Play with Fire, Bianca Juárez Olthoff

Source: https://vimeo.com/174819233

This lady has spunk! My Sabbath School small group was doing her study on the Book of Ruth, so I decided to see what else she had written. She was also one of the speakers for the 2018If: Gathering.

This book was more autobiography than Bible study. I didn’t really have any expectations going in, but I enjoyed it. This gave me a little more perspective on the way she tells the Ruth story and the fire behind her messages.

My DNA involves a consistent search for self-improvement and deeper connection to God.  Because I read so much, I have a potential propensity to analysis-paralysis.  Her encouragement is similar to that of Gary Vaynerchuk in Crush It to trust your gut sometimes.  Don’t over think things, but appreciate that life experiences are also good teachers.  All teaching and all information is not derived from an external source or a professor/author pouring into me.  At some point, you have enough.  At some point, you have to act . . . to play with fire.

I’ll keep following her to see what else is up . . . so far, so good.

The Living Room, Robert Whitlow

The beauty of this book was the combination of 3 plot themes woven into one story – Amy and her visions, role of her mentor, and Mr. Greg and Megan. It all came together at the end without being overly preachy. I’m a Robert Whitlow fan, and it’s been a couple years at least since I finished the Deeper Waters series. This was nice. 😉

Okay, I can’t just end a post with “this was nice”.  I want to, but I can’t.  I have to do the work that makes this blog something to bookmark . . . “bookmark this”.

So, here’s what I’m adding.  Life is short.  Make something of it.  Learn from people who are different than me.  Learn from people who are 1) much older than I am and from people who are 2) much younger than I am.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of joining my company at a college recruiting event.  As I spoke to students, I thought back to my college days and remembered the “game face on” times of suiting up and going to career fairs.  I also remembered how serious all of the adults looked.  So, I purposely wanted to at least be a friendly face.

There were a couple of students who really stood out to me, and one of them came in holding a gimbal.  He was using it to stabilize a video being created for “campus enterprises”.  Now, having done a little google research on my own after seeing this cool device in action, I know that professionals use these all the time.  However, I never knew a device like this was critical to stable videos and has been in use in professional form for year.  To see something like this attached to a smartphone was just like “wow!”.  Then, to see the output of their work was amazing to me.  I thought to myself, these are some enterprising kids.  Why on earth are they just looking for jobs in engineering?  LOL.

I learned something cool from someone at least half my age.

That was one of the key lessons in The Living Room.  The messages delivered in dreams and relying on them to make legal decisions is a bit of a stretch for me . . . pure fiction. However, relying on your gut and being open to learning from non-traditional sources is a lesson I feel much more comfortable sharing.  Then, again, maybe that’s what faith is all about.  Listening, learning, experiencing things that aren’t rational, logical, tried and true.  Just be open.

I was open yesterday.  I learned about the gimbal.  I learned that college students have literally traveled the WORLD at 20 years old.  I learned that there’s a lot I still have to learn, and that was cool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shoe Dog, Phil Knight

I’m a sucker for biography and autobiography, so this was an easy winner. I also appreciate learning about people who made something amazing from an idea . . . much less from a paper/project at Stanford that was initially shunned.

I also appreciated the transparency around things that didn’t go well – sweat shop debacle. “Fixing” that workplace dynamic made Nike better, and isn’t that what life is all about? We screw up. We learn. We get better.

I think another really cool experience about this book is that I finished it shortly before traveling to China.  But as I write this, I am sitting in Shanghai, China.  So, as I sit here, I’m thinking about the global impact of not only shoe production but so many products that are integrated into the way we live in the US and around the globe.

I also wonder how many other experiences we can share across borders.  The iphone is the iphone is the iphone.  From Paris to Shanghai to Zambia to Moonville, SC.  The same applies to Nike.  Pringles.  Coke.  IBM.  Bosch.  But, what’s missing in the US?  In my town?  How do I leverage the blessing of having traveled all over the world to help expose those in my small circle of influence to a bigger world beyond the southeastern US?  Even more importantly, how do I champion the notion of WANTING to see and experience a bigger world to the generations coming behind me . . . moreso than just watching the world via youtube.  That doesn’t count.

Easy five stars for me.  I love books that make me think and really challenge my thinking as it applies to life and work.  Shoe Dog checked the box for both.

