Disney Needs the Money!

Did you know lawyers from Disney did this?

Click the link above.

Read the very feisty comments.

Ayn Rand is spinning in her grave!

2012 Retrospective

Last week I finished Frank McCourt's second book - 'Tis: A Memoir - and it marked the 41st book I read this year.

That's by far the most books I've read in a year.

This year I also, finally, got off the ground with my local teaching and tutoring business, - and that, more than anything else, is what's basically destroyed my blogging career. Sorry.

There's definitely some decent side money in this and, importantly, it's something I can do during nights and weekends when my wife is around to watch the kids. Though I can actually take them with me when I need to. I sit them down outside with their own books and workbooks and they do in fact, without any issue, keep quiet outside my classroom or at the library for hours on end while I teach.

Yes, my clients are mostly all very smart Asians (who else would do math late into Friday and Saturday nights?), but no, none of them are even come close to my kids in terms of math competence.

Speaking of my kids, they are growing like weeds. My son turned 8 and my daughter - my little girl! - is already 6.5 years old. Before you know it they will be out of my house and that is quite the chilling prospect. My first wife will probably boot me out as well...

The big educational developments this year were chess and piano. Both kids started piano lessons about 9 months ago. As for chess, my son has really ramped up his game. He plays in tournaments quite often and meets with a terrific instructor once per week.

Definitely check out my post - First Chess Championship.

Christine enjoys chess as well but I don't push her as hard with math and chess, being a sexist with antiquated notions about gender expectations.

She's more into her art, dance, and now singing a little.

Another big, recent development is that we found, right under our noses, a very large Catholic homeschooling network here on Long Island. Why is this big? Well, because there just aren't that many people (out of the 15 million earthlings in the area!) who keep their children out of the *system*. And of the ones that do, they can be a very diverse set in the sense that they might homeschool for reasons totally different from the ones we do it for. Thus it can be hard to connect with families you actually have stuff in common with.

But this Catholic group is terrific. Everyone seems to be *more homogeneous*. And there are tons of kids (for my kids to hang with). It's hard to describe in words, in this short space, and to readers who have never been so far *outside the system* how critically important this *find* has been for my wife and I. But in some ways this might ultimately turn out to be THE pivotal event of 2012.

The good stuff in life is indeed out there....so don't EVER, EVER stop looking.

I did have to deal with that hurricane (Sandy) back this fall. Yeah, I shorted it and it blew up in my face. Whatever. These weathermen are right about one in 20 times! And actually, it was the snowstorm a week later that knocked down all my trees.

But since I spent weeks cleaning up my backyard and chainsawing several large trees....my physical fitness has benefited greatly.

I weigh 173 pounds now which is about 7-8 pounds more than I weighed for the past 20 years. (I had a very tight 5 lb range around 165). For whatever reason, I've added some bulk, pure muscle I suspect. And it has to be from the bench-pressing I'm doing now. Benching really, really hurts my back - or at least it used to. Perhaps my technique has improved a little? Or perhaps my back has gotten stronger???

I've also been ramping up my use of the speed bag (2,000 daily hits) and the heavy bag (kicks only). The kicking, 200 side kicks with each foot, everyday, rips my obliques more than ANYTHING else I've ever attempted. So it's something you fatties out there might want to give a whirl.

Golf?

Well I managed to hit more golf balls at the range this year than I ever have. Actual rounds are still rare. I maybe played 27 rounds this year (down from 32 or so in 2011) but I have never been more excited about my golf swing AND my short game than I am now. I did change to an interlocking grip in September, which is not exactly a little tinker!....so we'll see how that works out once I get comfortable.

Next year?

Am I taking the fam to Florida for an extended stay this winter, again? I don't know. I'll decide in a few weeks.

My wife will be changing jobs, sort of.

I do have an ebook that's just about ready for Kindle publication. It will be on SAT math, sort of.

I expect to be sitting, reading books, at a whole bunch of chess tournaments in 2013. I had never experienced stress levels like I felt this fall, waiting helplessly while my son was playing matches in the next room. But I do think I'm over it, somewhat. The more he competes, the more I'll learn to relax. It's only a friggin' game after all!

