Episode 90: Feeding Our Minds With Good Books

This week we discuss the books that we have read for Quarter 1! Most of them came strongly recommended to us, and we enjoyed them - so we hope you enjoy them as well! The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure By Johnathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff . Fantastic read of where we are in society with the children that we are raising, and who are currently in college and entering the work force. There are some parts that are VERY PAINFUL, but it all serves as a wake up call for us to really parent with intentionality and wisdom. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood By Trevor Noah, and read by him in the Audible version. This book is one of our favorite biographies, and ranks up there with Kevin Hart's book that we read last year. It is heartfelt, funny, and thought provoking. As all good books should be! Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition By Kerry Patterson. This book was good and gives you courage to go ahead and have those crucial conversations you have been avoiding. "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. ” The Infinite Game By Simon Sinek, this book is another winner by this award winning author. It is similar to the ideas of having a fixed mindset vs a growth one. Still a great read to help you to see if you are playing a finite game or an infinite one - in business, and in life. Power Questions: Build Relationships, Win New Business, and Influence Others By Andrew Sobel, Jerold Panas. This was a great read as well. On the podcast we unintentionally gave the intro of this book a bad rap, but we confused the intro with a different book that we read.  This is a great book and definitely helps us to stop talking, to start listening, and asking direct and powerful questions that will help unlock doors to conversations. We also mentioned that the power of questions and having crucial conversations really showed up in 'It's a Beatiful Day in the Neighborhood', the newer movie about Mr. Rogers, starring Tom Hanks. That movie is also worth watching! Pachinko By Min Jin Lee, I mentioned this in a previous podcast, but I highly recommend it. A great work of fiction set during Japanese occupation in Korea.  Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being By Shawn Achor, this is another great book that we highly recommend by this author. Our favorite part was when Shawn talked about struggling with depression in the midst of teaching about happiness at Harvard. How did he get out of that depression? Letting others in!  The Power of Now By Eckhart Tolle. Chris said this book was a bit too whimsical and didn't finish it. I will see if I get around to it. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable By Patrick Lencioni, this is one of Chris' all time favorite leadership books. Definitely worth checking out. All Secure By Tom Satterly, Chris also enjoyed this book about the author and his trials and successes as a military serviceman, who was a part of the Black Hawk Down mission. Can’t Hurt Me  By David Goggins. Chris also recommends this book about David, who was a Navy Seal, but definitely did not start out as someone that you would think of as Seal material.  We hope you enjoy these books as much as we did. We are always open to hearing about your book recommendations! Good Word of the Day "From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes." -Chief Justice John Roberts at his son's 9th grade graduation. We are all kind of in a time where maybe we are feeling lonely, and like we are failing - but there are great lessons to be learned. So we encourage you to learn them! Make a schedule - for you. And then for your kids. Think about some things you want to achieve, change, overcome - and do those things!  Thank you for tuning in for another week of the podcast. We wish you a great week, and hope you will tune in again next week!