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New Book!

10 October, 201710 October, 2017 ~ poorbjorn

New Book – New Topic.

Reading up on some light theory that might help me in my work as an Environment Artist in the games industry. Let there be light (and shadow, terminator, fill, translucency, caustics etc….)!

Light for Visual Artists: Understanding & Using Light in Art & Design

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One of my favorite parts of this book revolve around the topic of self-sabotaging our own creativity: —— 📝 “Some of the malevolent complexes’ favorite thieveries and punishments of women’s creativity revolve around promising the soul-self “time to create” somewhere of in the foggy future. Or promising that when one has several days in a row free, then the rumpus will begin at last. It’s hogwash.” —— This is just a way to suffocate the creative impulse further. —— Another great way of suffocating creativity is Only-iffing; Only if I had a such and such degree then my work would be decent. Only if I receive such and such thing... ——- Many put their talents in the back burner: ——- 📝 “I’ve seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write.... and you know it’s a funny thing about house cleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman.” 🧹 ——— How do you nourish and protect your creative life? And if you don’t; What are the ways you procrastinate? 🤔

“Your thoughts have consequences so great that they create your reality.” —— How did that quote make you feel? Did you throw up a little in your mouth, or did you get intrigued to know more? That feeling is probably a good indicator for how you feel about this book. —— Reality creation and manifestation books comes in a lot of different flavors—the Secret, Transurfing, the Kybalion—this book is attempting scientific route to manifestation. ———- I have a paradoxical relationship with “reality creation”. I kinda cringe at the explanation of how it works, but at the same time I have seen it work over and over again in my own life and others. So I really don’t care how it works, just that it does. Your attitude and inner state matters. ——- 📝 “When we are truly focused and singleminded the brain doesn’t know the difference between the internal world of the mind and what we experience in the external environment” 💭 ——- 📝 Mentally rehearsing an activity gives almost the same growth of neural connections as physical practice. This fact blows my mind every time I hear it. 🤯 ——— 📝 Eliminating the gap between who we are and who we present to the world is probably one of the biggest challenges we face in life. ——— 📝 “To know thyself is to meditate.” ——— ⭐️ TAKEAWAYS: Not much that can withstand sustained focused human effort. Your attitude changes your reality. The placebo effect is real. You experience changes with you focus (Reticular Activating System). —— ⚖️ VERDICT: I can imagine a reality where I have give a lower score, but to be honest, it was a great reminder of the importance of ones attitude towards life and that we don’t have to re-live the same emotions and experiences day after day. The power of one’s inner state is real, even if I’m not as sure as Dr Dispenza about the specifics. —— 4/5 —— What is your favorite books in the genre and what’s you thoughts on manifestation?⁉️ —— Photo credit: @whitneyalamb

From the Non Fiction Book Community, with love! Thanks for sharing great books all year round! 💜 ——— 📖 Turning Pro 📖 By Steven Pressfield - @poor_bjorns_notes_to_self —— 📖 Two Awesome Hours 📖 By Josh Davis Ph.d - @bookssavedmyass —— 📖 Stillness is the Key 📖 By Ryan Holiday - @bookmattic —— 📖 Willpower 📖 By Roy Baumeister - @enjoy_it_all_ ———- What are you reading this month? And which one of these books are on your radar?⁉️ ————————— MORE: #4booksin1minute ————————— - - - - - - #ryanholiday #stillnessisthekey #turningpro #theartofwar #dothework #stevenpressfield #RoyBaumeister #nonfictionnovember #nonfictionreader #twoawesomehours #thedailystoic #bookrecommendations #nonfictionbooks #igreads #mustread #bookreview #bookrecommendation #boktips #readersareleaders #52booksin52weeks #nonfictionbook

I found myself in the dentist chair earlier this week. It was time to re-evaluate my dental care insurance*. ——- During the examination, while listening to the dentist and her assistant esoteric tooth-lingo, I found myself starting to worry about the results. Would I still be eligible for my cheap 12$ a month insurance? Or would my monthly fee increase? 🤔 ——- 📝 In Stoic philosophy we learn to differentiate what is not up to us and what is up to us— and to only focus on the latter. Everything else is a waste of energy and will lead to unhappiness. ——— All the work up until the examination was up to me; the daily brushing, the flossing, restriction of sugars and acids. But now, as I was laying in the treatment chair, there was no more I could do. The evaluation results was not up to me. ——— Maybe it was reading Epictetus in the waiting room minutes before that helped me bring to mind this simple, but non-trivial, snippet of the ancients wisdom. I stopped worrying and relaxed (...at least until they started removing tartar. 🦷 😣 ) ———- ‼️ Tell me about you Stoic moments! ‼️ - - - - - - - - - - - *in Sweden you can sign up for a dental care insurance that cover any cost related to dental care if something happens. If you have good tooth health it’s cheap, if not it’s cost a bit more. Dentist evaluate what payment tier you get assigned to.

