“ The world has it’s ways, of quieting us down”
Firstly...what the fuck just happened?
It feels like 2019 took me by the ears, dragged me in the mud, spat on my face and then had the audacity to ask me to thank it for the lessons it taught me.
Well, I am grateful. Even if that gratitude isn’t entirely embodied — my intention is there.
In this post I outline some books that have made 2019 slightly better than if I had not picked them up. Most of the books are older and....more established? Eh, yeah.
In terms of what I read, I have adopted the mindset of (thanks Naval) reading: either timeless classics that have moved and shaped societies — or modern books that have been mentioned by great leaders (mainly spiritual because fuck politics) and innovators of today. As another metric for assessing the validity of a book, I tend to look at ratings on Goodreads (because hey, I trust the opinions of people on the internet).
I have included my favourite quotes from each book, the key message and being a lazy curator, placed Amazon’s description of the book.
Ok, I’m going to stop blabbering about and jump right into this…
Book #1: Ego is the Enemy
By Ryan Holiday
"Almost universally, the kind of performance we give on social media is positive. It’s more “Let me tell you how well things are going. Look how great I am.” It’s rarely the truth: “I’m scared. I’m struggling. I don’t know.”
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"All of us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want. Why do we do this? Well, it should be obvious by now. Ego leads to envy and it rots the bones of people big and small. Ego undermines greatness by deluding its holder.”
"Ego Is the Enemy draws on a vast array of stories and examples, from literature to philosophy to history. We meet fascinating figures such as George Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Katharine Graham, Bill Belichick, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who all reached the highest levels of power and success by conquering their own egos. Their strategies and tactics can be ours as well.
This is one of those books you look at and go, “yeah, I know…my Ego does need checking…wait, I do have my Ego in check…I don’t need to read this.”
It just seems so obvious. But I honestly wish I had picked this book up years ago. In fact, this book should be mandatory reading for any…anyone! Whether you’re just leaving school or starting a business or going through a mid-life crisis — this is the book for you.
Key Message: Ego is Your Enemy.
Book #2: The War of Art
Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
By Steven Pressfield
“…The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying."
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[Mr. Pressfield on finishing his first novel] "Nobody knew I was done. Nobody cared. But I knew. I felt like a dragon I'd been fighting all my life had just dropped dead at my feet and gasped out its last sulfuric breath. Rest in peace, motherfucker. Next morning I went over to Paul's for coffee and told him I had finished. "Good for you," he said without looking up. "Start the next one today.”
"Since 2002, The War of Art has inspired people around the world to defeat "Resistance"; to recognize and knock down dream-blocking barriers and to silence the naysayers within us.Resistance kicks everyone's butt, and the desire to defeat it is equally as universal. The War of Art identifies the enemy that every one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer this internal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.Though it was written for writers, it has been embraced by business entrepreneurs, actors, dancers, painters, photographers, filmmakers, military service members and thousands of others around the world."
If you are a creative of any kind, this book will speak to you.
We’ve all been there: staring at the blank page, waiting for a lighting bolt of inspiration to hit our penises (or vaginas or whatever).
Key Message: Resistance is the enemy — and the only way to overcome it is by working each day at your craft.
Book #3: So Good They Can’t Ignore You
Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
By Cal Newport
“Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”
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“If you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (“what can the world offer me?”) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (“what can I offer the world?”).”
"In this eye-opening account, Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that "follow your passion" is good advice. Not only is the cliché flawed-preexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work-but it can also be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping."
How many movies, bloggers, YouTubers, tweets, books and people do you know that say shit and have titles like: FOLLOW YOUR PASSION!
Well, this book blows that out the water.
Key Message: Fuck your passion. Become so good at whatever it is you’re half decent at and see where it takes you. This is the path to career fulfilment.
Book #4: Man’s Search For Meaning
By Viktor Frankl
"Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.”
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“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”
—
"It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.”
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“…everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
"Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful."
Even though this book is as old as time, it’s been mentioned by too many people that I admire and respect for me to not read it.