What else is going to happen???

Well the stock market will most certainly crash. And America will continue to *dichotomize* politically. The Democrats really do HATE the Republicans. Hate doesn't run the other way. The Republicans just think the Dems are lazy and stupid. And this entire divide goes back to *school* and the jock/nerd divide. I'm totally serious.

But now matter what, incumbents, old people, and institutions will continue to run this country aground at the expense of young people and liberty.

Taxes are getting out-of-control. At what point does the whole thing fall apart???

Whenever that it....we are most definitely one year closer.

And all y'all are one year older now....and will be dead soon, very, very soon.

So do get your affairs in order.

Sports Biography - Andre Agassi

I just enjoyed another can't-put-it-down biography - Open - tennis star Andre Agassi's autobiography.

It's a pretty amazing story. The guy is only a few years older than me and I remember vividly how he burst onto the scene with all sorts of hype - only to underachieve tremendously.

His lesser-touted peers Michael Chang, Jim Courier, and Pete Sampras all surpassed him.

Then, and I didn't even realize this because it happened in my later, self-orbital years when I had stopped following tennis, Andre finally turned the corner and won something like 8 Grand Slam events. (I had no idea! I thought he just won Wimbleton that once.)

Well it turns out that Andre suffered a lost childhood at the hands of his hard-charging father. And that he HATED TENNIS for many, many years.  His chronicles of depression and self-loathing will definitely shock readers.  I mean, how could he possible HATE tennis?

A hard-charging father myself I found this aspect of Andre's story to be of particular interest. I mean...his father was completely wacko in every regard.

Of course, ultimately, in Andre's climb to the top of the world rankings Mr. Agassi enjoyed the precise results he had been striving for.

Yeah there were some bumps and some *costs* along the way...

But there's plenty of downside to soft-charging parenting as well!

I'd bet anyone around the age of 40 and with a slight interest in sports will thoroughly enjoy this read.

ADDENDUM - Oh yeah, almost forgot. In one part of the book Agassi tells how he introduced Steffi Graf's hard-charging ESL father - his future father-in-law to his own ESL lunatic father.

Well, through broken English these two 'old coots' started fiercely arguing about the proper way to raise a tennis star - backhand techniques and whatnot - took their shirts off, challenged each other's manhood and just about came to blows!

Book Rec - The Talent Code

I just read The Talent Code (a mere 2 days)....and, well, it's not that bad.

If anything, it's got me hitting golf balls at the range M O R E S L O W L Y.

And it's also, from my perspective, yet another *homeschooling book in drag* - even if most of the people reading it (and the author!) don't realize it.

It's in the same mold as Outliers and Talent Is Overrated. So if you appreciated those...

Here are the links to those:

Book Rec - Talent Is Overrated

Outliers - A Must Read

Daniel Coyle also has a blog. Today's post has a neat little soccer video on it too (if you're into soccer anyway).

Self-Help, Health

Last year I discovered self-help guru Tony Robbins - a guy whom I like to describe as the *mind over matter* dude.

Many people no doubt scoff at Robbins, the *informercial* guy from the late 90s but I just read another of his books - Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement - and came across some fascinating heath/body stuff that I'd never read before.

Ever hear of *food combining"? I certainly hadn't.  It's a digestive theory that asserts certain foods (e.g. meat and potatoes) shouldn't be eaten at the same time because some necessitate a stomach acid for proper digestion....while some foods demand a stomach base (alkali?) for proper digestion.  For example, the American staple combo of meat and potatoes is to be avoided.

Why?  Because the acid and bases supposedly neutralize each other and make your body work harder to digest.....leading to bloating (ever felt that???) and other stomach issues (*out of your brains* farting!) In his book Robbins even said that eating a ton of incompatible sh*t food can even lead to a bad night's sleep if you eat late and your body is working overtime (several hours) to digest while you are sleeping.

I'm sure that those overweight doctors and the medical establishment have a study that debunks this....

BUT if anyone has stomach issues they'd be crazy not to experiment with separating their foods according to this *quack* theory.  I myself don't think I have but am willing to give it a whirl and see what happens.

There's also a snippet in the book about the lymph system, body cell waste products, and proper breathing.

