The Mississauga Half Marathon was held on Sunday, April 30th, 2023, and I ran a personal best time for a half marathon: 1:40:20.
In Change Your World: How Anyone, Anywhere Can Make a Difference, bestselling authors John C. Maxwell and Rob Hoskins provide a framework to get started being the change you want to see – in your community and beyond.
People Change When They Hurt Enough That They Have To, People Change When They See Enough That They Are Inspired To, People Change When They Learn Enough That They Want To, People Change When They Receive Enough That They Are Able To.
Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him, as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It’s a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age,
In The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential, New York Times bestselling author John C. Maxwell shares fifteen principles for maximizing personal growth.
The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth are:
- The Law of Intentionality: Growth Doesn’t Just Happen
- The Law of Awareness: You Must Know Yourself to Grow Yourself
- The Law of the Mirror: You Must See Value in Yourself to Add Value to Yourself
- The Law of Reflection: Learning to Pause Allows Growth to Catch Up with You
- The Law of Consistency: Motivation Gets You Going—Discipline Keeps You Growing
- The Law of Environment: Growth Thrives in Conducive Surroundings
- The Law of Design: To Maximize Growth, Develop Strategies
- The Law of Pain: Good Management of Bad Experiences Leads to Great Growth
- The Law of the Ladder: Character Growth Determines the Height of Your Personal Growth
- The Law of the Rubber Band: Growth Stops When You Lose the Tension Between Where You Are and Where You Could Be
- The Law of Trade-Offs: You Have to Give Up to Grow Up
- The Law of Curiosity: Growth Is Stimulated by Asking Why?
- The Law of Modeling: It’s Hard to Improve When You Have No One but Yourself to Follow
- The Law of Expansion: Growth Always Increases Your Capacity
- The Law of Contribution: Growing Yourself Enables You to Grow Others
“Average” is what the failures claim to be when their family and friends ask them why they are not more successful.
“Average” is the top of the bottom, the best of the worst, the bottom of the top, the worst of the best. Which of these are you?
“Average” means being run-of-the-mill, mediocre, insignificant, an also-ran, a nonentity.
Being “average” is the lazy person’s cop-out; it’s lacking the guts to take a stand in life; it’s living by default.
Being “average” is to take up space for no purpose; to take the trip through life, but never to pay the fare; to return no interest for God’s investment in you.”
“Being “average” is to pass one’s life away with time, rather than to pass one’s time away with life; it’s to kill time, rather than to work it to death.
To be “average” is to be forgotten once you pass from this life. The successful are remembered for their contributions; the failures are remembered because they tried; but the “average,” the silent majority, is just forgotten.
To be “average” is to commit the greatest crime one can against one’s self, humanity, and one’s God. The saddest epitaph is this: “Here lies Mr. and Ms. Average—here lies the remains of what might have been, except for their belief that they were only “average.”
– Edmund Gaudet.
In Mentoring 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know, Leadership author John C. Maxwell shares insights and strategies for building leaders by mentoring – what it is, why you should do it, and how you can do it most effectively.
The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography is a book of reflection by Bahamian-American actor Sidney Pottier wherein he reflects on lessons learned during his seventy-plus years of sojourn in life. Sidney described what he absorbed through his early experiences, lessons learned from his parents and adventures. Sidney Pottier was the first black actor and the first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.
In Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century, Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson shares strategies and tips for unleashing the full potential of software developers in any organization. Jeff Lawson founded Twilio in 2008 with the belief that empowering developers was key to unlocking innovation within nearly every kind of business.
Ask Your Developer is a framework for business leaders, product managers, technical leaders, software developers, and executives to achieve their common goal—building great digital products and experiences.
Twilio provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using its web service APIs.
I set a couple of goals at the beginning of the year, such as the 100 Books Reading Challenge, 50 Reports Reading Challenge, 50 Biography Reading Challenge, John C. Maxwell 50 Books Reading Challenge, 50 Magazine Reading Challenge, 365 English Podcast Listening Challenge, 365 French Podcast Listening Challenge etc.
Here is a breakdown of how I faired in executing the above goals in March 2023:
Exercise Routine
- Time Spent exercising: 94 Hours
- Kilometers covered: 223 KM
- Time spent in the gym: Daily, 31 days (Averaged 3 hours per day)
- Activities: Swimming, Running, Basketball Shooting, Pickleball, and Outdoor Biking
Books read in March (10)
- Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day by Todd Henry
- The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
- The Art of Attack: Attacker Mindset for Security Professionals by Maxie Reynolds
- The Human Magnet Syndrome: The Codependent Narcissist Trap by Ross A. Rosenberg
- The Pentester BluePrint: Starting a Career as an Ethical Hacker by Phillip L. Wylie
- Becoming an Ethical Hacker by Gary Rivlin
John Maxwell 50
- What Successful People Know about Leadership: Advice from America’s #1 Leadership Authority by John C. Maxwell
- The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork: Embrace Them and Empower Your Team by John C. Maxwell
Biography
- Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell
- Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe
Meditation
I meditated for an average of 27 minutes daily using the Calm Mindfulness A
- Aspire State of Influential Marketing 2023
- AFRICA’S EMPLOYMENT CHALLENGES The Ever-Widening Gaps by Robert Kappel
Podcast Listening
- 365 English Podcast Listening Challenge – Daily podcast session
- 365 French Podcast Listening Challenge – Daily French Podcast listening session.
All the Best in your quest to get Better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.