehead, GQ

Ted Chiang has long been known as one of the most powerful science fiction writers working today. Offering readers the dual delights of the very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, Arrival presents characters who must confront sudden change. In “Story of Your Life,” which provides the basis for the film Arrival, alien lifeforms suddenly appear on Earth. When a linguist is brought in to help communicate with them and discern their intentions, her new knowledge of their language and its nonlinear structure allows her to see future events and all the joy and pain they may bring. In each story of this incredible collection, with sharp intelligence and humor, Ted Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by wonder.

📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡

Red, White & Royal Blue

What happens when America’s First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?

When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There’s only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.

Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn’t always diplomatic.

“I took this with me wherever I went and stole every second I had to read! Absorbing, hilarious, tender, sexy—this book had everything I crave. I’m jealous of all the readers out there who still get to experience Red, White & Royal Blue for the first time!” – Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners

👩🏻‍💻📓✍🏻💡👩🏻‍💻📓✍🏻💡

Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire

From the editor of The New Yorker: a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject. Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule leading up to the collapse and gives us the voices of those who lived through it, from democratic activists to Party members, from anti-Semites to Holocaust survivors, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Sakharov. An extraordinary history of an empire undone, Lenin’s Tomb stands as essential reading for our times.

📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡

History Year by Year

The entire course of history is revisited in this unique and unforgettable visual guide.

The most memorable moments and significant events of each year are charted in a definitive timeline that runs throughout the book. From the ancient origins of our earliest African ancestors right up to our modern world today, Timelines of History includes a diverse range of people, cultures, and countries. Ideas, inventions, and innovations come together to provide a truly global view of history. ??

Dramatic photography, eye-catching maps, and supporting graphics bring history to life as never before. The instantly accessible, multi-layered timeline enables you to move effortlessly through the ages. This essential reference strikes a balance between being completely comprehensive, but also ideal for browsing, thanks to the organized structure, chronological order, and bitesize information.??

This celebratory compendium makes an outstanding addition to any family library, enabling you to dip into the past any time you like.

📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡

No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind

“A lot of fascinating insights . . . an eye-opener worth reading.”—Parents

Highlighting the fascinating link between a child’s neurological development and the way a parent reacts to misbehavior, No-Drama Discipline provides an effective, compassionate road map for dealing with tantrums, tensions, and tears—without causing a scene.

Defining the true meaning of the “d” word (to instruct, not to shout or reprimand), the authors explain how to reach your child, redirect emotions, and turn a meltdown into an opportunity for growth. By doing so, the cycle of negative behavior (and punishment) is essentially brought to a halt, as problem solving becomes a win/win situation. Inside this sanity-saving guide you’ll discover

• strategies that help parents identify their own discipline philosophy—and master the best methods to communicate the lessons they are trying to impart
• facts on child brain development—and what kind of discipline is most appropriate and constructive at all ages and stages
• the way to calmly and lovingly connect with a child—no matter how extreme the behavior—while still setting clear and consistent limits
• tips for navigating your child through a tantrum to achieve insight, empathy, and repair
• twenty discipline mistakes even the best parents make—and how to stay focused on the principles of whole-brain parenting and discipline techniques

Complete with candid stories and playful illustrations that bring the authors’ suggestions to life, No-Drama Discipline shows you how to work with your child’s developing mind, peacefully resolve conflicts, and inspire happiness and strengthen resilience in everyone in the family.

Praise for No-Drama Discipline

📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡

Memory’s Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection

From Leviathan Wakes to Leviathan Falls, James S. A. Corey’s Hugo Award-winning Expanse series has redefined modern space opera. Now, available in print for the first time comes the complete collection of short fiction set in the Expanse universe, including both a brand-new novella set after the events of Leviathan Falls and author’s notes on each story.

On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine that will one day become the drive that fuels humanity’s journey into the stars.

On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners are oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them.

On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off planet.

On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home.

All these stories and more are featured in this unmissable collection of short fiction set in the hardscrabble world of The Expanse.

📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡

Book Summary: The Power of Habit p11

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Good leaders seize crises to remake organizational habits. In fact, crises are such valuable opportunities that a wise leader often prolongs a sense of emergency on purpose. A company with dysfunctional habits can’t turn around simply because a leader orders it. Rather, wise executives seek out moments of crisis— or create the perception of crisis— and cultivate the sense that something must change, until everyone is finally ready to overhaul the patterns they live with each day.

