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Book Summaries

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In Beyond Codependency: And Getting Better All the Time, author and survivor Melody Beattie writes a follow-up to her best-selling book, Codependent No More. The theme of the book is dealing with the core issues of recovery, what to do when the pain has stopped and we’ve begun to suspect we have a life to live. It is about what happens next after becoming aware of your codependency. She writes about recovery, Relapse, family of origin, shame, setting healthy boundaries, intimacy, negotiating conflicts, self-care, support groups among other concepts.

Codependency is about normal behaviors taken too far. It’s about crossing lines.

In The New Codependency: Help and Guidance for Today’s Generation, the self-help writer and author of Codependent No More, Melody Beattie updates the concept of codependency with strategies such as self-care, detachment, letting go, setting boundaries, and building a healthy relationship in our ever-changing world. Me

Everybody has theories. The dangerous people are those who are not aware of their own theories. That is, the theories on which they operate are largely unconscious. –  John Cleese

In Rebel Ideas:: The Power of Diverse Thinking, British Journalist and former table tennis player, Matthew Syed examines the power of ‘cognitive diversity’ – the ability to think differently about the world around us. The book focuses not upon demographic diversity but cognitive diversity (differences in perspective, insights, experiences and thinking styles). People from different backgrounds, with different experiences, often think about problems in different ways.

In You’re Not Crazy – You’re Codependent.: What Everyone Affected by Addiction, Abuse, Trauma or Toxic Shaming Must know to have peace in their lives, writer and survivor Jeanette Elisabeth Menter writes about co-dependency based on her own life experiences. She is a survivor of a childhood filled with addiction, abuse, ongoing shame as a way of control, and more. Jeanette describes how codependency sabotages us through the lies we tell ourselves and exposes the truth that can lead to liberation.

Once you understand you are not crazy, just coping with the deep-seated effects of codependency, you will be free to create the life you were always meant to have.

Your regrets are only part of your story. They don’t have to be the story. Your past should remind you. It doesn’t have to define you.

In Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets: 5 Questions to Help You Determine Your Next Move, author and pastor Andy Stanley describes five game-changing questions to ask every time you make a decision—questions that will help you in your finances, relationships, career, and more. Stanley argues that well-timed and appropriate thought provoking questions lead to better decisions and fewer regrets.

Developing the discipline to pause and ask these five questions will result in better decisions and fewer regrets.

1. The Integrity Question

Am I being honest with myself, really?

Decision #1: I will not lie to myself even the truth makes me feel bad about myself.

2. The Legacy Question

What story do I want to tell?

Decision #2: I will write a story I’m proud to tell one decision at a time.

3. The Conscience Question

Is there a tension that needs my attention?

Decision #3: I will explore rather than ignore my conscience.

4. The Maturity Question

What is the wise thing to do?

Decision #4: I will take the past, present, and future into consideration

5. The Relationship Question

What does love require of me?

Decision #5: I will decide with the interests of others in mind.

Good questions lead to better decisions. And better decisions lead to fewer regrets.

Your decisions determine the direction and quality of your life. And while nobody plans to complicate their life with bad decisions, far too many people have no plan to make good decisions.

In Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, Artists David Bayles  & Ted Orland explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn’t get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. Art & Fear is a book written by artists, for artists – it’s about what it feels like when artists sit down at their easel or keyboard, in their studio or performance space, trying to do the work they need to do. Their insights and observations, drawn from personal experience, provide an incisive view into the world of art as it is experienced by artmakers themselves.

 In Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision-Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice, venture capitalist, and writer Patrick J. McGinnis describe one of the greatest scourge of our time: The Fear of Missing Out and how we can become more strategic with our decision making in the age of social media.

“We make more than 35,000 decisions a day. Some impulsive, some logical, and some complex and paralyzing. Compounded with our “always-on” society, the pressures and stresses wrought by endless access to yet another option or possibility can create an endless loop of indecision and unease.”

Tim coined the term FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), as well as the related term FOBO (Fear of a Better Option) in a 2004 article titled ” Social Theory at HBS: McGinnis’ Two FOs” in The Harbus, the student newspaper of Harvard Business School(HBS). FOMO has since appeared all over pop culture and it’s even been added to a host of authoritative dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster.

it’s easy to do the little things, every day. It’s also easy not to do them.

In Leading an Inspired Life, author and motivational speaker Jim Rohn shares timeless insight on living an inspired life. Rohn distills some of the finest teachings from his mentor John Earl Shoaff and his own life philosophies such as seasons of life, law of averages, ant philosophy, visual chain thinking, snowball effect among others.

In The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life, licensed psychoanalyst, and Co-founder and Associate Director for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence Robin Stern, Ph.D. shows how the Gaslight Effect works and tells you how to: Turn up your Gaslight Radar, so you know when a relationship is headed for trouble.

Gaslighting is an insidious form of emotional abuse and manipulation that is difficult to recognize and even harder to break free from. That’s because it plays into one of our worst fears — of being abandoned — and many of our deepest needs: to be understood, appreciated, and loved.

You can’t call something a “distraction,” unless you know what it is distracting you from.

In Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, author, former Stanford lecturer, and behavioral design expert, Nir Eyal argues that in the future: There will be two kinds of people in the world-those who let their attention and lives be controlled and coerced by others and those who proudly call themselves “indistractable”.

Being indistractable isn’t about being a Luddite. It’s about understanding the real reasons why we do things against our best interests.

 Lean Startup: the application of lean thinking to the process of innovation.

In The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Entrepreneur and Author Eric Ries proposes a methodology for developing businesses and products that aims to shorten product development cycles and rapidly discover if a proposed business model is viable; this is achieved by adopting a combination of business-hypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning.

Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing. Lean Startup relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want.

The book is divided into three parts: “Vision,” “Steer,” and “Accelerate.”

  • Vision makes the case for a new discipline of entrepreneurial management.
  • Steer dives into the Lean Startup method in detail, showing one major turn through the core Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop.
  • Accelerate, explore techniques that enable Lean Startups to speed through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop as quickly as possible, even as they scale.

“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist,  author, and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl chronicles his experience as a prisoner and survivor of four Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and he also describes his psychotherapeutic method which he called Logotherapy (meaning-centered psychotherapy). The book tries to answer this question: How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?

“‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

In Running Lean, Entrepreneur and creator of the one-page business modeling tool “Lean Canvas“, Ash Maurya provides a step-by-step blueprint for practicing entrepreneurs who want to increase their odds of success. A business plan rests on a series of leap-of-faith assumptions, each of which can be tested empirically. Running Lean lays out Ash’s approach to breaking these assumptions down so that they can become the subjects of rigorous experiments.

“Running Lean is a systematic process for iterating from Plan A to a plan that works, before running out of resources.”

Great is the art of the beginning, but greater is the art of the ending — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

In Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward, Clinical Psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Henry Cloud shares mindset-altering methods for proactively correcting the bad and the brokenness in our businesses and our lives. Cloud challenges readers to achieve the personal and professional growth they both desire and deserve—and gives crucial insight on how to make those tough decisions that are standing in the way of a more successful business and, ultimately, a better life.