#187 Seven of the most important books I read in 2021

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Episode Transcript

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Welcome to the personal development mastery podcast. I am Agi Keramidas and my mission is to inspire you to grow, stand out and take action towards the next level of your life. I interview leaders, authors, successful entrepreneurs, spiritual teachers, exceptional people who will inspire you to improve your life . Tune in for two episodes each week, and make sure you subscribe to get them as soon as they are released. Welcome to personal development mastery podcast episode 187. This episode, the day is released of some of the most important books that I read in 2021. I actually had this conversation in my other podcast personal development Essentials, where I discussed with Paul my co host, when we were reviewing our most significant books of the year. And out of the books that I described in that podcast episode, I have chosen seven of them. And so I'm going to share here my my brief description of each of those seven books, as I talked about, in my other podcast, I hope you will find them valuable that you will find some ideas, some triggers of something that you could read yourself or maybe give us a present. And one last thing to mention here and then we're going to dive straight into the books is that the last ones, especially number five and seven are books that I really urge you to check them out. So having said that, let's begin the next book on my list. It's actually a book that I read years ago, but I picked it up again, and I'm going to mention it briefly. It's this Chicken Soup for the Soul. So I read it because I had the the opportunity and the honour actually to interview one of his one of the books, co authors Mark Victor Hansen. So I wanted to I don't know about you, but if you've read it, I read it. Copy it's it's it's full of stories, short stories, one or two, maybe three pages, short stories different, written by different people, but they are so inspiring. So I thought very quickly, instead of saying anything, for those of you who haven't heard of the book, I will share one of the stories, which is like a very small page story. And I think it's relevant also is personal development and what we have been discussing about in the podcast. So the story is called, we learn by doing. And it goes like this. Not many years ago, I began to play the cello. Most people would say that what am I doing what I'm doing is learning to play the cello. But these words carry into our minds this strange idea that there exist two very different processes. First, learning to play the cello and second, playing the cello, they imply that I will do the first until I have completed it at which point I will stop the first process and begin the second. In short, I will go on learning to play until I have learned to play and then I will begin to play. Of course this is nonsense. There are not two processes, but one, we learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way. The next one on the list is Michael Singer, the surrender experiment which I had heard about quite a few times in the past it's autobiography from this guy who really at some point decided to let go of his need to control his life. And he surrendered to the divine. He was very spiritual work in the 70s. And he decided to surrender to His life and live his whole life as an experiment without resisting what would happen. So if someone would give him a call and ask him, you know, what I need you to would you like to teach in that school or that university for that period?

He had to do it because that he felt that this was presented to him as as his life as a child. Yes. So and he was in the resistance that he felt inside his head who's overwhelmed but he still fought the resistance of the chatter of the mind and did what was presented like surrendering and The story what he has lived and how the pieces of the puzzle were pieced together later on after years and decades is it's unbelievable it it made me realise and it's a very inspiring book 100% For me, it gave me that sense of knowing that you know, we are our lives is part of something way much bigger. And if we resist it and try to control our life in the way that we think in our limited understanding that this is the right thing to do it, then we're missing out on some amazing things that might happen once you let go of the need to control everything and just surrender the show. Very inspiring book, autobiography, true story. 100% recommend it, it's very easy to read as well, you can read it in a couple of, of days, if the next one on my list, which is a small book, a very recent book, actually, it's less than two months old. It's called stop asking questions, by Andrew Warner. And the subtitle of the book is lessons from a veteran podcast host with 2000 plus interviews. And obviously, for me, that book made a big sense to read it because I do interview people on my podcast, and I wanted to improve that, but this book, apart from these techniques that offers in abundance and poll I can, I can certainly recommend that, you know, it's it's, you know, techniques, like how to interrupt someone who's really rambling on without being rude or what, what to ask if you have a complete mind blank. But apart from the techniques, which you may or might not be interested in that what I got very much was how you can have a conversation by first being assertive about what it is that you want out of the conversation, and also really listening and paying attention to what the other person says. And that this title, stop asking questions which is a very weird title for someone who does interviews he was saying that and I got that very well that it's best to change not all but most of your questions to statements so rather than asking, so then what how did you do this? How do I do that? What happened next? change some of them into statements so tell me about this. Tell me about that. Only that changes very much the the dynamic of the conversation you you sound much more assertive in that you the other person feels that he's been guided by you rather than you asking things like you are a mentee you're a student which many times you can feel like that especially if the other person but show my conclusion with his book up. Of course, if you do interview people is very important. But I think in terms of communication and listening and being a better communicator is a fantastic book highly recommended. The next one is called no excuses the power of self discipline by Brian Tracy and I will say straight away that the reason why I got this book is Brian Tracy has read it has written over 80 books, believe it or not, I had no idea that he was so so productive. But I had the the honour really to interview him on my podcast. It's no it's not out yet. But I wanted to, you know, when you have half an hour with one person, I was thinking what to talk about the one to scatter about? Sure. I thought, let's talk about self discipline, which is something I'm very big at. Sure I read the book. The book is amazing. It's good old school personal development, it reminded me you know, how Jim Rohn explains things it is this thing, that fantastic style. Very, very, very simple to read and follow. And my biggest takeaways from this because this is really an actionable book. It's not about theory at all.