“This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”

if we start our shopping sprees by loading up on healthy stuff, we’re much more likely to buy Doritos,
Oreos, and frozen pizza when we encounter them later on. The burst of subconscious virtuousness that comes from first buying butternut squash makes it easier to later put a pint of ice cream in the cart.

There are thousands of hours of videotapes showing shoppers turning right once they clear the front doors.) As a result of this tendency, retailers fill the right side of the stores with the most profitable products they’re hoping you’ll buy right off the bat.

“Consumers sometimes act like creatures of habit, automatically repeating past behavior with little regard to current goals,” two psychologists at the University of Southern California wrote in 2009.

A firm named Rapleaf sells information on shoppers’ political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, the number of cars they own, and whether they prefer religious news or deals on cigarettes. Other companies analyze photos that consumers post online, cataloging if they are obese or skinny, short or tall, hairy or bald, and what kinds of products they might want to buy as a result.

If you use your Target credit card to purchase a box of Popsicles once a week, usually around 6:30 P.M. on a weekday, and megasized trash bags every July and October, Target’s statisticians and computer
programs will determine that you have kids at home, tend to stop for groceries on your way back from work, and have a lawn that needs mowing in the summer and trees that drop leaves in the fall.

People’s buying habits are more likely to change when they go through a major life event. When someone gets married, for example, they’re more likely to start buying a new type of coffee. When they move into a new house, they’re more apt to purchase a different kind of cereal. When they get divorced,
there’s a higher chance they’ll start buying different brands of beer.

“Changing residence, getting married or divorced, losing or changing a job, having someone enter or leave the household, are life changes that make consumers more “vulnerable to intervention by marketers.” And what’s the biggest life event for most people? What causes the greatest disruption and “vulnerability to marketing interventions”? Having a baby. There’s almost no greater upheaval for most
customers than the arrival of a child. As a result, new parents’ habits are more flexible at that moment than at almost any other period in an adult’s life.

So for companies, pregnant women are gold mines. 🧈🧈

Book Summary: Daring Greatly p15

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THE SHIELD: NUMBING

We are a culture of people who’ve bought into the idea that if we stay busy enough, the truth of our lives won’t catch up with us. Statistics dictate that there are very few people who haven’t been
affected by addiction. I believe we all numb our feelings. We may not do it compulsively and chronically, which is addiction, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t numb our sense of vulnerability. And numbing vulnerability is especially debilitating because it doesn’t just deaden the pain of our difficult
experiences; numbing vulnerability also dulls our experiences of love, joy, belonging, creativity, and empathy. We can’t selectively numb emotion. Numb the dark and you numb the light. ☀️

Americans today are more debt-ridden, obese, medicated, and addicted than we ever have been. For the first time in history, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced that automobile
accidents are now the second leading cause of accidental death in the United States. The leading cause? Drug overdoses. In fact, more people die from prescription drug overdoses than from heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine drug use combined. The dealers today are more likely to be parents, relatives, friends, and physicians.👨🏻‍⚕️🥼℞☤🩺👩🏻‍⚕️💊

The primary driver of numbing would be our struggles with worthiness and shame: We numb the pain that comes from feeling inadequate and “less than.” Anxiety and disconnection also emerged as drivers of numbing in addition to shame. The most powerful need for numbing seems to come from combinations of all three—shame, anxiety, and disconnection.

The anxiety described by the research participants appeared to be fueled by uncertainty, overwhelming and competing demands on our time, and (one of the big surprises) social discomfort.

Disconnection includes a range of experiences that encompassed depression but also included loneliness,
isolation, disengagement, and emptiness.

Anxiety with shame rising. Disconnection with shame rising. Anxiety and disconnection with shame rising.

Shame enters for those of us who experience anxiety because not only are we feeling fearful, out of control, and incapable of managing our increasingly demanding lives, but eventually our anxiety is compounded and made unbearable by our belief that if we were just smarter, stronger, or better, we’d
be able to handle everything. Numbing here becomes a way to take the edge off of both instability and inadequacy.

🩺💉🩸💀🩻🧑🏻‍⚕️ Dare Greatly 🩺💉🩸💀🩻🧑🏻‍⚕️

Most popular books published in January 2025

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Onyx Storm (The Empyrean Book 3)

After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty.
Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust.
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.
Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.
They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth.
But a storm is coming…and not everyone can survive its wrath.

📚📚📚📚

The Crash

A brand new psychological thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden!

The nightmare she’s running from is nothing compared to where she’s headed.

Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn’t realize she’s heading straight into a blizzard.

She never arrives at her destination.

Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she’s made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle occurs: she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.

But something isn’t right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realize she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn’t what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet.

And now she must do whatever it takes to save herself―and her unborn child.

A gut-wrenching story of motherhood, survival, and twisted expectations, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden delivers a snowbound thriller that will chill you to the bone.

📚🎧☕📚🎧☕📚🎧☕

Beautiful Ugly

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.

Grady calls his wife as she’s driving home to share some exciting news. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by a cliff edge, the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there . . . but his wife has disappeared.

A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible: a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Wives think their husbands will change, but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change, but they do.

🗝☕🕰📜🎞🖋️🗝☕🕰📜🎞🖋️

Beg, Borrow, or Steal

Emily Walker hates having her carefully crafted world disrupted by anyone, most of all her legendary nemesis, Jack Bennett. He’s the opposite of the wonderful heroes she dreams up in her double life as a romance writer, which is why Emily was perfectly happy when Jack left Rome, Kentucky, mid-school year with his fiancée. The last thing Emily saw coming was Jack’s return at the start of the summer after calling off the wedding and ending his relationship, but he’s here to stay—as her colleague and her neighbor.

Jack is glad to be back, eager to renovate his house and work on the next mystery novel under his bestselling pen name. But when he realizes he’s now neighbors with the one woman who has always pushed his buttons, he discovers something he’s even more excited about—thwarting Emily and her petty plans to sabotage his return.

With their chemistry-fueled animosity at an all-time high, Emily accidentally sends an email to their school’s principal that could reveal her secret literary side hustle. She needs to steal back her manuscript, and Jack—she hates to admit—is just the man to help her. Surprisingly, he agrees. Will their unlikely alliance put an end to their rivalry? Or could it lead to a steamy plot twist they never saw coming?

🎧💌📖🎧💌📖🎧💌📖🎧💌📖

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.
In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master” (NPR).

˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆

The Stolen Queen

Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. That is until an unbearable tragedy strikes.
New York City, 1978: Nineteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.”
Meanwhile, Charlotte is now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art. She’s consumed by her research on Hathorkare—a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant.
The night of the gala: One of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing, and there are signs Hathorkare’s legendary curse might be reawakening. Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, and a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she’d never return: Egypt. But if they have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past—which may mean leading them both directly into danger.

📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡

Homeland: The Dark Elf

📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡📗📘📚 ₊˚⊹♡

Water Moon

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (31-32) Summary

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The Commandment
of Entry

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim.
When a man does not know what harbor he is making for,
no wind is the right wind.
~ Seneca

You Can Be the Sheep or the Sheepherder

The Commandment of Entry states that as entry barriers to any business road fall, or lessen, the effectiveness of that road declines while competition in that field subsequently strengthens.

I spotted the signs of “everyone is doing it,” because if everyone were rich, “everybody is doing it” would work.

If you want to live unlike everyone, you can’t be like everyone. Don’t confuse that with exceptionality. You have to lead the pack and have “everyone” follow. When the lambs are lining up single-file for slaughter, you want to own the slaughterhouse.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The Commandment of Entry states that as entry barriers fall, competition rises and the road weakens.
•• Easy access roads carry more traffic. More traffic generates higher competition, and higher competition creates lower margins for the participants.
•• Businesses with weak entry often lack control and operate in saturated marketplaces.
•• Exceptionalism is required to overcome weak entry barriers.
••Access to a business road should be a process with a toll, not an event.
••“Everyone” consists of the general populous and is served by the mainstream media.
•• If everyone were wealthy, “everybody is doing it” would work. And if everyone is wealthy, then no one is wealthy.
••“Everyone is doing it” is a signal to overbought conditions and the entrance of “dumb money.”

The Commandment
of Control

There is no dependence that can be sure
but a dependence on one’s self.
~ John Gay

Demand the Driver’s Seat
Yes or no. You’re either driving the Fastlane or you aren’t. You’re either in control over your financial plan or you aren’t. There is no in between.

Good Money Versus Big Money
There is a difference between good money, big money, and legendary money. Good money is $20,000/month.

Think Shark, Not Guppy
If you lived in an aquarium, would you rather be the shark or the guppy? Sharks eat . . . guppies get eaten.

Invest in Your Brand Only!
Whose money tree are you growing? Are you investing in your brand or in someone else’s?

