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Leadership

Read Even More (Day 30) by David Guerra

Day 30 of 100 Days of 100 Ways To Rule Your World

READ EVEN MORE (A Few Suggestions)

What are you reading? Something from the New York Times Best Seller List? Your kid’s Science book? A Comic Book? A Classic? Junk mail? If you answered yes, that’s a Very Good thing. If you are not currently reading something then it is time to crack open a book (or two or more).

Read something all the time. Always have a book handy, either bound or electronic format. Always have a book you can dive into no more than arm’s length away.

Reading is essential to life. Reading is what opens our minds and expands our horizons. When you read you increase your vocabulary, keep your mind performing at peak levels, increase your knowledge of the world, and among other things you experience the world through the eyes and thoughts of someone else.

If you are not too sure what to read first, that’s OK.

Here is a list of 77 books that I highly recommend. These are what I consider REQUIRED READING FOR LIFE. These books are listed in NO particular order but they are ALL in one of two lists: “Read” and “Not Yet Read”.

  1. The Iliad by Homer
  2. The Odyssey by Homer
  3. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  4. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
  5. 1984 by George Orwell
  6. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  8. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  9. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
  10. Maus by Art Spiegelman
  11. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
  12. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  13. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
  14. The Trial by Franz Kafka
  15. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
  16. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  17. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  18. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  19. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
  20. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  21. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
  22. 52 Pick-up by Elmore Leonard
  23. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  24. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
  25. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  26. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  27. Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
  28. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
  29. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  30. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  31. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  32. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  33. The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
  34. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
  35. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  36. Dracula by Bram Stoker
  37. The Time Machine by HG Wells
  38. The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
  39. The Sword in the Stone by TH White
  40. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  41. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  42. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
  43. The Book of Daniel by EL Doctorow
  44. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
  45. Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
  46. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  47. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
  48. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  49. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
  50. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
  51. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  52. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
  53. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
  54. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  55. Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville
  56. Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
  57. The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolp Erich Raspe
  58. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
  59. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
  60. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
  61. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  62. Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  63. The Island of Dr Moreau by HG Wells
  64. The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
  65. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
  66. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  67. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  68. Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
  69. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  70. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

So grab yourself a book and start reading. If you are curious, as of this writing, I finally finished reading The Odyssey by Homer.

Thank you,
Dave
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Categories
Leadership

Let Go Of What You Cannot Change (The Past) (Day 29) by David Guerra

Day 29 of 100 Days of 100 Ways To Rule Your World

LET GO OF WHAT YOU CANNOT CHANGE: THE PAST

Letting go of the past is one of those things that people say is easy but in reality it is one of the most difficult things anyone can do.

However, it does not hurt to try and let go of the past. Set free those grudges that we have of people that have hurt us, that have done us wrong, that have made us feel bad, they have no right to make us feel like they did.

Of course, in letting go of their past transgression does NOT mean you have to associate with them. It just means that you are not going to give them any more power over you. Power that you gave them when you allowed yourself to stay hung up on the past. A past that you can no longer change.

The only thing you can change is the future. Changing the future begins with letting go, so let it go!

Thank you,
David Guerra
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Have A Little Humility, Will Ya? (Day 28) by David Guerra

Day 28 of 100 Days of 100 Ways To Rule Your World

HAVE A LITTLE HUMILITY, WILL YA?

Everyone, at one point or another in their lives will be humbled by something that puts things in perspective. The birth of a child, a wedding, the death of loved one, seeing your first book go to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list, a snail moving across your driveway, a sun rise, a rain storm, and the list goes on and on. However, there are more times than not that we forget to be humble. We forget what humility is.

Especially, as we start to feel that the world is EXPECTED to stop when we want it to stop. To focus ALL its attention on us. To be at our BECK and CALL 24/7 with no exception. Heaven help the individual who does not answer your text within 5 seconds after hitting the send button or the person who doesn’t answer your call on the first ring. Of course, PERMANENT BANISHMENT to the person who lets your call go to voice mail. To the GULAG for them.

Then again, when it comes to people trying to contact you, you have no problem letting the voice mail pick up the call and you will answer the email when you feel like it, and text message responses: FORGET ABOUT IT! Seriously, you know who you are. I am just as guilty as you are.

There is a solution: HAVE A LITTLE HUMILITY. LEARN IT, KNOW IT, LIVE IT!!!

To have a little humility is to be modest and respectful. Basically, it is to REALISTICALLY address your self-worth. To be grounded and KNOW and UNDERSTAND that you are NOT PERFECT, that NO ONE IS.
I know I AM NOT PERFECT.

After recognizing that fact, it is easy to be humble and stay humble all the days of your life. The trick is to accept the fact that the SUN does NOT RISE or SET because of you. It rises and sets because of ALL OF US.
For those that need a biblical reminder that having little to no humility is a bad thing: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (Proverbs 3:34). If you need more references, all you need to do is LOOK AROUND YOU. The world and ALL the Good that exists is because of people that know and live Humility.

Thank you,
David Guerra
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