{"id":239,"date":"2017-12-01T02:40:18","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T02:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/?p=239"},"modified":"2019-04-12T14:05:14","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T14:05:14","slug":"the-5-most-important-things-ive-ever-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/01\/the-5-most-important-things-ive-ever-read\/","title":{"rendered":"The 5 most important things I&#8217;ve ever read"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m excited to share these important and life-changing texts with you!&nbsp; I hope they are as helpful to you as they were to me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>#1 <a href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People-ebook\/dp\/B003WEAI4E\/\">How to Win Friends and Influence People<\/a> by Dale Carnegie<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In short, it&#8217;s hard to get what you want without aligning to what other people want.&nbsp; This book teaches leadership, influence, and friend-making.&nbsp; The name of the game is to find win-win opportunities, which often requires a shift in mindset from &#8220;what do I want&#8221; to &#8220;how can we both get what we want&#8221;.&nbsp; This book gets my top spot &#8211; no other book has influenced me more.&nbsp; Read this book now, and re-read it every few years!<\/p>\n<p><strong>#2 <a href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-ebook\/dp\/B00COOFBA4\/\">How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big<\/a> by Scott Adams<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The key takeaway is to think in terms of systems, not goals.&nbsp; (Adams says &#8220;Goals are for losers&#8221;.)&nbsp; A goal has two states &#8211; failed and achieved.&nbsp; Most of your time is spent in &#8220;failed&#8221;, and &#8220;achieved&#8221; is a fleeting moment.&nbsp; A goal is &#8220;lose 10 pounds&#8221;, a system is &#8220;eat healthy every day&#8221;.&nbsp; Systems give you momentum that reinforces your success.&nbsp; And, a system need not have a specific end in mind.&nbsp; Like Adams, I write without knowing exactly where it will take me.&nbsp; My system is to write regularly and be ready for the good things that come from it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>#3&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/habits-that-are-destroying-your-confidence-2015-12\">12 habits that you don&#8217;t realize are destroying your confidence<\/a> by&nbsp;Lolly Daskal at Inc.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Like many professionals, I went through a serious bout of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Impostor_syndrome\">Impostor Syndrome<\/a>, one that took years to fully work through.&nbsp; This article pulled me out to the other side.&nbsp; We are who we are, with our own strengths and weaknesses.&nbsp; Don&#8217;t consume yourself comparing your weaknesses to others&#8217; strengths.&nbsp; I made peace with the fact that some colleagues are just plain better than me in some areas, but I also realize my strengths that some others don&#8217;t have.&nbsp; &nbsp;I recognized my place as a&nbsp;<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">key<\/span>&nbsp;<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">member<\/span> of a&nbsp;<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">leadership<\/span>&nbsp;<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">team<\/span>, placing emphasis on each word, so that I was mindful when to use my strengths and when to rely on others.<\/p>\n<p><strong>#4 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/you-leader-until-have-produced-who-can-produce-another-simon-banks\/\">You are not a leader until you have produced a leader who who can produce another leader<\/a> by Simon Banks<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The quote and image at the link say it all.&nbsp; I love the way this encourages long term thinking and I continually marvel at things that&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/04\/giving-back-may-take-ten-years-to-pay-off\/\">take years to pay off<\/a>.&nbsp; It&#8217;s one thing to train a couple of potential leaders, it is truly amazing to influence and train whole generations of leaders.&nbsp; It&#8217;s a big motivation for my writing and mentoring &#8211; I don&#8217;t know which specific things will pay off, but if I want to influence entire generations of future leaders I have a lot of work to do!<\/p>\n<p><strong>#5 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulgraham.com\/sun.html\">General and Surprising<\/a> by Paul Graham<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Many times we silence ourselves, thinking that what we have to say isn&#8217;t that interesting or novel &#8211; surely whatever we have to say has been said before.&nbsp; Paul Graham reminds us that even though that sentiment is mostly true, speak and write anyway!&nbsp; Through sheer force of slight changes in repetition, we will eventually generate novelty.&nbsp; Whether this novelty is small or large, it advances human understanding that much further.&nbsp; The worst case scenario is most writing is that you won&#8217;t say anything new.&nbsp; Even in this scenario, you still practice writing.&nbsp; But the best case scenario is that you&#8217;ll introduce a new and valuable nugget to the world.&nbsp; That&#8217;s why I write!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Each of these books, articles, and posts have been truly life-changing for me.&nbsp; I hope you find them as useful as I did.&nbsp; Please add your favorites in the comments!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-243\" src=\"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/useful_books_image-700x838.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"838\" srcset=\"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/useful_books_image-700x838.png 700w, http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/useful_books_image-250x300.png 250w, http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/useful_books_image.png 718w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m excited to share these important and life-changing texts with you!&nbsp; I hope they are as helpful to you as they were to me. #1 How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/freedville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}