When you blindly invest your life and time into someone else’s brand, you become a part of their marketing plan.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Hitchhikers relinquish control of their business to a Fastlaner.
••There is a difference between “good” money and “big” money. Hitchhikers can make good money while Fastlaners make big money. Sometimes legendary money.
•• In a driver/hitchhiker relationship, the driver always retains control and the hitchhiker is at the mercy of the driver.
•• Hitchhikers are party to someone else’s Fastlane plan.

••Make the world your habitat of play in an organization you control.
•• Network marketing has little to do with entrepreneurship but more to do with sales, networking, training, and motivation.
•• Network marketing fails both the Commandments of Control and Entry, and sometimes, Need.
•• Network marketers are soldiers in a Fastlaner’s army.
•• Network marketing is a powerful distribution system. As a Fastlaner, seek to own one, not join one.

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (29-30) Summary

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The Right Road
Routes to Wealth

He who chooses the beginning of the road
chooses the place it leads to.
It is the means that determines the end.
~ Henry Emerson Fosdick

The Road to Effection: The Five Fastlane Commandments:

1) The Commandment of Need
2) The Commandment of Entry
3) The Commandment of Control
4) The Commandment of Scale
5) The Commandment of Time

A road meeting all five commandments can make you filthy rich fast.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Not all businesses are the right road. Few roads move at, through, or near the Law of Effection.
••The best roads and the purest Fastlanes satisfy the Five Fastlane Commandments: Need, Entry, Control, Scale, and Time.

The Commandment
of Need

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
~ George Eliot

Sand Foundations Crumble Houses
Ninety percent of all new businesses fail within five years, and I know why they fail. They fail because they fail the Commandment of Need.

Businesses that solve needs win. Businesses that provide value win.

To succeed as a producer, surrender your own selfishness and address the selfishness of others.

Stop Chasing Money—Chase Needs.

Stop thinking about business in terms of your selfish desires, whether it’s money, dreams or “do what you love.” Instead, chase needs, problems, pain points, service deficiencies, and emotions.

You and your business attract money when you stop being selfish and turn your business’s focus from the needs of yourself to the needs of other people. Give first, take second. Money Chasers Chase Money, Not Needs.

💰 To Attract Money Is to Forget About Money 💰

Solve needs massively and money massively attracts. The amount of money in your life is merely a reflection to the amount of value.

Make 1 million people achieve any of the following:

1) Make them feel better.
2) Help them solve a problem.
3) Educate them.
4) Make them look better (health, nutrition, clothing, makeup).
5) Give them security (housing, safety, health).
6) Raise a positive emotion (love, happiness, laughter, self-confidence).
7) Satisfy appetites, from basic (food) to the risqué (sexual).
8) Make things easier.
9) Enhance their dreams and give hope.

. . . and I guarantee, you will be worth millions.

Beware of another guru-speak: “Do what you love and the money will follow!” Bullshit.

The motivational fuel for the Fastlane is passion, not love. Passion gets you out of the garage and onto the road. If you have a passion for a specific goal, you’ll do anything for it. 💖

Passion beats “do what you love,” because passion fuels motivation for something greater than yourself and is generalized.

I repeat: Passion for an end goal, a why, drives Fastlane action.

Passion Erases the Suffering of Work

The Fastlane isn’t a destination but a personal journey.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The Commandment of Need states that businesses that solve needs win.
Needs can be pain points, service gaps, unsolved problems, or emotional disconnects.
•• Ninety percent of all new businesses fail because they are based on selfish internal needs, not external market needs.
•• No one cares about your selfish desires for dreams or money; people only want to know what your business can do for them.
•• Money chasers haven’t broken free from selfishness, and their businesses often follow their own selfish needs.
•• People vote for your business with their money.
•• Chase money and it will elude you. However, if you ignore it and focus on what attracts money, you will draw it to yourself.
•• Help one million people and you will be a millionaire.
•• For money to follow “Do what you love,” your love must solve a need and you must be exceptional at it.
••“Do what you love” sets the stage for crowded marketplaces with depressed margins.
••When you have the financial resources, you can “do what you love” and not get paid for it, nor do you have to be good at it.
•• Slowlaners feed “do what you love” with “do what you hate.” Five days of hate for two days of love.
••“Doing what you love” for money can endanger your love.
•• Passion for an end goal, a why, drives Fastlane success.
•• Having a passionate “why” can transform work into joy. ••“Doing what you love” usually leads to the violation of the Commandment of Need.
••The right road for you is one that will converge with your dreams.