Now I myself have been unable to stop shallow, mouth-breathing for quite a while now.  But Tony has a method that seems to be clicking with me.  Breathe in deeply, hold your breath for 4-times as long, and then breathe out slowly for twice as long as your inhaled.  When I do this....I can really feel the inhale get deep down into my stomach.

Okay we're still here on the beach (Ocean City, NJ)....and I just missed the sunrise writing this post. As my son would say, "WHAT AN EPIC FAIL!!!"

See also:

Moronic Respiration

Breathe-Right?

Another Help-Self Book

I just read The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives That Make You Feel Alive.

It was *okay*. I happened to get it directly from the author for $7 instead of the $16 it costs on Amazon now.

It's funny how at $7 I will definitely buy it, but would hesitate at $16. We all have our price points, I guess.

I had read his Millionaire Messenger previously - which was better and, really, sufficient as far as giving me the gist of his spiel. So I recommend reading that one first/instead.

Who is he?

He's a dorky little guy who's carved out quite a name/wage for himself in the high performance, personal coaching industry. Rich people pay him astronomical sums, e.g. 250k for a year of *coaching*, 50k to have him watch one guy speak,...

If this HJ can make it big, then so can we!

Grounding Book

Back in the early 90s, finally away from home and liberated from prison-school....I couldn't have been more *self-orbiting* as a college student, chasing booze and broads.

I had no idea what was going on in Rwanda, i.e. the genocide.

In fact I had really no idea about what happened until I stumbled upon the motion picture - Hotel Rwanda - recently.

My SIL actually went on a mission to Rwanda a year or so ago, to a village her church has sort of adopted.

She recommended that I read - Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust - the life story of a woman who survived the genocide by hiding in a tiny bathroom with 7 others for 3 months.

It's the sort of book that puts all of our trivial grievances (e.g. long lines at CVS, traffic,...) in the proper perspective.

I would say it falls into the *must read* category, for just about everyone.

Book Skip - The Innovator's DNA

Ignore the Amazon stars...

The Innovator's DNA is not a book worth reading. It breaks no new ground and is stereotypical, *let's see if we can sell to academics and corporations* tripe.

As always, you can see my current reading list on the *Books Read* tab above, or by clicking here. I feel like I haven't been reading much lately but the tally shows I'm devouring books at my fastest pace yet.

Book Rec - The Hunger Games

I read The Hunger Games yesterday and I must say....it's pretty good!

Don't see the movie until you read the book, please. There just aren't that many good books out there (contemporary fiction anyway) and seeing the cheesy-looking motion picture would certainly ruin you for the book.

The Hunger Games is about a post-apocalyptic world where Big Government reigns and everyone is a starving slave. I would argue that difference between this fictional world and today's reality amounts to mere *subtlety*.

I read most of it while marooned at my son's chess tournament yesterday. I finally used the cheap Kindle which I bought last year. My wife enjoyed the book (and the second one already!) very much too.

Book Rec - The Bluest State

The The Bluest State is a terrific book about the horrible place I grew up in. And I especially recommend it for anyone who's ever *done any time* in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.

The author refers to the bad guys as *Boomer Liberals* even though as far as I'm concerned, and as he admits, he is in fact one himself.

I didn't expect to take any notes on this one so I was without paper and No. 2 pencil when I sat down to read it. Consequently there are no less than about 20 pages dog-eared!

But I'm only going to type up one little excerpt:

Years later, Googling the slogan, I found the consensus meaning of "The personal is political": the "broad texture and character" of our personal lives are not a result of our personalities and life choices, but are "defined by the broader political and social setting." We are what a corrupt political system makes us, and thus we suffer from "a totality of oppressions." It's a wonder, given Hanisch's depressing no-exit spin on this, that we even get out of bed.


