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In his late 40s, American writer George Leonard took up the practice of aikido (modern Japanese martial art) and he went on to earn a a fifth-degree black belt. In Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment, Leonard draws up his expertise in aikido and Zen philosophy to describe the process of mastery. He identified the five keys to mastery as instruction, practice, surrender, intentionality and the edge.

“If there is any sure route to success and fulfillment in life, it is to be found in the long-term, essentially goalless process of mastery.”

The book is based on Leonard’s 1987 Esquire Ultimate Fitness special, MASTERY: TAKING IT HOME – Its principles can be applied to anything in life that involves learning—even love. The subject of the special was mastery “the mysterious process during which what is at first difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable through practice.” The purpose of the feature was to describe the path that best led to mastery, not just in sports but in all of life, and to warn against the prevailing bottom-line mentality that puts quick, easy results ahead of long-term dedication to the journey itself.”

Mastery: Tthe mysterious process during which what is at first difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable through practice.

In What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful!, executive coach Marshall Goldsmith identifies fundamental problems that often come with success–and offers ways to attack these problems. He outlines twenty habits commonly found in the corporate environment and provides a systematic approach to helping you achieve a positive change in behaviour.

The difference between success that happens because of our behavior and the success that comes in spite of our behavior

In Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World, American entrepreneur, author and host of The Time Ferriss Show shares a compilation of tools, tactics, and habits from 130+ top performers. From iconic entrepreneurs to elite athletes, artists to billionaire investors, many of the people who answered the eleven questions posed by Tim have not been featured on his podcast yet as of the book’s writing.

Tim is also the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers: The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef and Tribe of Mentors. The Tim Ferriss Show has exceeded 900 million downloads and has been selected for “Best of iTunes” three years running.

“If you light a lamp for someone, it will also brighten your own path.” – Ancient Buddhist Proverb

In One Minute Mentoring: How to Find and Work With a Mentor–And Why You’ll Benefit from Being One, authors Ken Blanchard and Claire Diaz-Ortiz share a fictional parable about the power of finding—or being—a mentor. They share a framework for maintaining a mentoring relationship.

In One Minute Mentoring, Ken and Claire tell the story of Josh Hartfield, a young sales rep whose motivation is flagging, and Diane Bertman, a sales executive whose crammed schedule isn’t delivering the satisfaction it once did. As the story of Diane and Josh unfolds, the authors share six action steps to creating a successful mentoring relationship, as developing and finding a mentorship partnership,  and strategies for skills and wisdoms of people of all ages.

In High-Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way, high-performance coach Brendon Burchard (The Motivation Manifesto) shares the six deliberate habits of high-performing individuals and teams.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do.Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.—Aristotle

In Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You, a former doctor turned YouTuber, podcaster, and entrepreneur Dr. Ali Abdaal argues that the key to productivity isn’t discipline but joy. He provides a framework and various experiments for making projects more enjoyable so that productivity takes care of itself.

Three Parts of the Book

  • Part 1 explains how to use the science of feel-good productivity to energise yourself.

The Three Energizers: Play, Power and People

  • Part 2:  Examines how feel-good productivity can help us overcome procrastination.

The Three Blockers: Uncertainty, Fear and Inertia

  • Part 3: How feel-good productivity can sustain us in the long term.

The Three types of burnout: Overexertion burnout, depletion burnout and misalignment burnout

The Three Sustainers: Conserve, Recharge and Align

In Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior…and Feel Great Again, American Psychologist and founder of the Schema Therapy Institute Jeffrey E. Young describes eleven chronic, self-defeating personality patterns known as lifetraps. The authors draw upon actual clinical experiences to explain life schema. Based on various therapeutic approaches such as cognitive, behavioural, psychoanalytic, and experiential therapies. They share strategies for changing major life patterns called Lifetrap therapy. They describe eleven of the most destructive problems in life that they encountered in their practices. How to recognize them, their origin and how to change them.

Oprah Winfrey first came across American author and academic Arthur C. Brooks through his column in The Atlantic, “How to Build a Life.” Oprah read Arthur’s column throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and she was fascinated by the subject matter he was discussing: Living a life with purpose and meaning. Oprah became a fan, and they ultimately collaborated to write the Build the Life You Want Book. One of the common themes that always came up in Oprah’s interviews during her 25 years of running the Oprah Winfrey Show was her guest and the universal desire to be happy.

Oprah on Arthur Brooks: “Arthur exudes a kind of confidence and certainty about the meaning of happiness that’s both comforting and galvanizing.” In Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey share tools, strategies, research and tips for leading a happier life.

Books Theme:

  • Teach strategies for leading a happier life by optimizing for the four pillars of happiness: Family, Friendship, Work and Spirituality.

“The relationships that impact us the most are those with family. The wounds are deep, and the relationships are filled with expectations.

In Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships, licensed therapist and author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself, Nedra Glover Tawwab, provides a guide for dealing with unhealthy family dynamics and relationships. Her first book, Set Boundaries, is one of my favourite books on boundary setting.

Drama Free Book’s Theme:

  • The book is a tool to help readers develop the skills needed to reclaim their voice in a dysfunctional family.

Life is in the transitions as much as in the terms connected. – WILLIAM JAMES

In Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age, New York Times bestsellers author Bruce Feiler writes about the nonlinear life, in which each of us faces dozens of disruptors. One in ten of those disruptors is what Feiler refers to as a lifequake, a massive change that leads to a life transition. The average length of these transitions is five years. The upshot: We all spend half our lives in this unsettled state. You or someone you know is going through one now.

As a financial consultant, Shawn Rochester helped his clients develop plans to dramatically increase their household cash flow, eliminate their debt, and set aside enough resources to maximize their income-generating assets during retirement. He also started Good Steward University, where he developed online courses to help Black Americans manage their resources based on a mindset and a set of actions focused on stewardship, ownership, and legacy. Within Good Steward University, Shawn developed a course called The Black Tax: The Incremental Cost of Being Black in America. The course was created based on reviewing 25 years of research on the cost of implicit bias on African-Americans.

This tax is insidious in many ways because it reduces Black Americans’ cash flow, thereby reducing our ability to leave a legacy for our children and their children.

In The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America, founder of Good Steward LLC, Shawn Rochester, examines the various costs associated with being Black in America. He describes The Black Tax (which is the financial cost of conscious and unconscious anti-black discrimination), creates a massive financial burden on Black American households that dramatically reduces their ability to leave a substantial legacy for future generations. 

In Burn the Boats: Toss Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential, American businessman Matt Higgins provides the blueprint he used to go from a desperate sixteen-year-old high school dropout caring for his sick mother in Queens, New York, to a shark on Shark Tank and the faculty of Harvard Business School.

Burn the Boats is about not becoming hesitant when your instincts don’t match what the world is telling you to do. The key to unlocking potential is to embrace your highest competitive advantage: you are the only one who has the full story of your life. YOU are the one subject about which there will never be a greater expert in the world.