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August 2021

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Book Summary -Gaslighting: How to Avoid a Narcissist’s Mind Control and Heal from Narcissistic Abuse by Patrick K. Simon.

In Book Summaries 11 Mins Read By

Gaslighting is portrayed as a type of diligent control and mentally programming that makes the unfortunate casualty question her or himself, and at last lose her or his feeling of recognition, personality, and self-esteem.

Do you have someone in your life who keeps belittling your concerns and making you feel like your concerns about something are invalid?

Does it always feel like you are always misunderstanding him/her because any time you point out something they said, they always turn things around to make you look like you have no idea of what you are saying?

If this is where you find yourself, then you are definitely dealing with a gaslighter. A gaslighter usually wants to manipulate you by doing or saying things that will question your reality, perceptions, and memory. They will make it seem like you are always misunderstanding them or misquoting them, you are always making a mountain out of a molehill, that your concerns are not valid. You may then end up not being free to express yourself, which can negatively affect your self-esteem, and make you doubt everything about yourself.

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Top 30 Quotes on Success.

In Quotes 5 Mins Read By

“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is a roller coaster of challenges: sometimes you win and sometimes you learn (loss). Author Earl Nightingale defined success as the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal. Sometimes you are up and other times, you are down. The key to happiness is to never let Success get into your head and never let failure get into your heart.

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Book Summary -The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed-in Your World by Jeffrey Kluger.

In Book Summaries 13 Mins Read By

“Narcissism, like strong drink, has its place and its purpose; it braces and emboldens and offers a wonderfully primal pleasure. Indulging in it too deeply, however, leaves you sorry and sick and wishing you’d been more moderate in your pleasures.”

Author and senior writer at Time magazine, Jeffrey Kluger, in his illuminating book – The Narcissist Next Door writes: Narcissists are everywhere – They are politicians, entertainers, business people, your spouse, family members, friends, peers, colleagues, relationships. Recognizing and understanding them is crucial to your not being overtaken by them.

Narcissists are, in a sense, emotional muggers, people who assault their victims with a combination of stealth and misdirection—leaping out at them in situations and at times when they have a right to feel safe and taking what they want.

Narcissism, like strong drink, has its place and its purpose; it braces and emboldens and offers a wonderfully primal pleasure. Indulging in it too deeply, however, leaves you sorry and sick and wishing you’d been more moderate in your pleasures. We would feel poorer in a world without liquid spirits, just as we would without the manifold elements of the human spirit. But they are all volatile spirits. They effervesce and enliven or they singe and scald. The difference, as with so many things, is in knowing how to control them.

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Success is Never an Accident

In Life 8 Mins Read By

“Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances.… Strong men believe in cause and effect.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Author Earl Nightingale defined success as the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. This means that any person who knows what they are doing and where they are going is a success. Any person with a goal towards which they are working is a successful person. Success is personal and subjective hence what I think to be success might not be success to you but no matter what your definition of success is, you still need to aim for something. Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of success in life is just showing up. It is the writer who sits down every day to write, the entrepreneur who is always growing his business, the salesman who is always pitching, the artist who is always rehearsing, the sportsman who is always at the gym training, the student at the library studying, the creative who is always creating.

80 percent of success in life is just showing up. – Woody Allen

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John Waters 2015 Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Commencement Speech.

In Speech 9 Mins Read By

A career in the arts is like a hitchhiking trip: All you need is one person to say “Get in” and off you go. And then the confidence begins.

American filmmaker John Waters delivered the commencement address for the Rhode Island School of Design’s graduating class of 2015. The speech inspired – the Make Trouble book which contains inspiring advice for artists, graduates, and all who seek happiness and success on their own terms.

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Mono no Aware (物の哀れ) – The impermanence of things.

In Insight 6 Mins Read By

Mono no aware is a Japanese term for the awareness of impermanence (mujō 無常), or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.  Impermanence is the philosophical problem of change. In Buddhism, the three marks of existence are 3 characteristics of all existence and being namely: Impermanence (anicca), non-self (anatta), and unsatisfactoriness or suffering (dukkha).

When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the soul laughs for what it has found. ~ Sufi aphorism

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus shared the same sentiment that nothing in this world is constant except change and becoming (Everything is impermanent).

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Top 30 Quotes on Midlife.

In Quotes 3 Mins Read By

A midlife crisis is a transition of identity and self-confidence that can occur in middle-aged individuals, typically 45 to 65 years old. The phenomenon is described as a psychological crisis brought about by events that highlight a person’s growing age, inevitable mortality, and possibly lack of accomplishments in life. 

Top 30 Quotes on Midlife:

  • Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence. – Carl Gustav Jung
  • Midlife is about surrendering things that no longer matter, not because our lives are in decline, but because they’re on an incline. – Marianne Williamson
  • You know you’re getting old when you stoop to lie your laces and you wonder what else you can do while you’re down there ~George Burns
  • Midlife crisis begins sometime in your 40s, when you look at your life and think, ‘Is this all?’ And it ends about 10 years later, when you look at your life again and think, ‘Actually, this is pretty good. – Donald Richie
  • If you live your life all out today, not only is it fun, but you are preventing a midlife crisis. – Daphne Oz

“Midlife is missing out not just on other lives but on the meaning for one’s present life of having them as options.” –  Midlife: A Philosophical Guide by Kieran Setiya.

