Book Summaries Archives | Page 3 of 28

401: The Man who Ran 401 Marathons in 401 Days and Changed his Life Forever by Ben Smith.

November 1, 2023 In Biographies 8 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

401: The Man Who Ran 401 Marathons in 401 Days and Changed His Life Forever is the story of Ben Smith, a marathon runner who completed 401 marathons in 401 days in England between 2015 and 2016. Ben was bullied as a child and he attempted to commit suicide as a result of that experience. As an adult, he was dissatisfied with the way he was living until he discovered his passion for running. He decided to run 401 marathons in 401 days, raise money for charity, and find himself in the process.

By the end of the run, Ben raised £330,000 for two anti-bullying charities Kidscape and Stonewall, and ran over 10,000 miles which is the equivalent of running from Syndey, Australia to London, England. During his run, Ben met and ran with 13,000+ people across England. He also Helen Rollason Award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards in 2016, In the book, Ben shares his struggle with bullying, mental health, divorce, and navigating the vicissitudes of life.

Running is just putting one foot in front of the other – that’s the simple bit – the hard part is choosing to go running in the first place. But once you make that choice, you can start putting distance between your old life and closing in on a new one.

Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity by Keith Sawyer

October 25, 2023 In Book Summaries 3 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity, Creativity, and Innovation Researcher Keith Sawyer identifies the eight stages of the creative process and contains over 100 techniques to enhance your personal creativity.

Neuroscience and psychology have proven that all human beings unless their brain has been seriously damaged, possess the same mental building blocks that inventive minds stack high to produce works of genius. That creative power you find so breathtaking when you see it tapped by others, lives just as surely within you. You only have to take out those blocks and start playing with them.

Clockwork, Revised and Expanded: Design Your Business to Run Itself by Mike Michalowicz.

October 23, 2023 In Book Summaries 9 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In Clockwork, Revised and Expanded: Design Your Business to Run Itself, small business author Mike Michalowicz provides a step-by-step method for getting more done by doing less – making it easier than ever to have your business run itself. Mike suggests that the four-week vacation is the ultimate acid test for a business that runs itself.

There are three stages in a business’s life that every successful entrepreneur experiences. Stage one is when you are scratching your head thinking about starting a business, stage two is surviving the startup stage, and stage three is the growth stage.

Lucky Me: A Memoir of Changing the Odds by Rich Paul.

October 20, 2023 In Book Summaries 12 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In Lucky Me: A Memoir of Changing the Odds, American sports agent and founder of Klutch Sports Group Rich Paul shares the role luck played in him becoming one of the most successful sports agents, considering his background. He writes about his relationship with NBA superstar Lebron James and the lessons he has learned from being a student of life and the streets. Rich writes about his early upbringing, his mother’s drug addiction, lessons learned from his father, and the most important insights that he garnered from the streets.

Rich went from gambling to selling weed, drugs, and selling jerseys. He met Lebron James in 2001 at the airport, fascinated by the jersey Rich was putting on, Lebron asked “What kind of jersey is that?“. Rich was wearing a Warren Moon Houston Oilers throwback Jersey. The rest, they say, is history.

Luck is a complicated thing. We live surrounded by luck, if we know how to recognize it. Bad luck can seem good for a while; good luck might be hard to understand.

Book Title: Lucky Me

One of my all-time favourite Jay-Z songs is a deep cut called “Lucky Me.” Jay is talking about how success brings envy, jealousy, and danger and about how people think his life is perfect, but he’s dealing with more than they could ever know. It’s a powerful, mournful, and somewhat sarcastic song, with a hook that goes: You only know what you see / You don’t understand what it takes to be me.

“My first stroke of luck was being born into a life that forced me to be focused and prepared. Luck was learning how to recognize friendship, loyalty, love, and justice, and how to cultivate those values in life and business. Learning how to confront systems of power and not flinch, to walk on a razor’s edge and never fall. Most importantly, I was lucky to learn from real Gs how to have a purpose and mission that can make a difference in people’s lives, and that maybe, someday, can change the world.”

We Got Fired!: . . . And It’s the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us by Harvey Mackay.

October 19, 2023 In Book Summaries 7 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In We Got Fired!: . . . And It’s the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us, author Harvey Mackay chronicles the story of some of the most successful people in the world and how they turned their firing into a better story for their career and life.

“Getting fired may eventually be the best thing to happen to you, but it’s no ticket to a smooth ride. What you get is the chance to play with a new set of more complex problems.”

12 Months to $1 Million by Ryan Daniel Moran.

October 16, 2023 In Book Summaries 10 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur, Serial Entrepreneur and host of Capitalism.com Ryan Daniel Moran describes a one-year plan through the three stages of entrepreneurship to making the first $1 million. Ryan is the founder of Capitalism.com, which empowers entrepreneurs to create change through business. He also organizes an annual event, the Capitalism Conference, which brings together all the top entrepreneurs to tell their stories.

Being an entrepreneur means thinking in years rather than months. The worst thing you could do in any cycle is trade a long-term risk for a short-term win.

Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

October 13, 2023 In Biographies 10 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

Arnold Schwarzenegger has constantly re-invented himself from being the world’s greatest bodybuilder, and highest-paid movie star and later becoming the thirty-eighth governor of California (the world’s sixth-largest economy.). Growing up in Austria, his father constantly encouraged him to be useful. In Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, Arnold shares seven life principles that have helped him become one of the most recognizable faces in the world and the secret to his extraordinary achievement.

The Seven Figure Agency Roadmap by Josh Nelson.

October 10, 2023 In Book Summaries 8 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In The Seven Figure Agency Roadmap: How to Build a Million Dollar Digital Marketing Agency, author Joshua D. Nelson provides a step-by-step, on how to implement agency marketing, how to get results for your clients, and how to implement systems so they stick around long-term. He also writes about building teams and systems, so you become the owner of a reliable and scalable business that can work without you.