I saw this quote on Twitter before the recent Apple event on the iphone 7.  Since I’d just finished Off-Balance, it really stood out to me.  Thanks, @evernote for posting that day!

 

Off Balance

Now, this should be pretty embarrassing, but I’m going to say it was “destined to be”.  I found a stack of these books at my office and asked someone if I could take one.  She said yes, and off to my bookshelf it went.  THEN, I saw it on an audible “sale” and said to myself, Matthew Kelly!  Buy it.  I started listening to it and then realized that I already had the hard copy.  Yeah for me.  🙂

The great thing is that this really is a hard copy – touch and feel it – book bc of a couple of questionnaires included in personal exercises. 

With all of that preface out of the way, what did I think?  Hands down, it’s going to be another Dream Manager top-of-mind reference book that I will share with folks for years to come.   I’m not sure what it is about Matthew Kelly, but his level of reflection and introspection really challenges me to think about my life.

When I had the pleasure of experiencing a Dream Manager workshop with him live a few years ago, I was CHANGED!  I did my list of 100 dreams and added to it.  I’ve led girlfriends through it. I’ve led a small group through it.  I’ve facilitated it with a church group.  The Dreams list is SUPER powerful!  I even sat next to a guy on a plane who I affectionately refer to as my “angel” for many reasons bc he had read the Dream Manager (how serendipitous is that!) and had done his dream list.  Then, he shared with me that it was super cool to see some of his dreams come true and to go back and check them off the list. I’ve never met anyone who did that like me.  WOW!

Okay, this review is about Off-Balance, but I had to throw that in.  If you haven’t read Dream Manager, it is a must-read (10 stars) if you like to think about your life and envision the next version of yourself.  Back to Off-Balance . . . The first 30-40% is really a set up on the misnomer of balance in the life of corporate America.  Initially, I thought this was just semantics.  As I continued listening and running (this was a long miler listen), I decided to give the “satisfaction” premise a chance.  Am I someone who really just wants satisfaction in my life?  Does balance really matter to me?

I think there’s room for both schools of thought.  If I’m satisfied with my life, I don’t mind being out of balance so to speak — more work than play at times.  However, for peace in my life, I do need moments to recalibrate . . . to get back in balance.  For me, that is usually a day of rest.  I can go 100 mph for 6 days, but I need a break.  6/1 doesn’t exactly equal balance, but it does give me a reset point.  I don’t think that contradicts the notion of seeking satisfaction for life happiness, but I don’t want to discount the importance of finding a place to reset.  Maybe it’s the introvert in me that needs some quiet time (note Quiet by Susan Cain is another powerful must-read with the highlighter book), but I think this is notable injection into the satisfaction in the line of thinking.

The later half of the book provides processes/methods to get to satisfaction . . . my personal definition of satisfaction.  These exercises are powerful.  In a world of constant change – especially in the work place – one thing that made me go “aha” was answering the question “What do you want?”

If I don’t know what I want, it’s super hard for a mentor or employer to help me get “there”.  As a more senior person in my organization now, I am really blessed to be a mentor to a handful of younger professionals.  I am constantly inspired and motivated by their passion, ideas and commitment to personal success in our company.  What challenges me most is that they are so frustrated with the inability to advance their ideas and careers in the present environment.  As much as I challenge them to know what they want to do and develop process plans for life outside of work, the comment on page 113 of the book has become a new mantra for me.

We CHOOSE every day where we spend 8-10 hours of the day.  No one forces us to come to work.

So, as frustrated as we may get with X company and X culture, we all have a choice.  If we want to do something else, we should develop a plan to get there.  But first, we have to know what we want.  Bottom line.

I think frustrating work environments and experiences are going to be everywhere.  Working with other human beings happens all around the world, so there’s no escaping moments or even seasons of frustration.  However, I can choose how I respond to situations, and I can choose what is important to me. I have to remember that every day I choose to come to work because there are other things that I want to experience in life that this job affords me.  If this isn’t the place to help me accomplish those other things, what am I doing to change that?

I could go on and on because as you may have guessed, I really enjoyed this little book. However, I will close here with 2 words that I am applying to my life and sharing with my mentees . . . Personal Responsibility.

Definitely check this one out and share it.  I went back and emptied that box of books by giving them to my mentees . . . 🙂