  • Most of us abandoned the idea of a life full of adventure and travel sometime between puberty and our first job. Our dreams died under the dark weight of responsibility. Occasionally the old urge surfaces, and we label it with names that suggest psychological aberrations: the big chill, a midlife crisis.- Tim Cahill
  • Turn your midlife crisis to your own advantage by making it a time for renewal of your body and mind, rather than stand by helplessly and watch them decline. – Jane Brody
  • Midlife: when the Universe grabs your shoulders and tells you “I’m not f-ing around, use the gifts you were given. – Brene’ Brown
  • Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence. – Carl Jung
  • You know you’ve officially hit a midlife crisis when you finally start feeling like you have your life together and your body starts falling apart! – Tanya Masse
  • Midlife is when you reach the top of the ladder and find that it was against the wrong wall. –Joseph Campbell
  • Midlife is not the time to disenchant ourselves. It’s a time to turn on all our magic in full force. – Marianne Williamson

“Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.” – Carl Jung

  • Middle age is not the beginning of decline, but a time to reach for the highest in our selves. Middle age is a pause to re-examine what we have done and what we will do in the future. This is the time to give birth to our power. – Frank Natale
  • Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place. – Paulo Coelho

All the Best in your quest to get Better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.

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Book Summary – Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel.

In Book Summaries 14 Mins Read By

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future is a 2014 book by the American entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel co-written with Blake Masters. It is a condensed and updated version of a highly popular set of online notes taken by Masters for the CS183 class on startups, as taught by Thiel at Stanford University in Spring 2012.

The book is about the questions you must ask and answer to succeed in the business of doing what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.

You can’t escape the madness of crowds by dogmatically rejecting them. Instead ask yourself: how much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes? The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.

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Book Summary – Midlife: A Philosophical Guide by Kieran Setiya.

In Book Summaries 8 Mins Read By

“Midlife is missing out not just on other lives but on the meaning for one’s present life of having them as options.”

“It is a work of applied philosophy: philosophical reflection trained on the challenges of midlife. And it takes the form of a self-help guide. The trials of middle age have been neglected by philosophers, but they are philosophically interesting, and they are amenable to therapy by the tools philosophers use.”

 For most of us, midlife is not too late to start something new, though it often feels that way. Don’t be fooled by the foreshortening of time that accompanies middle age. You have more time than you think.

The most elusive challenge of midlife is not to cope with the past or the future, but with the emptiness of the present, the sense that satisfaction is deferred or left behind, that one’s relentless striving is self-destructive.

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Make your Bed.

In Life 10 Mins Read By

If you want to change your life and maybe the world—start off by making your bed! -William H. McRaven 

Four-star retired United States Admiral William H McRaven delivered an inspiring and thought-provoking commencement speech to the  2014 graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin.

Taking inspiration from the University of Texas slogan, “What starts here changes the world,” he shared the ten principles he learned during Navy Seal training that helped him overcome challenges not only in his training and long Naval career but also throughout his life. At the core of his message is the principle of Laying your Bed daily. In his speech, he noted:

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

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Book Summary -Kaizen: The Japanese Secret to Lasting Change―Small Steps to Big Goals by Sarah Harvey.

In Book Summaries 8 Mins Read By

After living in Japan for six months and noticing differences in her own behavior, Sarah became fascinated by how small details and incremental change were given more emphasis in Japanese daily life. In Kaizen: The Japanese Secret to Lasting Change―Small Steps to Big Goals, author Sarah Harvey shows how to apply kaizen to health, relationships, money, career, hobbies, and home—and how to tailor it to your personality. 

The Kaizen philosophy: you can change your life by making lots of small steps.

Favorite Take-Aways: Kaizen: The Japanese Secret to Lasting Change―Small Steps to Big Goals by Sarah Harvey

Kaizen

Roughly translating from Japanese into ‘good change’ or ‘improvement’, the philosophy of Kaizen isn’t about change for change’s sake, but about identifying particular goals – both short-term and long-term – and then making small, manageable steps to achieve those goals. Rather than forcing us to make big dramatic changes, the method emphasizes doing things incrementally.

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Bono’s 2004 University of Pennsylvania Commencement Speech.

In Speech 18 Mins Read By

Sing the melody line you hear in your own head, remember, you don’t owe anybody any explanations, you don’t owe your parents any explanations, you don’t owe your professors any explanations.

Lead singer of U2 and co-founder of DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa) Bono delivered the University of Pennsylvania 248th Commencement Address to the Class of 2004 at historic Franklin Field, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Monday May 17, 2004.

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Kaizen 改善 – The Japanese art of Continuous Improvement.

In Insight 9 Mins Read By

Kaizen (改善) is a Japanese word that has two components – Kai 改(Change) and Zen 善 (Good) which translates to “Good Change”, “Change for the Better” or “Continuous Improvement.” It involves making changes for the better, small incremental changes that eventually amounts to extraordinary progress and result. In a business context, Kaizen refers to activities that continuously improve all functions and it usually involves everyone in the organizational value-chain from the CEO to the assembly line workers.

Kaizen was first implemented in Japanese factories and businesses after World War II. It was greatly influenced by American business and quality-management consultants like W. Edwards Deming who worked with Japanese industry leaders after world war II. It is one of the guiding principles of the Toyota Way. Other prominent Kaizen pioneers include Shigeo Shingo  (Toyota Production System) and Masaaki Imai (Founder of Kaizen Institute).

The Toyota Way is a set of principles and behaviors that underlie the Toyota Motor Corporation’s managerial approach and production system. In 2001, the Toyota Corporation published some set of guidelines and principles to clarify its values and business methods. The document was called “Toyota Way 2001“. It consists of two main pillars: “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People”. The Toyota Way further sub-divided continuous improvement into 3 sub-pillars: Challenge, Kaizen and Genchi Genbutsu (現地現物) which translates to “go and See”.

 Kaizen is mostly associated with manufacturing processes such as the one popularised in the Toyota Production System Originally called “just-in-time production” and it has also been used in other non-manufacturing environments/industries such as Healthcare, Information Technology, PsychoTherapy, Government, Banking, Supply Chain Management, etc.

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