And he said about self discipline. And so he says in this book, it's the ability to say no to ourselves, we have that's fantastic. And he also mentioned the self control. He also describes it as self mastery. And another way he described it is the ability to delay your gratification and all these things even though they are not exactly the same but I can get the point that all these are self discipline and delayed gratification. And one thing I really good again, I mean It's something that we've talked, I think since episode one or two, that personal development and is a lifelong process. So the same with self discipline, it's not that you will gain self discipline to a certain point. And then you'll say, now I am self disciplined. It's something you have to do every single day. And there was one other big thing that I got from it. From this book, he talks about a mantra that he used personally, and I've been using it as well, since I read the book, when when things are not going the way you want them to go, either externally or internally, it doesn't you use the mantra, I am responsible. It really anchors me when I think of it like that. Because no matter what is happening out there, you are responsible for the way that you feel. So if you're feeling like shit, I am responsible by repeating this mantra to yourself, if you gain again, the power to do something about it. My next one, and this is actually, I'm going to do in a small preface about this book, because this is the most important book that I certainly read this year, and probably a few years for a few years. And it is a book that can really make a big difference, especially if you've never read anything like that before it can completely flip your viewpoint of the world. So the book is called an end to upside down living. It's by an American author called Mark Gober. Again, I had the pleasure to interview him, actually, I was, that's what I found about the book, because I interviewed him, I was introduced to him by someone else for my podcast. And when I started researching him, I thought, Oh, my God, this is amazing show. There is, I'm trying to think of what is an easy a simple way to explain something because I kind of gave a big introduction. But he has researched and collated information about other people who research consciousness. And when I say consciousness, I've been this experience that we're living our life that we all have. So there were there have been many people who have researched that and Mark takes lots of this knowledge and presented in a way. And the argument that he makes is, where does all this our consciousness come from? So this experience of life as we look around us, and we speak and you communicate, where is that? And most people science included, would say that this is all chemical reactions happening inside the brain. The thing is that this theory, because this is a theory that it's comes from our brain has never been proved. Actually, there is a list Science Magazine has a list with the top 20 unanswered questions in answer in science. And this is the number two question what is where does our consciousness come from. So it has not been proved that it ended actually, with what it says in the book, he actually proves that it's impossible for it to be coming from our brain. And he uses him many examples of metaphysical phenomena that had been studied in in you know, peer controlled, peer reviewed studies, so very scientific studies that have proved that people have had experiences that we can't explain with the current scientific knowledge. So for me that book, and I'm trying to now I'm really trying to think how I could present in the simplest way, but instead of this common way, that we believe that our consciousness is produced inside our brain. So our brain does this complex chemical reactions and we experience our life, which means that when the brain switches off, we die. And that's it in fairness,