But my peers in Cambridge didn't have quite the same gloomy, humbling take on it. "The personal is political" was a slogan from heaven for my generation, endowed with limitless self-esteem by our parents, instinctively understanding that the center of the universe looks back at us from the mirror every morning. We took it as a green light to let our gut feelings and personal biases - often mistaken for moral principles - dictate our civic behavior. We used it to justify a new brand of politics that valued personal identity over communal interests, all the while insisting they were one and the same. Widespread protests in the streets of Cambridge during the spring of 1970 were described as antiwar, but they were really a convention of grievances from feminists to anti-Zionists and everything in between. The uniform of choice that spring was a T-shirt with a red fist on the back, a generic but satisfyingly defiant symbol. Exotic concepts of discrimination with made-up names like "lookism," and "heteronorming" got their start from "The personal is political" and its comforting premise that if you believe strongly enough in your own oppression, just as the children in Peter Pan believed in fairies, it must be real.

That just about describes all of my Mass Boomer uncles and my father to a "T". Every time I see them they are complaining about a *totality of oppressions*!

Never, and I mean never, do they ever convey the outlandish notion that, perhaps(!), they themselves have any responsibility for or any control over whatever the particular grief is.

Book Rec - Pilgrim's Progress

I just finished - The Pilgrim's Progress - the Christian soul-searching classic that was never assigned once in the course of my *liberal arts* education. (free Kindle link .)

And I must say - what a terrific book!

I just can't believe that my Catholic high school didn't REQUIRE studying it.

Of course, after thinking about this omission it dawned on me that this masterpiece might have been deemed *too Protestant* by the Vatican.

Just Googled for an explanation and I came up with this:

As you pointed out, Pilgrim's Progress was and is a very anti-Catholic book. Seeing as its author, John Bunyan, was a Baptist writer serving time in jail for opposing an Anglican church in England at the same time England was living in fear of the even-more hierarchical Roman church, you can understand why he might be anti-Pope.


The basic tenant of the book - that the Christian life is a journey that must be accomplished on one's own, is as about as Baptist / Puritanical as it gets. Like all Puritans, he celebrated rather than suppressed emotion, and wanted to ensure the "personal relationship" with Jesus took center stage. (Yes, Puritans were not the dour people popularly portrayed. Want to read a theology that celebrates sex between man and wife? Look to the Puritans - not the Catholics!)


These two biggies - the unmediated experience and the anti-hierarchical church polity - are probably the biggest bugaboos for a Catholic.


Beyond that, the book presents salvation as an act of free will, and seems to completely discount election or predestination. These issues may also cause some interesting discussions.


That said, this is the second best selling book of all time, just behind the Bible. Even if a good Christian were to disagree, I'd suggest it is edifying to read and think. The praise of Acts 17:11 comes to mind:


Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.


As a Baptist believer in soul competency, Bunyan himself probably wouldn't have wanted you to accept his opinions without considering them against scripture. His genius was to rehabilitate allegory from static symbolism and push the metaphor into dynamic journey and learning that could be used to direct a believer's life.

Just imagine how many Harvard students have never read this landmark book or even the Bible...

On Intimidation

I just read an *old* book (1973) titled - Winning Through Intimidation.

Surely some of you who know me well are derisively wondering if in fact I WROTE it.

I did not.

It was penned by one Robert J. Ringer. I kid you not - that is his real name!

I guess with a name like that you pretty much have to become an intimidator, no? Just as Thom Dammrich had to go into the yacht industry. Just as a young boy named *Howard Pressman* (an attorney I used for my car accident) HAD to grow up to become a personal injury lawyer...

Anyway the book is okay - a quick enjoyable read that probably has more appeal for real estate salespeople than anyone else.

Marketing guru Dan Kennedy highly recommended it; and if you know anything about him you can certainly understand why he has Ringer up on a pedestal.

I am definitely an *intimidator* - always have been. Heck when I was 15 years old refereeing youth soccer games the parents were all scared to death of me.

And now that I am doing one of the most *offensive* things a parent can do in educating my own children *outside the system*....while most people who do this are continually interrogated, mocked, scoffed at, questioned, and considered loons....well, I can't tell you the last time someone expressed to me even a hint of disapproval.

But I don't see intimidation as a *winning move* - at least not in my life. It's more a self-defensive attribute than anything else. And it probably costs me many things too.

Book Review - Homeschooling, The Right Choice

A father and son at the foot of Mt. Rushmore:

Boy - Hey Dad, do you think they’ll ever make a monument to homeschoolers?