Book Summary: Daring Greatly p13

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DARING GREATLY: PRACTICING GRATITUDE

Gratitude emerged from the data as the antidote to foreboding joy. In fact, every participant who spoke about the ability to stay open to joy also talked about the importance of practicing gratitude. This pattern of association was so thoroughly prevalent in the data that I made a commitment as a researcher not to talk about joy without talking about gratitude.

Participants described happiness as an emotion that’s connected to circumstances, and they described joy as a spiritual way of engaging with the world that’s connected to practicing gratitude.

Scarcity and fear drive foreboding joy. We’re afraid that the feeling of joy won’t last, or that there won’t be enough, or that the transition to disappointment (or whatever is in store for us next) will be too difficult.

I learned the most about gratitude practices and the relationship between scarcity and joy that plays out in vulnerability from the men and women who had experienced some of the most profound losses or survived the greatest traumas.

Joy comes to us in moments—ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.

Scarcity culture may keep us afraid of living small, ordinary lives, but when you talk to people who have survived great losses, it is clear that joy is not a constant.

Be grateful for what you have. 🌹

Don’t take what you have for granted— celebrate it. Don’t apologize for what you have. Be grateful for it and share your gratitude with others.

When you honor what you have, you’re honoring what I’ve lost.

Don’t squander joy. 🙂

We can’t prepare for tragedy and loss. When we turn every opportunity to feel joy into a test drive for despair, we actually diminish our resilience. Yes, softening into joy is uncomfortable. Yes, it’s scary. Yes, it’s vulnerable. But every time we allow ourselves to lean into joy and give in to those moments, we build resilience and we cultivate hope. The joy becomes part of who we are, and when bad things happen—and they do happen—we are stronger.

THE SHIELD: PERFECTIONISM

The most valuable and important things in my life came to me when I cultivated the courage to be vulnerable, imperfect, and self-compassionate. Perfectionism is not the path that leads us to our gifts and to our sense of purpose; it’s the hazardous detour. Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth.

Perfectionism is a defensive move. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around, thinking it will protect us, when in fact it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from being seen. Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval.

Healthy striving is self- focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused:
What will they think? Perfectionism is a hustle. Perfectionism is not the key to success.

Perfectionism is correlated with
depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis or missed opportunities. Where we struggle with perfectionism, we struggle with shame.

Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame. Perfectionism is self-destructive simply because perfection doesn’t exist.

Perfectionism actually sets us up to feel shame, judgment, and blame, which then leads to even more shame and self-blame: “It’s my fault. I’m feeling this way because I’m not good enough.”

🦋🦋 Dare 🦋🦋

Book Summary: The Power of Habit p9

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Just as choosing the right keystone habits can create amazing change, the wrong ones can create disasters.

even destructive habits can be transformed by leaders who know how to seize the right opportunities. Sometimes, in the heat of a crisis, the right habits emerge.

Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war. Yet despite this capacity for internecine warfare, most companies roll along relatively peacefully, year after year, because they have routines— habits— that create truces that allow everyone to set aside their rivalries long enough to get a day’s work done. Organizational habits offer a basic promise: If you follow the established patterns and abide by the truce, then rivalries won’t destroy the company, the profits will roll in, and, eventually, everyone will get rich.

The problem with sabotage is that even if it’s good for you, it’s usually bad for the fi rm. So at most companies, an unspoken compact emerges: It’s okay to be ambitious, but if you play too rough, your peers will unite against you. On the other hand, if you focus on boosting your own department, rather than undermining your rival, you’ll probably get taken care of over time.

Most of the time, routines and truces work perfectly. Rivalries still exist, of course, but because of institutional habits, they’re kept within bounds and the business thrives. However, sometimes even a truce proves insufficient. Sometimes, an unstable peace can be as destructive as any civil war.

Truces are only durable when they create real justice. If a truce is unbalanced— if the peace isn’t real— then the routines often fail when they are needed most.

Creating successful organizations isn’t just a matter of balancing authority. For an organization to work, leaders must cultivate habits that both create a real and balanced peace and, paradoxically, make it absolutely clear who’s in charge.

Sometimes, one priority— or one department or one person or one goal— needs to overshadow everything else, though it might be unpopular or threaten the balance of power. Sometimes, a truce can create dangers that outweigh any peace.

During turmoil, organizational habits become malleable enough to both assign responsibility and create a more equitable balance of power. Crises are so valuable, in fact, that sometimes it’s worth stirring up a sense of looming catastrophe rather than letting it die down.

