Unlock ways to reach your best potential
Step up your game!
In order to reach our true potential, we have to fix our physical health, mental health, work on our relationships, and build our skills.
But how?
Today’s books are here to show you just that. Each of them will serve as a convincing and practical guide for you to level up your life.
Let’s go!
How much comfort is too much comfort?
Michael Easter is a professor, author, and journalist who writes on health and wellness.
This book makes a very strong argument against the over-comfort that exists in modern lives. We have an excess of everything. Food, leisure, pleasure, and rest.
“We are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged, safety-netted lives.”
Our lifespan might have increased but our health is going down.
The author talks about the importance of spending time in nature and building good relationships. In addition to this, he also talks about the importance of being fully engaged in demanding activities and experiencing flow.
“Fear is apparently a mindset often felt prior to experience…”
The book touches on the difference between junk food, real food, cravings, and hunger.
“We live in a state of constant mental churn and meaningless chatter.”
This book will make you realize how far we’ve come from how we were supposed to live.
Buy The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter On Amazon
Focus to win!
Just today, a friend told me about a lady who sews highly creative pieces of clothing, bags, etc. But she doesn’t have a social media presence.
This lady does deep work.
How?
“To simply wait and be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it’s incredibly valuable.”
Deep work means being fully immersed in the task at hand and producing high-level outputs. Something increasingly rare in our lives as we are disturbed constantly by the ‘ding’, ‘ding’ of our emails and messages.
Newport makes us realize how distraction is killing our productivity. We might think we are being highly efficient by answering our emails fast. In reality, our productivity is suffering.
“Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging.”
The author motivates us to quit social media, schedule deep work, and create a shutdown ritual.
There is a famous saying, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’. We are not meant to work for the whole day.
Work deeply when it’s time to work. And don’t think back after your shutdown ritual.
This book will make you rethink the way you structure your work.
If you want to live to a hundred then make this book your bible.
Using science and research, Peter Attia tells us about the secret to living a long and healthy life.
The current medical approach misses a lot of things, The author calls it Medicine 2.0.
He is a proponent of Medicine 3.0. This approach focuses on 4 pillars of good health in order to avoid the chronic diseases that plague our society.
“Experience can be an effective teacher. But, clearly, only some students listen to their teachers.”
Good health can be sustained through:
Exercise
Nutrition
Sleep
Emotional health
“The typical cholesterol panel that you receive and discuss at your annual physical, along with many of the underlying assumptions behind it (e.g., “good” and “bad” cholesterol), is misleading and oversimplified to the point of uselessness.”
The author suggests different ways to limit calorie intake in order for better health. Our problem is not the lack of food but quite the opposite. We have too much food and too many options.
Sadly, most of it is junk.
Similarly, the author reminds us to move and exercise. He asks us to think of things that we want to do at a 100-year-old and use that to motivate ourselves.
This book will show you the path to living longer and healthier.
Don’t rely on the results.
This book teaches us how to improve our decision-making.
Everything is a bet. When we make a decision and it turns out to be beneficial, we think we are right.
In fact, we are right only 50% of the time.
“Improving decision quality is about increasing our chances of good outcomes, not guaranteeing them.”
How can we make better decisions?
The thing is, one can never have all the knowledge about something. We have to make decisions without knowing everything.
It is a game of probability. Luck also counts. Sometimes bad decisions lead to good outcomes because of chance.
We have to differentiate between the quality of decisions and luck. We have influence over the first one and not the latter.
“We might think of ourselves as open-minded and capable of updating our beliefs based on new information, but the research conclusively shows otherwise.”
The author equates real life to a game of poker.
This book will teach you how to focus on what you can control when making a decision.
Talent is made, not born.
We look at people who have achieved great things and we are in awe of how they got all that.
“People who make major strides are rarely freaks of nature. They’re usually freaks of nurture.”
The author tells us that it is all about your character. If you build the right character skills, you can work hard and learn skills.
This will help you realize your true potential.
The book focuses a lot on building comfort with discomfort as part of our character traits. It’s okay to be uncomfortable. If you keep practicing your skills despite it, comfort will follow.
Grant is an organizational psychologist. He also focuses on organization to develop systems that will allow people to thrive.
Remember, anyone can achieve great things.
Some truths never change!
The world has changed a lot. But there are a few things that haven’t changed across the span of time and generations.