Father - You’re looking at it, son!

That was a comic/cartoon in Homeschooling: The Right Choice by Christopher Klicka.

Written by one of the founding (sort of) members of the HSLDA - Home School Legal Defense Association - it was unlike most other books I've read in this genre.

It was really a historical, legal, and moral perspective rather than another how-to-homeschool guidebook.

Klicka argues that all self-identifying devout Christians ought to be educating their own children. So if you fall into this category the book is DEFINITELY something to borrow from your library or buy on Amazon.

Basically, homeschooling has only recently been re-legalized - and Klicka and his organization played THE major role in reclaiming the educational rights enjoyed by 3,000,000 homeschooled kids today.

Here are my book excerpts:

The students attending teacher’s colleges and pursuing education degrees are, on the average, below average on SAT scores. Consistently, these students who are planning to major in education scored below the national average. Such students’ average verbal score is 406 (out of a possible 800; national average is 422) and their math score average is 441 (out of a possible 800; national average is 474). (p31)

In fact, a U.S. Department of Education study demonstrates that public school teachers are more likely to send their children to a private school than any other group. (p32)

The College Board "recentered" its test scores....by adding 80 points to individual scores on the verbal section of the SAT and 30 points to scores on the mathematics section....a numbers game to lift the average SAT score from 424 to 500. (p34)

Horace Mann quote,

"What the church has been for medieval man the public school must become for democratic and rational man. God will be replaced by the concept of the public good....The common [public] schools....shall create a more farseeing intelligence and a more pure morality than has ever existed among communities of men." (p82)

John Dewey, author of the modern public school system...

"I believe all education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself....Education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform [religion being bypassed]....Every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth....In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true god and the usherer of the true kingdom of god."

"Faith in the prayer-hearing God is an unproved and outmoded faith. There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, the immutable truth is also dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural law or moral absolutes."

Dewey also emphasized "social unification" as the goal of public schools in order to promote "state-consciousness."

"The American people is conscious that its schools serve best the cause of religion in serving the cause of religion in serving the cause of social unification; and that under certain conditions schools are more religious in substance and in promise without any of the conventional badges and machinery of religious instruction than they could be in cultivating these forms at the expense of state-consciousness." (p84)

In the late 1980s Dr. John Goodland wrote a report for the National Education Association arguing that one of their goals is to re-educate children to turn away from the values of their parents. He said:

"Our goal is behavioral change. The majority of our youth still hold to the values of their parents and if we do not resocialize them to accept change, our society may decay." (p85)

In 1923,....J. Gresham Mecham, sounded the alarm concerning the direction of attendance at the public schools becoming compulsory:

"...Freedom of thought in the Middle Ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective. Place the lives of the children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist. Such a tyranny, supported as it is by a perverse technique used as the instrument in destroying human souls, is certainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies of the past, which despite their weapons of fire and sword permitted thought, at least, to be free.

"The truth is that the materialistic paternalism of the present day, if allowed to go unchecked, will rapidly make of America on huge ‘Main Street’ where spiritual adventure will be discouraged and democracy will be regarded as consisting in the reduction of all mankind to the proportions of the narrowest and least gifted of the citizens." (p95-96)

Many families are turning to home schooling as the solution to the decaying public school system. However, home schooling is not a new idea - it is the restoration of an old and successful idea. It is not only a return to effective, parent-directed education; it is a moral and spiritual reformation. (p103)

...the national average of parents spending approximately seven minutes a day with face-to-face contact with their children, according to a study from Stanford University. (p125)

Academically, the home schoolers have generally excelled, but some critics have continued to challenge them on an apparent "lack of socialization" or "isolation from real world." Often there is a charge that home schoolers are not learning how to live in the "real world." However a closer look at public school training shows that it is actually those public school children who are not living in the real world.