“You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.” ZIG ZIGLAR

Thicker than Water: A Memoir by Kerry Washington.

October 6, 2023 In Biographies 9 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

I fell in love with Kerry Washington’s character, Olivia Pope, in the American political thriller television series Scandals. Her performance won her the Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series and other multiple award nominations, including Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nomination. In Thicker than Water: A Memoir, Kerry Washington attempts to make sense of herself, her upbringing and her family dynamics.

I’ve written this account to more fully understand this truth, to affirm it, and to embrace it. This truth has given birth to a deeper compassion and love for my parents, and for myself. And I share it with you because I do not want to hide.

Kerry reveals how her parents did not reveal to her that she was conceived through artificial insemination until recently. She writes about her parent’s tumultuous marriage, being an only child, navigating the family secret and finding her place in the world.

Book Summary: No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering by Thich Nhat Hanh.

October 2, 2023 In Book Summaries 4 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

“Most people are afraid of suffering. But suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower of happiness grow.There can be no lotus flower without the mud.”—THICH NHAT HANH

In No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering, Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh asserts that the art of happiness is also the art of suffering well. He offers practices and strategies for transforming suffering and finding true joy in life. Thich Nhat Hanh introduces the concept of non-duality: how to make good use of mud in order to produce beautiful lotus flowers, and how understanding our suffering gives birth to love and compassion.

Book Summary: Think Again by Adam Grant.

September 28, 2023 In Book Summaries 4 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, Wharton’s top-rated professor, organizational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant explores how rethinking happens, the Value of rethinking, and adopting mental flexibility/agility. He describes how we can challenge our intuition, accept and implement criticism and establish a challenge network to push our thinking to greater levels.

The book is an invitation to let go of knowledge and opinions that are no longer serving you well, and to anchor your sense of self in flexibility rather than consistency.

Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction by Judith Grisel.

September 25, 2023 In Book Summaries 4 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction, behavioural neuroscientist and recovering addict Judith Grisel shares how she transforms her life from a daily drug user and college dropout to becoming a renowned behavioural neuroscientist. She writes about the lessons learned in her over twenty-five years of experience as a researcher studying the neuroscience of addiction. The principles thus shed light on the biological dead end that perpetuates substance use and abuse: namely, that there will never be enough drugs because the brain’s capacity to learn and adapt is infinite.

Understanding the mechanisms behind every addict’s experience makes it very clear that short of death or long-term sobriety there is no way to quell the screaming need between exposures. At the point where pathology determines behavior, most addicts die trying to satisfy an insatiable drive.

Book Summary: How to Lead by David Rubenstein.

September 22, 2023 In Biographies 5 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In How to Lead: Wisdom from the World’s Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers, American lawyer and co-founder of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein interviews and profiles some of the world’s most successful individuals. He shares his discussions, advice, and wisdom from CEOs, presidents, founders, and master performers from the worlds of finance (Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, Christine Lagarde, Ken Griffin), tech (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Tim Cook), entertainment (Oprah Winfrey, Lorne Michaels, Renee Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma), sports (Jack Nicklaus, Adam Silver, Coach K, Phil Knight), government (President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nancy Pelosi), and many others.

David Rubenstein has had a long fascination with different individuals becoming and staying leaders. In 2008, he became the president of the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., and began almost monthly interviewing a prominent business, government, or cultural leader. As a follow up he started the Peer to Peer interview show on Bloomberg TV in 2016 (broadcast on PBS as well since 2018). The How to Lead Book is an outgrowth of these interviews and is designed to provide the reader with the perspectives of different kinds of leaders, with the hope that readers might be inspired to develop or enhance their own leadership skills.

Rubenstein divides the leadership experience of interviewees in the book into six categories:

Visionaries: Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, and Warren Buffett
Builders: Phil Knight, Ken Griffin, Robert F. Smith, Jamie Dimon, and Marillyn Hewson
Transformers: Melinda Gates, Eric Schmidt, Tim Cook, Ginni Rometty, and Indra Nooyi
Commanders: George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, David Petraeus, Condoleezza Rice, and James A. Baker III
Decision-Makers: Nancy Pelosi, Adam Silver, Christine Lagarde, Anthony S. Fauci, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Masters: Jack Nicklaus, Mike “Coach K” Krzyzewski, Renée Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lorne Michaels

Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions by Russell Brand.

September 16, 2023 In Biographies 10 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

English comedian, actor, writer and activist Russell Brand is a man of extremes with a loquacious and flamboyant lifestyle. Brand struggled with drugs, sex, alcohol, food, fame and online shopping addiction for several years. In Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions, he writes about his journey of recovery using the twelve-step program of Alcohol Anonymous framework and principles.

Initial Resistance to 12-step program

Brand was initially resistant to the 12-step addiction program, but upon further examination of the principles he found out that self-centred, egotistical thinking is the defining attribute of the addictive condition. Self-centredness is a tricky thing; it encompasses more than just vanity. It’s not just Fonzie, looking at himself in self-satisfied wonder and flexing his little tush, no.

I can attest personally that the 12 Steps work with severe addiction issues. If you have them, you should engage with the appropriate 12 Step support group.

Book Summary: Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members by Sherrie Campbell

September 12, 2023 In Book Summaries 9 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut, psychologist and toxic-family survivor Sherrie Campbell, Ph.D. argues that surviving our toxic and dysfunctional family units requires cutting ties forever for a while or forever. Campbell provides strategies for embracing the decision with pride, validation and faith in oneself. She provides tools for creating boundaries, coping with judgment, and overcoming self-doubt.