If I thought my 2019 was hard, I have shame for myself. Reading Man’s Search for Meaning will expeditiously put your life’s privileges into perspective.
Key Message: your mind creates reality and no matter how bad things may seem, you have a choice in seeing your situation as good or bad.
Book #5: Waking Up
A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
By Sam Harris
"Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others.”
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"How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives.”
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"The promise of spiritual life—indeed, the very thing that makes it “spiritual” in the sense I invoke throughout this book—is that there are truths about the mind that we are better off knowing. What we need to become happier and to make the world a better place is not more pious illusions but a clearer understanding of the way things are.”
"For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris’s latest New York Times bestseller is a guide to meditation as a rational practice informed by neuroscience and psychology."
Fuck I enjoyed this book.
Waking Up has quickly become one of my all-time favourite reads.
Underlying message: you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars going on an Ayahuasca retreat — which, I would still love to do — in order to obtain enlightenment. Enlightenment an end goal that most meditators seek. However, Sam Harris argues that this moment, right now, free from distraction, is your life.
There’s wisdom in that. Each time you meditate, notice you are distracted and pull yourself into the present moment, you are training yourself to Be Here Now.
It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t meditated. But if you have or you haven’t, Sam Harris is one interesting guy.
Key Message: This moment right now, as you’re reading this, is your life.
Book #6: Stillness is The Key
By Ryan Holiday
"Stillness is what aims the archer’s arrow. It inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections. It slows the ball down so that we might hit it. It generates a vision, helps us resist the passions of the mob, makes space for gratitude and wonder. Stillness allows us to persevere. To succeed. It is the key that unlocks the insights of genius, and allows us regular folks to understand them.”
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"To experience another person fully in the moment is a rare thing. To feel them engage with you, to be giving all their energy to you, as though there is nothing else that matters in the world, is rarer still.”
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"One of the simplest and most accessible entry points into stillness is gratitude. Gratitude for being alive, for the lucky breaks you’ve gotten, and for all the people in your life who have helped you.”
"All great leaders, thinkers, artists, athletes, and visionaries share one indelible quality. It enables them to conquer their tempers. To avoid distraction and discover great insights. To achieve happiness and do the right thing. Ryan Holiday calls it stillness--to be steady while the world spins around you."
Ryan Holiday makes a second appearance in my list of books for 2019. Stillness is The Key is — like Essentialism by Greg Mckeown (which I read in 2018 and highly recommend) — a book that seems like it should be written on an A4 piece of paper, but the stories and anecdotes provide so much wisdom that a tweet-like-blog-page thingy just won’t.
Key Message: to be more at peace and do great things, make Stillness part of your life.
(Extra) Book #7: The Graveyard Book
By Neil Gaiman
"It’s like the people who believe they’ll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.”
—
‘Ah, listen to me young Leander, young Hero, young Alexander. If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.’
"Nobody Owens, known as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised by ghosts, with a guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the dead. There are adventures in the graveyard for a boy—an ancient Indigo Man, a gateway to the abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, he will be in danger from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod’s family."
I included this fiction book from the legend himself — Mr. Neil Gaiman. It’s difficult to fall asleep at night when reading books uncovering consciousness and its contents (kudos Sam Harris) or dabbling in ways to hack the way your money works for you.
Being a non-fiction addict is taxing on the prefrontal cortex.
The Graveyard Book became my attempt at turning off my non-fiction brain — a means to enjoy altered realms of literature beyond Silicon Valley. It was fantastic. Highly recommend if you’re like me.
I’m sure you’ve gathered by the titles above, 2019 was an organised shit show. I got dealt some interesting cards that taught me many lessons.
Life has a way of quieting us down.
Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
As Sam Harris would point out if he were sitting here, peering over my shoulder, watching me write this: "how we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the quality of our lives.”
We are all undernourished from continual distraction — notably during the festive season. Presence is the antidote. This moment is all we have. Enjoy it. Savour it.
Wishing you a prosperous 2020.
Proost!
Joshy — Umhlanga, South Africa.