I don’t think much about race, why would I? Im a white man. I’m the norm. Have you ever played a video game with a character selection screen? I’m the default character. ——- The book was an emotional rollercoaster of self-reflection. It left my head spinning and I realized how little time I’ve spent contemplating the question of race. ——- 📝 “How can I define white privilege? It’s so difficult to describe an absence. And white privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism.”...“Absence of structural discrimination. Absence of ‘less likely to succeed because of my race’.” ——— 📝 Reflection: I get suspicious when Twitterstorms are used to prove a point in books. Twitter is usually not a good representation of society as a whole. ——- 📝 Reflection: Dividing people into groups has a purpose, I guess, especially when you want to highlight problems like structural racism. But where does it end? Reni talks about white feminists vs. black feminists vs mixed feminist etc etc. If the goal is to unite, then why this obsession with division? ——- 📝 Reflection: What about evolutionary psychology? “Us” vs. “Them”-dichotomies has existed for millions of years. And we tend to like people who are like us. Evolutionary it makes sense; Similar individuals are more likely to share copies of each other's genes. It would be interesting see this perspective in a book like this one. But then maybe I should look for books written by professors rather than journalists. ——- ⭐️ TAKEAWAY: My main takeaways was to learning more about what Eddo-Lodge calls “white privilege”, and also getting a rather overdue reminder that structural racism is still going strong today. —— ⚖️ VERDICT: I didn’t enjoy the book; maybe it was the angry tone, the stereotyping or what felt like generalizations (or maybe it’s my ‘whiteness’ that put me in a defensive mode). It left me with a lot to think about. I appreciate that. The book is at its best when it catches you off-guard and challenge your assumptions and beliefs! ——- 3/5 ——- What book challenges you recently? 🤔⁉️

We keep reading about it; the most important endeavor one can undertake is self-knowledge— to “know thyself” as the inscription reads at the Temple of Apollo—and what better way to start that examination than the practice of meditation? --------------------------- The Lab Report - 012- "One Year of Meditation" ----------------------- For one year I have been taking a moment out of each day to sit quietly with myself. ----------------------- Short term effects: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ----------------------- - It’s quite frustrating to observe when one’s mind wander. -Initially there was a lot of resistance to sitting. - Observing one’s thoughts and the “monkey mind” creates a gap between myself and my thoughts. Disidentification with thoughts and emotions is a key benefit of meditation for me. ----------------------- Long term effects: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ----------------------- - It’s now easier, in daily life, to catch myself being lost in thought and snap back to presence. - I have found meditation to be an excellent gauge of my stress levels. If I’m stressed, then meditation really highlights the internal turmoil of looping thoughts and emotions. - Realizing just sitting is enough to feel fully content is freeing. ----------------------- Sustainability: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ----------------------- - It has been tricky to turn this into a daily habit. Especially since my baby, Hanna, arrived. 👶 - When routine is broken (traveling, busy weekends etc.) I tend to forget to sit. - It’s easier for most of us to value ‘doing’ above ‘non-doing’. Going for a run is more readily accepted than prioritizing stilllness. ----------------------- FINAL VERDICT: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ----------------------- It’s easy to get carried away with our careers and demands of life. Meditation has become a daily reset for me. —— No longer taking my thoughts too seriously, or mistake them for being me, is a big takeaway from this experiment. —- If you feel you don’t you have time to sit for 10 minutes each day, then you probably need to sit for an hour! 😉 🧘🏻‍♂️ ----------------------- Tell me about your experiences with mediation? 🤔⁉️ - - - Check out #poorbjornsexperiments for more Lab Reports!

I was in bed at night, talking with my wife about this book and the discrepancy between how we experience the world through the News (‘Look! It’s a gruel and violent world out there!!’) and how in reality violence, death and war are slowly but steadily declining, and has been for centuries. ——— In that moment it knocked on the door. ——— Given the late hour this was unexpected. When I opened the door a policewoman was standing in the hallway asking if I had heard or seen anything suspicious. I told he I hadn’t and asked if something had happened. She replied, “I can’t tell you, but I saw reporters outside, so I’m sure you can find out online.” ———- A man had been shot to death outside the entrance of my building that night. - - - - - - I could have become a more fearful person that day. Thanks to people like Pinker and Rosling I’m staying optimistic about where we are going.

This was the right book at the wrong time for me. I can see myself loving it 10 years ago, when I was had a more gloomy and cynical outlook on life, I can hear myself saying, “This book really gets it”. (It don’t miss those days. 😂) ——- While I can still see the qualities; the complexity, the prose etc.., I just don’t connnect fully with the existential crisis of the middle aged misanthrope, Haller, around which the story revolves. ——— Part of me wanted to go up to him and shake some life into the man. “Wake up, go dance! Have a laugh for Christ sake!” And well.. thats just what the characters around him tried to do, whether it was Mozart and Goete (we are dealing with a mix of fictive and historical character in true Hesse fashion..) or Hellers object of desire, a girl named Hermine (his anima?!). ——- 📝 “You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live”. ——— 📝 “For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.” This reminds me of McCandless notion from ‘Into The Wild. ———— ⚖️ VERDICT: I love me some Hesse— Siddhartha and Damien being two of my favorite novels of all time—but I didn’t fully resonate with Steppenwolf. It’s a solid classic nevertheless! ———- ⭐️ TAKEAWAY: We need to laugh more! Have you ever gauged how many times you laugh out loud each day? ——- Which is your favorite Hermann Hesse novels? ——- 3/5 ——- - - - - (ps... looking for my next classic. I’m looking for recommendations!)

Recent Posts

Thoughts on: “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself” by Joe Dispenza 17 November, 2019
Thoughts on: “Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by Reni Eddo-Lodge 16 November, 2019
Thoughts on: Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse 2 November, 2019
Thoughts on: ‘Richard Nixon: A Life’ John A. Farrell 10 October, 2019
Thoughts on: ‘Southeast Asia: A Very Short Introduction’ 27 September, 2019

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A Guide to Quality Reading – Life is Too Short for Bad Books!
Favorite Books of 2016
Lab Reports – Life is an Experiment
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Reading List 2017
Reading List 2018
Reading List 2019
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Top 10 Books of 2017

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Top 10 Books of 2017
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Lab Reports – Life is an Experiment
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