For instance, public school children are confined for at least 180 days each year with minimal opportunity to be exposed to the workplace or to go on field trips. The children are trapped with a group of children their own age with little chance to relate to children of other ages or adults. The children spend their time pooling their ignorance. They learn in a spiritual and moral vacuum where there are no absolute standards. They are given little to no responsibility, and everything is provided for them. The opportunity to pursue their interests and to apply their unique talents is stifled. Actions by public students rarely have consequences, as discipline is lax and passing from grade to grade is automatic. The students are not really prepared to operate in the home (family) or the workplace, which comprise a major part of the "real world" after graduation. (p127-128)

For example, DuPont de Nemours surveyed education in America in the early 1800s and discovered nearly a 99 percent literacy rate:

"Most young Americans...can read, write, and cipher. Not more than four in a thousand are unable to write legibly - even neatly....the Bible is read; it is considered a duty to read it to children...In America a great number of people read the Bible." (p153)

Sadly, even within the homeschooling world there are many people (militant anti-Christians) who bash the poop out of this group that won educational freedom FOR THEM.

But whatever...

I've got too many things to do to worry about other people.

See also - Hired A Homeschool Legal Posse.

Tim Ferriss - Launching Again

I just pre-ordered The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life for my wife (a *Winter Festival of Trees* present).

While I obsess over exercise, posture, and whatnot...

She's Italian so she's genetically wired to obsess over food!

Seriously. Recently I asked her, rhetorically, what her favorite part of the government school penitentiary day was.

While the answer is supposed to be RECESS, she threw me off by saying *lunch*.

Though personally I'm not too excited about this subject, Tim's books have proven to deliver an enormous ROI. But there's simply no way this one will be as good as his others. So read them first:

4-Hour Workweek

4-Hour Body

Running Out Of Self-Help Books!

Is that all you have to do, THINK?

In a sense, yes, Think & Grow Rich is about working *smart* rather than simply working hard.

I just finished it and my verdict...

I would say it is decent.

The background on it is that way back when, Andrew Carnegie (the steel magnate) commissioned this dude to spend 25 years studying *success*, er successful earthlings. And this book is allegedly the fruit of that laborious endeavor.

The more of these self-help, get-rich gurus I read....the more their theories blend together. In fact Tony Robbins, whom I just read, I feel rips substantially from this book which was published back in 1937.

To both of them, it's all about *mindset* - persistence, will power, self-control, etc.

I must note that there were two surprising parts to this book.

One, the author talks about sex a bunch. He asserts that highly sexed individuals are usually very successful - and they ought to be admired for their flirtatiousness rather than deprecated. (Throughout this subject....all I could think of was Bill Clinton.)

And the other section which was a little wacky was the part where Hill starts talking about, with considerable certainty(!), exactly what happens to people after they die.

In books like this I really look forward to great anecdotage and there was a bit (mostly Thomas Edison and Henry Ford), but not really that much considering all the alleged empiricism behind the text.

But that's not to say that Hill's suggestions on how to succeed in life don't constitute sound, if not profound advice. I will chew on his ideas and assess later on.

Anytime you hear people say *I've read that book 5 times* - as I did with this one - I think it can't hurt to check it out.

And, not for nuthin', but the book has actually sold over 60 million copies now.

Another Business Book, Eaten

Not a long post here.

I just read - Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive - my 26th book of the year.

It was OKAY but nothing special.

The book was all over the place, essentially anecdotage from a shrewd, experienced businessman.

I'm not quite sure why it is so widely read and critically acclaimed.

Its best feature?....That it was an easy, skimmable read!

Forget Trump's endorsement on the cover. Read his book instead.

Tony Robbins - Review

Alright it took longer than I thought, but I finally finished self-help guru Tony Robbins' book - Awaken The Giant Within.

It was definitely good and worthwhile reading.

While I didn't take any notes I can share, I did take away several key ideas from this book.

I would say that the subtitle of the book captures its essence - *How to take immediate control of your mental, emotional, physical, and financial destiny!*.

Tony breaks down the mental processes which Earthlings use to determine their feelings, actions, etc.

The main lesson/message is that each one of us is indeed capable of fully controlling how we are going to react to the poop that life tosses our way.

It's not just some cheesy *look on the brightside* tripe either.

So it you are into self-improvement and appreciate the transformative power introspection I'd recommend you give Robbins a look. I'm sure your local government library has his books.

See also - Up Sheep-Creek Without A Paddle.

Too Much Homework...