the alternative which sounds like and what's more, for me much more valid theory is that our brain merely and receives consciousness show the analogy that he uses is like an antenna that picks up the signal show the teller if the television is what we send the television is your life. It is the the brain is the antenna that receives that it's not what produces the image. The image is those radio waves the or the TV waves that the antenna picks up here. Another analogy he uses is like the phone connecting to the cloud and downloading information from for the cloud. So our brain or Synology is The equivalent of the phone connecting to the clouds, to the universe to the to God to. And this really the, the book goes into metaphysical topics, but in a very scientific way. So for and I loved how you were doing earlier Paul, you're saying that this book is for this version and I think if someone is sceptical to anything that is not mainstream science, especially with this thing, very sceptical with spirituality, this book will give very solid scientific evidence that there is a very different way of looking at things and that's why he calls it upside down living because by assuming that our brain is what manufactures our consciousness, our life, then is the next deduction is that when when we die, it's all over. It's finished. But what was the scariest this scariest of all, isn't it? But then you see what Spirituality Religion say that there is afterlife and so on. Anyway, it's a for me, it really gave some scientific proof that spirituality exists. It's real. Our it's not our brain that creates our life, our brain receives what what is happening. And so my next one is by the same author I mentioned earlier, Mark Gober, it's the third book he said book, it's called an end to upside down liberty, and he talks. And I will, I will briefly mention that because I actually did a huge two part episode fit podcast episode feature with him because I started this book and I had a conversation about him very recently, and I will direct people who want to find out more there. He talks about what is going on, since the pandemic started last year, and when I what I mean, see what is going on. I mean, in terms of our liberty, how much attention have our freedoms been? Little by little taken away? And I think that is something that you just need to look around carefully that to see that we can do less things that we could we wait for the politicians or the government to tell us what we can and what we can do, can we go out for 15 minutes a day or raise the lockdown that is there going to be a curfew is so and regardless of anything else. The book is about liberty in what and why the government is taking on liberty, he follows the history of governments and I will make here a clarification that the form is very relevant because I was never into politics. Paul, I don't know about you never in my life. But the last year and a half, I'm starting to get very much into politics because it's affecting my life. My freedom, my liberty, I can't do things without some prerequisites prerequisites. So if I voice an opinion that is not the the common narrative, then I get either ridiculed or silenced or awkward even or some people have lost a job show because they're saying something that is not agree with what is happening. So the book an end to upside down Liberty was a great

reminded of what our knowledge really for me because I didn't know it of what the government is, how it has come to be what it is why who have given all our power to it. And apart from the institution of government asserts, also the people, the politicians, we think that they are they want our best, our best interest. But is that really the case? And a very thought provoking book. For me anyone who is concerned about what's going on and whether our children will have any freedom to live life or they will be working with masks around forever and having to scan their routine I like the science fiction dystopian movies. It's a great book to understand the current situation, why our liberty has been taken away and what can we can do about it because otherwise that's, for me, it is something I have been very felt very passionate about recently that we have to do something we are in trouble as free society, that is something we need to do each of us. So reading a book is certainly something that is a very good first step before they start burning them. The last book and I continued the topic, who started with the previous book. So this last book, for my recommendation is called The Truth About COVID 19. Exposing the great reset lockdowns, vaccine passports and the new normal, it's a book by Dr. Joseph Mercola. And continuing what I was saying about our freedom or liberty, which I'm very concerned that we're losing it little by little ever sadly, but whatever has been taken with don't get back. This book, I think it's a must read. For someone who is not exposed to the alternative opinions, some will say, because I think it's quite obvious, I hope it is obvious to most people that there is one narrative, one specific way of presenting the COVID situation in the world. And anything that does not agree with that is being censored is being muted, it's been ridiculed has been prosecuted. And for me, that is basic violation, both of our freedoms when it has to do with with medical treatments is a violation of science. Because if I have a treatment that works, and that statement gets silenced, already killed or forbidden there, because it's, it's the opposite of what the mainstream narrative is, then for me, that is a great deal of concern. And unfortunately, all our media, most of the media, the mass media, in a way, plus social media, they will present a very one sided view of COVID. And I will, I'm trying to use words carefully to, you know, be as objective as I can. But I think that we deserve to hear what the other side is. And then once you hear the other side, if you have reasons to believe that the other side is conspiracy theory, as they like to call it, then go right ahead, but have in order for you to engage in critical thinking you have to get acquainted with what the alternative is what what are the thing is there that we're not being told by the TV? Why? Why does Facebook put all these warnings? Every time someone when mentioned the word vaccine? Why are we not allowed to speak freely about it. So this is obviously a very big topic and it's affecting our lives every day and even more the lives of the future generations. So I think it's a very important topic. So this was the list with seven of the most impactful books that I read in 2021. You will find the titles of all of them in the show notes and I hope you find this useful. Thank you for listening.

I hope you enjoyed listening. If you have please share this episode with someone who you think will benefit from it. If you want to know more about what I do, visit my website AGIKERAMIDAS.COM