Books · MoveMe Quotes

Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control [Book]

Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control [Book] by Ryan Holiday — By: Ryan Holiday

Book Overview: To master anything, one must first master themselves–one’s emotions, one’s thoughts, one’s actions. Eisenhower famously said that freedom is really the opportunity to practice self-discipline. Cicero called the virtue of temperance the polish of life. Without boundaries and restraint, we risk not only failing to meet our full potential and jeopardizing what we have achieved, but we ensure misery and shame. In a world of temptation and excess, this ancient idea is more urgent than ever.

In Discipline is Destiny, Holiday draws on the stories of historical figures we can emulate as pillars of self-discipline, including Lou Gehrig, Queen Elizabeth II, boxer Floyd Patterson, Marcus Aurelius and writer Toni Morrison, as well as the cautionary tales of Napoleon, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Babe Ruth. Through these engaging examples, Holiday teaches readers the power of self-discipline and balance, and cautions against the perils of extravagance and hedonism.

At the heart of Stoicism are four simple virtues: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. Everything else, the Stoics believed, flows from them. Discipline is Destiny will guide readers down the path to self-mastery, upon which all the other virtues depend. Discipline is predictive. You cannot succeed without it. And if you lose it, you cannot help but bring yourself failure and unhappiness.

Book Quotes ➜

The Win Within: Capturing Your Victorious Spirit [Book]

The Win Within: Capturing Your Victorious Spirit by Bert Mandelbaum — By: Bert R. Mandelbaum

Book Overview: As an orthopedic surgeon, a finish-line physician, and a USA team doctor at the World Cup and the Olympics, Dr. Bert Mandelbaum has witnessed the trials and triumphs of elite athletes from a vantage point few of us get. And over his twenty-plus years of experience, he’s identified a common character trait that every elite athlete relies upon for success: it’s what he calls the ”victorious spirit.” In The Win Within, Mandelbaum reveals that any of us–no matter our age or physical condition–can capture that same spirit in our own lives. This inner drive to win resides in all of us, he argues, hardwired into our DNA by ancestry dating back millions of years. You’ll learn how to view life the way a top-performing athlete does: relentlessly, tenaciously, positively, and focusing less on the finish line of the marathon and more on the 26.2 miles that precede it. With narrative support ranging from the lessons of our early ancestors to Mandelbaum’s stories of our modern-day gladiators (both household name and lesser known), The Win Within will give you a greater understanding of how and why we’re all hardwired to win–and you’ll come away with no shortage of tactics and motivation to capture your own victorious spirit.

Book Quotes ➜

Waking Up: A Guide To Spirituality Without Religion [Book]

By: Sam Harris

Book Overview: From multiple New York Times best-selling author, neuroscientist, and “new atheist” Sam Harris, Waking Up is for the 30 percent of Americans who follow no religion, but who suspect that Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history could not have all been epileptics, schizophrenics, or frauds. Throughout the book, Harris argues that there are important truths to be found in the experiences of such contemplatives – and, therefore, that there is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow. Waking Up is part seeker’s memoir and part exploration of the scientific underpinnings of spirituality. No other book marries contemplative wisdom and modern science in this way, and no author other than Sam Harris – a scientist, philosopher, and famous skeptic – could write it.

Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life [Book]

By: Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

Book Overview: According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai—a reason for living. And according to the residents of the Japanese village with the world’s longest-living people, finding it is the key to a happier and longer life. Having a strong sense of ikigai—where what you love, what you’re good at, what you can get paid for, and what the world needs all overlap—means that each day is infused with meaning. It’s the reason we get up in the morning. In researching this book, the authors interviewed the residents of the Japanese village with the highest percentage of 100-year-olds—one of the world’s Blue Zones. Ikigai reveals the secrets to their longevity and happiness: how they eat, how they move, how they work, how they foster collaboration and community, and—their best-kept secret—how they find the ikigai that brings satisfaction to their lives. And it provides practical tools to help you discover your own ikigai.

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

The 10 Rules of Ikigai (for a Longer and Happier Life) + 6 Bonus Quotes from The Book

Heavy: An American Memoir [Book]

By: Kiese Laymon

Book Overview: In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a “gorgeous, gutting…generous” (The New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon’s experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

No Excuses [Book]

By: Brian Tracy

Book Overview: Most people think success comes from good luck or enormous talent, but many successful people achieve their accomplishments in a simpler way: through self-discipline. No Excuses! shows you how you can achieve success in all three major areas of your life, including your personal goals, business and money goals, and overall happiness. Each of the 21 chapters in this book shows you how to be more disciplined in one aspect of your life, with end-of-chapter exercises to help you apply the “no excuses” approach to your own life. With these guidelines, you can learn how to be more successful in everything you do –instead of wistfully envying others you think are just “luckier” than you. A little self-discipline goes a long way — so stop making excuses and read this book!

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

9 Brian Tracy Quotes from No Excuses! and How To Lead A More Self-Disciplined Life

Siddhartha [Book]

By: Hermann Hesse

Book Overview: Hesse’s famous and influential novel, Siddartha, is perhaps the most important and compelling moral allegory our troubled century has produced. Integrating Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with psychoanalysis and philosophy, this strangely simple tale, written with a deep and moving empathy for humanity, has touched the lives of millions since its original publication in 1922. Set in India, Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmin’s search for ultimate reality after meeting with the Buddha. His quest takes him from a life of decadence to asceticism, through the illusory joys of sensual love with a beautiful courtesan, and of wealth and fame, to the painful struggles with his son and the ultimate wisdom of renunciation.

Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be [Book]

By: Steven Pressfield

Book Overview: Are you losing your “war of art”? Are you being defeated by a tendency to procrastination, self-doubt, fear, distraction, and perfectionism? Are you self-sabotaging your loftiest artistic entrepreneurial dreams? The antidote is in nine words: Put your ass where your heart wants to be. Can you shift your artistic identity—your “ass”—from the shallow, fearful, superficial ego to the wise, loving, fearless self? Can you commit to your dream for the long haul and for keeps? In this book, best-selling author Steven Pressfield delivers the tough-love inspiration to help you make this life-altering transformation.

The Prophet [Book]

By: Kahlil Gibran

Book Overview: Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. The Prophet has been translated into over 100 different languages, making it one of the most translated books in history and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies. The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

18 Kahlil Gibran Quotes from The Prophet and Insights For Fulfilled Living

Crying In H Mart [Book]

By: Michelle Zauner

Book Overview: In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

20 Heavy Michelle Zauner Quotes from Crying In H Mart on Cancer and Grief

The Midnight Library [Book]

By: Matt Haig

Book Overview: Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

Self-Renewal [Book]

By: John W. Gardner

Book Overview: This is a book about the importance of renewal for both societies and individuals – and the interdependence between the two to accomplish it. Societal renewal (think government, education, race relations, international affairs), hinges on a creative society, which itself hinges on the capability of individuals to move from apathy to self-renewal. What sounds simple is complicated by entropy, the slowing pace that invariably occurs in societies, organizations, and individuals as they age. Gardner writes, “[V]itality diminishes, flexibility gives way to rigidity, creativity fades and there is a loss of capacity to meet challenges from unexpected directions.” Shocks to the system (think wars, disasters, pandemics, loss of a job) often unlock “new resources of vitality.” How to continually initiate renewal apart from these external prompts is the secret and subject of this book.

Freedom from the Known [Book]

By: J. Krishnamurti

Book Overview: In this classic work, Krishnamurti shows how you can free yourself from the tyranny of the expected. You are free to create your own future, and your departure from the confining expectations of ‘fate’ can be radical and immediate—no matter what your age. By changing yourself, you can change your relationships with others, consequently improving the whole structure of society. The vital need for change and the recognition of its very possibility constitute the rich essence of Krishnamurti’s message in Freedom from the Known.

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

26 J. Krishnamurti Quotes from Freedom From The Known For A More Liberated, “First-Hand” Life Experience

If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! [Book]

By: Sheldon B. Kopp

Book Overview: A fresh, realistic approach to altering one’s destiny and accepting the responsibility that grows with freedom. No meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real. The Buddahood of each of us has already been obtained. We only need to recognize it. “The most important things that each man must learn no one can teach him. Once he accepts this disappointment, he will be able to stop depending on the therapist, the guru who turns out to be just another struggling human being.” Using the myth of Gilgamesh, Siddhartha, The Wife of Bath, Don Quizote . . . the works of Buber, Ginsberg, Shakespeare, Karka, Nin, Dante and Jung . . . a brilliant psychotherapist, guru and pilgrim shares the epic tales and intimate revelations that help to shape Everyman’s journey through life.

Essentialism [Book]

By: Greg McKeown

Book Overview: Essentialism is more than a time-management strategy or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter. By forcing us to apply more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy—instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us. Essentialism is not one more thing—it’s a whole new way of doing everything. It’s about doing less, but better, in every area of our lives. Essentialism is a movement whose time has come.

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

23 Greg McKeown Quotes from Essentialism and How To Live Better Via Less

Think Like A Monk [Book]

By: Jay Shetty

Book Overview: In this inspiring, empowering book, Shetty draws on his time as a monk to show us how we can clear the roadblocks to our potential and power. Combining ancient wisdom and his own rich experiences in the ashram, Think Like a Monk reveals how to overcome negative thoughts and habits, and access the calm and purpose that lie within all of us. He transforms abstract lessons into advice and exercises we can all apply to reduce stress, improve relationships, and give the gifts we find in ourselves to the world. Shetty proves that everyone can—and should—think like a monk.

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

The Body Keeps The Score [Book]

By: Bessel Van Der Kolk

Book Overview: In The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Van Der Kolk uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity.

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

40 Bessel van der Kolk Quotes on Trauma and Healing from The Body Keeps The Score

Everyday Osho [Book]

By: Osho

Book Overview: Everyday Osho features 365 short meditations that offer insights into living fully in the here and now. Each brief text is thoughtful and inspiring and the perfect length for starting a daily meditation practice. With topics that range from gratitude to nature to philosophy to love, Everyday Osho contains a full year of meditation and inspiration.

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

Letting Your Bow Relax—A Short Story About Not Being So Serious All Of The Time

Book Quotes ➜

One Minute, Please? [Book]

By: Cole Schafer (January Black)

Book Overview: A book of poetry by Cole Schafer aka January Black. Written on the back of the book: “To be candid, I’m not entirely sure what the fuck any of this is about. But, if you have a minute… I do think I can make you feel something.”

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

26 Cole Schafer Quotes from One Minute, Please? on Love in a World of Conditions, Screens, and Pain

To My Daughter. [Excerpt]

Automate Your Busywork [Book]

By: Aytekin Tank

Book Overview: Do Less, Achieve More, and Save Your Brain for the Big Stuff. In this book, entrepreneur, founder, and CEO of Jotform—Aytekin Tank delivers a can’t-miss blueprint to help you make the most of your most precious asset: time. You’ll explore what’s possible when you offload repetitive tasks, why automation has democratized innovation, and how you can use cheap―or even completely free―no-code automation tools to transform your ability to focus on what truly matters in your business and life.

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

15 Aytekin Tank Quotes from Automate Your Busywork To Help You Reclaim Your Time