This book lets us in on all those.
“People don’t want accuracy. They want certainty.”
Housel tells us that the sure short way to achieve happiness is to lower your expectations. You can have everything and be unhappy. And you can have less and be happy.
This is because of how you tune your expectations.
Another truth that I liked reading about is the balance in the world.
In the world, the pendulum keeps swinging between good and bad, positive and negative, calm and crazy. It is not abnormal to have a bad time after a happy one.
“Just like evolution, the key is realizing that the more perfect you try to become, the more vulnerable you generally are.”
As many books tell us, this one also reminds us that bad news gets more attention hence the good is harder to see.
This book will deliver poignant lessons about life that can help you live better.
Finding hope when there is none.
Frankl was a psychiatrist.
In World War 2, he was captured by the Nazis and taken to a concentration camp. There he witnessed a lot of atrocities and suffered abuse.
“…there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
This book chronicles his experiences. He tells us about the fight for survival. We get to know his fellow prisoners and Nazi guards.
Through the worst time imaginable, Frankl survived through a sense of purpose.
He is also the founder of logotherapy in psychology. Logotherapy focuses on identifying a meaning to one’s life.
This is also mentioned in his book. The author suggests finding meaning through a cause, love, or suffering.
“No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”
No matter what you are going through in life, Frankl’s words will make you feel less alone.
From South Africa to global domination.
The author spent two years with Elon Musk to write this book.
He tells us about Elon’s childhood in South Africa and his struggles. Due to his experiences, Elon grew up to be a risk-taker and someone who is dedicated to his mission.
“Reading remained Musk’s psychological retreat. Sometimes he would immerse himself in books all afternoon and most of the night, nine hours at a stretch.”
The author tells us about Elon’s fascination with space exploration.
We also get to know about the founding of SpaceX and all that came with it. The book also traces his journey of founding Tesla and taking over Twitter.
“This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks.”
An interesting thing that we learn about Elon in this book is… that he thrives in crisis situations. Success feels a bit off to him.
This book is a fascinating look into one of the world’s most rich and famous men.
The interesting twist in human behavior.
We don’t know the reasons for our actions. Why?
Because we have evolved to be selfish without appearing selfish. And when we believe something ourselves, it’s easier to convince other people.
Hence, our brain fools us.
“The less we know of our own ugly motives, the easier they are to hide from others.”
The authors go into detail about why we hide our motives. They talk about animal behavior, signaling, social norms, and self-deception.
The book also discusses examples of ‘Hidden Motives in Everyday Life’.
For example: Why do we do charity? Why do we laugh? What is the value of art?
“If we can accurately diagnose what’s holding back our institutions, we may finally succeed in reforming them, thereby making our lives better.”
The discussions on each of these will surprise you.
We think we are doing charity to help others. In fact, we are signaling wealth and generosity.
Laughter has more purposes than humor. It’s a play signal. A feeling of comfort with the other party.
Art is also used to show prestige and knowledge.
This book will change the way you think about human behavior.
It’s time to replace our addiction.
I was just craving something spicy. I went and made myself a spicy omelet.
We crave stuff and we get it. But is it good?
“Do you want to be right or happy?”
The ‘want for more’ served our ancestors well. But for us, it is detrimental. We are getting addicted.
The author tells us about the scarcity loop:
Opportunity
Unpredictable rewards
Quick repeatability
Social media, games, eating, drinking, all of these things are powered by the scarcity loop.
Higher odds are preferred by animals even. Pigeons and other animals preferred the game in which they didn’t know whether they would get food by pressing a button. The other was where they got food 100% of the time.
“…in life, we have to do this painful and awkward thing of trusting people and information and making decisions beyond our understanding.”
This want of more is killing our creativity and making us more mentally ill.
One study that blew my mind was about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
Scientists conducted a study. They compared a group of people who saw 6-plus hours of news coverage of the bombing to those who actually participated in the marathon.
“Embrace short-term discomfort to find a long-term benefit.”
Turns out that those who watched the news coverage for many hours were more likely to develop PTSD and other symptoms.
I mean…. Whoa!
This excess of news is not good for us in any way shape or form.
The author suggests replacing the addiction in the loop with healthier alternatives like exercising.
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If you enjoyed these book recommendations, check out the rest of my book lists on my blog- https://www.thenovelnest.com/blog
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