If you’ve been following me for a while, you may know how much I love reading books.
I am running a book club that focuses on self-care, personal development, relationship, and success, and each month I pick a few books in each department to read together and share the key takeaways and your view or experience on those.
In July, I have picked 3 books — all come highly recommended and although I have not finished reading them yet, so far these books have done wonders and they are nothing but AMAZING:
1/ In the department of love, I have picked “Calling into love” by Katherine Woodward Thomas and it is THEEEE book to read to call into love! So well written with so many golden nuggets. It is a 7 weeks program with 1 lesson per day or you can do 7 in a row for the week. No matter where you are at in your romantic relationship, this book can help unclutter some of the stubborn blocks for the divine love your deserve, heal those old wounds from the past, and establish a solid foundation and rich soil to prepare you to accept and appreciate the love that is yours.
Here are a few of my takeaways so far:
- In the society nowadays, we stop giving much of ourselves to others. We have stopped allowing others to give much of themselves to us. We have come to think of needing others as a negative thing. Our misguided goal has become total independence and self-sufficiency. [My note: Yes exactly!! It’s so true. And my grandma has been very strong advocate in self-reliance perhaps due to some misfortune events in her past, she wants to rely on herself solely on a lot of things. And that has influenced me to think that being self-dependent and self-reliant is the best way to live and needing others is a shame and it is not reliable to rely on others. So definitely this is one of the mental blocks that I need to work on.]
- Love requires us to give up a certain degree of autonomy and allow ourselves to become unguarded and accessible. [My note: I used to think that love is marriage and two people attracted to each other to live happily ever after. But that is a simplified version of love that only stretches the surface. There is so much more to it. Love is commitment to each other, is compromise and sacrifice and I did not think about all of these until recently. There are so many challenges in daily life and when two people commit to loving each other, it is literally merging two person, two personalities, two lives, two lifestyles, two mindsets, two souls into one. I feel like many people have a not so accurate expectation of love and marriage, hence causing disappointments, anger and heartbreak. It is worth spending the time to dive more into the depth of love and what love really entails.]
- One reason why so many relationships fail is that we enter into them for reasons that can’t sustain us. We’re afraid to be alone. We want someone to give us what our parents do not. We’re hoping to be taken care of financially. These reasons are not sufficient. [My note: when we start a business we think about why we want to do it. The reason WHY supports us through the tough times and rotten days. The same goes for relationship, but this is often overlooked. Why do we enter into a relationship? When I ask myself this question, I was surprised to find that the answer is I don’t want to be alone and my family expects me to get married by xx age! Obviously, this is not a good enough reason (and perhaps this is why my ex felt insecure with me). So the reason why is really something I need to spend some time on to figure out myself, my needs and my why.]
I have not yet finished the book but have already learnt so much from it, especially on overcoming my mental blocks. I plan to do a full book sharing and review on our Patreon behind-the-scene community where I share my struggles and biggest lessons learnt. If you are looking for a book club that focuses on self-care, personal development, relationship and success, this is for you: patreon.com/simplifiedbusinesscoach
2/ In the department of personal development, I have chosen this book for July: You2 (You squared). It comes highly recommended and it is about quantum leap. It puts forth 18 key components for building massive success while expending less effort.
Although it is such a thin book, it contains so much wisdom and really challenges the conventional way of thinking (another brain bomb xD).
Prepare to be mentally challenged in a big way when reading this book. And for sure, it needs to be re-read (and re-re-read) to fully grasp the idea within and perhaps another re-read before applying the quantum leap strategy
I am inspired to write an article [A Habit You MUST Develop: https://medium.com/@unicornconnie/a-habit-you-must-develop-e3a5f7c8479a] only after reading the first chapter alone so you can imagine the amount of thoughts and attention it deserves.
Here are a few of my takeaways so far:
- Working hard is not the solution to all. [my note: Indeed, hard work is a virtue but hustling more in the wrong direction would just keep us MORE stuck. Most of the time, we think if we just keep pushing harder things would happen. If we just go out a few more times, we could meet the one. If we just post a few more posts on social media, we could get the next client. If we just try harder to get the next client, we could be hit $x. If we hustle, we can succeed. That’s the conventional thinking that we are installed with. Right when we were small, we were told to study hard, work hard, as if trying harder would make all the difference. But after reading the story of the fly in this book, I realize that the key is not the hard work, but where we are working hard towards. More about this point shared in another article named: A Habit You MUST Develop]
- make your move before you are ready [My note: this is MAJOR. So many of us, myself included, are waiting to live a certain life when we have $x money. We are waiting to learn everything and have the perfect plan before we build the business. We are not being happy until we get certain things that we want or certain results that we aim for.
When I tried to implement and apply some of the learnings in this book in daily life, I found it hard to do so because it requires going the unconventional way. So I have tried to put together a guide on How to use Quantum Physics to Make Your Dreams become REALITY for you to help you get started with the implementation of this book. You can refer to my another article titled “How to use Quantum Physics to Make Your Dreams become REALITY”.
3/ In the business department, I have a tendency to choose books on either psychology, sales or influence. The reason being that I believe that the new business model is no longer B2C (Business to clients) or B2B (Business to business), but H2H (Human to human). With the increasing time spend and purchase decisions influenced by social media, building meaningful relationships to make an impact is a key to attracting clients and long term business success. (Btw if you would like to know more about my business struggles and lessons learned, Patreon community would be the best place to go.)
Therefore, I have chosen the book “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World” by Gary Vaynerchuk.
Although I personally do not agree with Gary Vaynerchuk’s key philosophy of hustle (rather I believe that business or social media has to be operated in a way that is sustainable, simplified and soulful), I think there are something that we can all learn from him, especially on how to connect with customers.
I believe that connection with clients is the key to serving them and as a result, you will receive the security and sustainability of the business.
Nowadays when so many people are having virtual connections, we will only be hungrier for real connection like we have in person. That care for customers in connecting with them and being a human (rather than an automated robot) would be the reason why clients prefer you over your competitors.
Ok, I kinda went off track here so if you want to hear me talk about business, patreon.com/simplifiedbusinesscoach
Back to the book, here are a few of my takeaways so far:
- Customers want brands and companies to pay attention to them, let them voice their opinions, concerns, make the brand their own before giving them a shot at the sell. [My note: people want to be heard, be understood, feel connected. Especially in this social media age, we are craving for meaningful, caring connection more than ever. This is going to be a trend that business will rely on relationships and connections.]
- To do social media right is harder and requires more time and effort than most people realize [My note: this cannot be truer. I used to think that it is easy to operate social media too by uploading pictures and captions. Once I am really doing it, I realize that it is so much more than that — it is more about developing relationship and engaging with others than uploading pretty pictures. Relationships take time to build and engagement requires time investment as well. So to do social media right requires more time and effort than most people may initially imagine. Having a content plan is not enough, engagement is just as important, if not more important, than the content.]
Again, I haven’t finished the book yet as I write this article so definitely I will have more to share later.
Nonetheless, these 3 books are worth reading and so I would like to invite you to join our book club to read and learn together, and share your view and takeaways in the community afterwards.
Here’s the link to the book club : https://www.patreon.com/simplifiedbusinesscoach
If you have any book recommendation on self-care, personal development, relationship and success, I would love to hear from you too!
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Share your thoughts or any book recommendation?
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