Yes, this is indeed my nightstand at the moment:

Awaken The Giant Within

Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition (Collins Business Essentials)

The Official SAT Study Guide, 2nd edition

Relax into Stretch : Instant Flexibility Through Mastering Muscle Tension

Life Application Study Bible NIV

The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost your Sales.

Home Schooling, the Right Choice: An Academic, Historical, Practical, and Legal Perspective

Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization

There's just too little time to read these days - so they are piling up. Plus I keep coming across new, good ones.

So far I've read 23 books in 2011.

Last year I read approximately 27 books. See my - book list.

In this arena my bibliophile son leaves me in the dust. Just wait until I show you what he's read - just since July!

Of course he doesn't really have to do anything other than make his bed. And a good portion of his reading takes place while I'm at the steering wheel, stuck in New York traffic. So it's not exactly a fair contest.

Up Sheep-Creek Without A Paddle

It's hard to believe that I'd never before heard of Tony Robbins - a fabulously wealthy, self-help guru from the 90s.

I just started reading one of his books and I'm afraid I'm going to have real trouble putting it down. It's 500 pages so there goes this week!

From page 41 of Awaken the Giant Within:

Too many of us don't make the majority of our decisions consciously, especially these three absolutely crucial ones; in doing so, we pay a major price. In fact, most people live what I call "The Niagara Syndrome." I believe that life is like a river, and that most people jump on the river of life without ever really deciding where they want to end up. So, in a short period of time, the get caught up in the current: current events, current fears, current challenges. When they come to forks in the river, they don't consciously decide where they want to go, or which is the right direction for them. They merely "go with the flow." They become a part of the mass of people who are directed by the environment instead of by their own values. As a result, they feel out of control. They remain in this unconscious state until one day the sound of the raging water awakens them, and they discover that they're five feet from Niagara Falls in a boat with no oars. At this point, they say, "Oh, shoot!" But by then it's too late. They are going to take a fall. Sometimes it's a physical fall. Sometimes it's an emotional fall. It's likely that whatever challenges you have in your life currently could have been avoided by some better decisions upstream.

Bingo! No?

The three crucial destiny-controlling decisions referenced are:

1. Your decisions about WHAT TO FOCUS ON.

2. Your decisions about WHAT THINGS MEAN TO YOU.

3. Your decisions about WHAT TO DO to create the results you desire.

Tony Robbins used to broke and fat. Now he's worth an envy-inducing $480 million!

Note that he DID NOT ATTEND COLLEGE either.

I'll say it again - HE DID NOT GO TO COLLEGE!!!

I myself have never been to Niagara Falls - it's not really on my list either.

Couple Of Book Rec's

Dan Kennedy - Famous Bull Photo

Tim Ferriss lists The Magic of Thinking Big as one of his top book recommendations. In fact he said he read it 5 times in high school or something.

Published 50 years ago, and with several million copies sold it was weird that I had never heard of it.

Anyways it's a decent read - inspirational and full of tips on developing an attitudinal plan for business success: wear nice clothes, be infinitely polite/nice, etc.  Tim's book rec's, and I've read a few of them now, have not been anywhere nearly as good as his own works (4HWW and 4HB).

The other book I read this week I had heard recommended by several big names recently so I concluded it was worth buying (surprisingly, my library network didn't have it).

Dan Kennedy's book How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide was also seemingly dated, published back in 1995.

I found this one to be much better, one of those compelling reads that you kill in a single day and has you lamenting the end of the book. It's chock-full of stories of earthlings who made $hitloads of money in the 80s and early 90s - mostly via infomercial-type products and innovations. Many of the big winners sold *information products* but of course in the pre-internet age the vehicles were different: FAX machines, classified ads, color TV commercials, and toll-free phone numbers. Watching how many people today have cleaned up selling content online and looking back at their forerunners I can't help but in hindsight say, "DUH...of course billions were going to be there for the picking on the web!"

I sure wish I had read this book 15 years ago!!!

What was striking about these little case studies is how banged-up, bankrupt, and thoroughly uneducated the people were originally. Seemingly almost NONE of them even went to college - notably the ultra-wealthy author himself.

So take THAT all y'all college flacks out there!