💪 Develop powerful habits 🔥🔥

Book Summary: Daring Greatly p12

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THE VULNERABILITY

THE word persona is the Greek term for “stage mask.” In my work masks and armor are perfect metaphors for how we protect ourselves from the discomfort of vulnerability. Masks make us feel safer even when they become suffocating.

Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you.

Common vulnerability arsenal:

Foreboding joy: the paradoxical dread that clamps down on momentary joyfulness;

Perfectionism: believing that doing everything perfectly means you’ll never feel shame;

Numbing: the embrace of whatever deadens the pain of discomfort and pain.

THE COMMON VULNERABILITY SHIELDS

THE SHIELD: FOREBODING JOY

Joy is probably the most difficult emotion to really feel. 😎 Because when we lose the ability or willingness to be vulnerable, joy becomes something we approach with deep foreboding. We just know that we crave more joy in our lives, that we are joy starved.

What the perpetual-disappointment folks describe is this: “It’s easier to live disappointed than it is to feel disappointed. It feels more vulnerable to dip in and out of disappointment than to just set up camp there. You sacrifice joy, but you suffer less pain.”

Softening into the joyful moments of our lives requires vulnerability.

Once we make the connection between vulnerability and joy, the answer is pretty straightforward: We’re trying to beat vulnerability to the punch. We don’t want to be blindsided by hurt. We don’t want to be caught off-guard, so we literally practice being devastated or never move from self-elected disappointment.

We’re desperate for more joy, but at the same time we can’t tolerate the vulnerability.

We’re visual people. We trust, consume, and mentally store what we see. 👀

💐🌷🌹🌸🌺 Dare 💐🌷🌹🌸🌺

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (21-23) Summary

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The Real Law of Wealth

Try not to become a man of success, but a man of value.
~ Albert Einstein

The Law of Effection states that the more lives you affect in an entity you control, in scale and/or magnitude, the richer you will become. Impact millions and make millions. It doesn’t get any simpler than that!

NET PROFIT = Units Sold (Scale) × Unit Profit (Magnitude)

Scale creates millionaires. Magnitude creates millionaires. Scale and magnitude creates billionaires.

Retrace the source of millionaire money and you will find millions of something.

The closer you get to the source of large numbers, the closer you will get to wealth. To serve millions is to make millions. Think big to earn big.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The Law of Effection states that the more lives you affect or breach, both in scale or magnitude, the richer you will be.
•• Scale translates to “units sold” of our profit variable within our Fastlane wealth equation. Magnitude translates to “unit profit” of our profit variable within our Fastlane wealth equation.
••The Law of Attraction is not a law, but a theory. The Law of Effection is absolute and operates exclusive of a roadmap.
••All lineages of self-made wealth trace back to the Law of Effection.
••The Law of Effection’s absoluteness comes from direct access and control (you are the athlete) versus indirect access (you are the athlete’s agent).
•• To make millions you must serve millions in scale or a few in magnitude.

Own Yourself First

Events and circumstances have their origin in ourselves.
They spring from seeds which we have sown.
~ Henry David Thoreau

To Pay Yourself First, You Must Own Yourself. When you have a job, someone owns you.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••“Pay yourself first” is fundamentally impossible in a job.
•• To own your vehicle (you), start a corporation that formally divorces you from the act of business. Your corporation is the body of your surrogate.
••The recommended Fastlane business entity is a C corp, an S corp, or an LLC.

Life’s Steering Wheel

Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously.
If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life.
You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself.
~ Robert F. Bennett

Poor choices are the leading cause of poorness. The problem is poor diet; cholesterol is the symptom.

If you aren’t where you want to be, the problem is your choices.

••The will to persevere is often the difference between failure and success.
•• Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.

Your choices spark the fires of future circumstances.

What’s Chosen Today, Impacts Forever. Our choices have consequences that transcend decades.

A Fastlane process is hundreds of choices.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The leading cause of poorness is poor choices.
••The steering wheel of your life is your choices.
••You are exactly where you chose to be.
•• Success is hundreds of choices that form process. Process forms lifestyle.
•• Choice is the most powerful control you have in your life.
•• Treasonous choices forever impact your life negatively.
••Your choices have significant horsepower, or trajectory into the future.
••The younger you are, the more potent your choices are and the more horsepower you possess.
•• Over time, horsepower erodes as the consequences of old choices are thick and hard to bend.

💸💲🧠

💸 Pave your road to abundant wealth 💰⃤