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Poor Bjorn's Notes to Self

Read Books – Conduct Experiments – Grow

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Reading Lists

Here is where you find my reading- and recommendation lists!

Recommendation Lists:

  • Favorite Books of 2018
  • Favorite Books of 2017
  • Favorite Books of 2016

Reading Lists:

  • Reading List 2019
  • Reading List 2018
  • Reading List 2017
  • Reading List 2016

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Current situation: children, crying, shit everywhere (literally and figuratively speaking), irregular sleep, a constant stream of contingencies and emergencies. It’s a lovely mess! BUT it can be frustrating at times. Condition are perfect for a new experiment. ----------------------- The Lab Report - 009 - “60 days of Non Resistance" ----------------------- Non-resistance is about letting things unfold as they do. Life is a mess. Instead getting frustrated by trying to control people and situations we can accept things to be as they inevitably are. ——- To offer no resistance to life makes you feel light and at ease— at least that’s the theory! Let’s look at the results! ----------------------- Short term effects: ⭐️ ----------------------- - I was going to do this experiment for a month, but it took me a month just to get in the habit of catching myself in my resistance. Usually I realized what had happened only in hindsight. ------------------------- Long term effects: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ------------------------- - My close relationships have improved. - It feel pretty good to be able to stay in control when the storm comes. - It’s still unknown to me how I’m able to handle bigger setbacks since only minor one occurred during the test period. - Stress levels has gone down. --------------------------- Sustainability: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ -------------------------- - How long it takes to build a habit of non resistance might differ depending on you life situation. You might or might not have a life situation where you have a lot of opportunity to practice. --------------------------- FINAL VERDICT: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ --------------------------- - A few days ago my wife complemented me on how patient and helpful I’ve been recently and how it had really made a difference during these first chaotic months with a newborn (she doesn’t know about the experiment (I think!). - I actually kept productivity up during this experiment. I thought not forcing and resisting life would lead to less productivity. - I’ll continue this going forward. ---------------------- Related reading: 📖 A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle 📖 📖 The Bhagadvad Gita 📖 —- How do you handle the twists and turns of life? 🤔
Audiobooks and E-books are great, BUT sometimes you want to have the real tangible thing. I just went against my usual minimalistic life-approach and ordered some of the books that impacted me the most these last couple of years. ——— 📖 “A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient art of Stoic Joy” My introduction to Stoicism. - 📖 “The Bhagavad Gita” The most famous hindu text and a really powerful read. - 📖 “The Better Angels of Our Nature: why Violence has Declined” This book changed my perspective. - 📖 “Levels of Energy” It’s just fascinating and “out there” in a good way! My Book of the Year 2017. - 📖 “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse Just such a beautiful book. My favorite fiction book. ——— What’s your strategy for library building? Buy and keep? All-in on digital? Library junkie? 🤔🧐 - - - - - #TheBetterAngelsofOurNature #stevenpinker #Siddhartha #hermannhesse #TheBhagavadGita #BhagavadGita #levelsofenergy #frederickdodson #AGuidetothegoodLife #stoicism #stoic #spiritualbooks #bookshelf #52booksin52weeks #recommendedreading #morebooks #leadersarereaders #toberead #bookhoarder #bookreviewer
We know we are going to die someday. This is the unique problem of the conscious animal. We know it but we don’t feel it because we need to repress this truth in order to function. ——- So what to do? It’s really hard to accept that we are just worms in the dirt. Especially when our nature is so paradoxical; the body being so animalistic and limited yet our minds so godlike and boundless. We are gods with anuses. ——- What we need is a lie. A vital and grand one that we can always rely on. We need something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers that embed us, whether it’s a flag, the proletariat, a guru or religion. ——- Kierkegaard, Freud, Jung, Maslow and Fromm are some of the characters you’ll get to familiarize with during this journey. I felt like each chapter demanded a following period of reflection. I was absolutely taken aback by this book. ——— Some notes: —— 📝 “I believe that those who speculate that a full apprehension of man’s condition would drive him insane are right, quite literally right.” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. 😨 —— 📝 Man is beaten down by life and the world; “beaten because he fails to face up to the existential truth of his situation— the truth that he is an inner symbolic self, which signifies a certain freedom, and that he is bound by a finite body, which limits that freedom.” —— 📝 How much of experience do we let in?The schizophrenic allow for too much; the depressed too little. ——- 📝 Anxiety is the possibility of freedom. ——- 📝 Ideally man is “...fully in the world on its terms and wholly beyond the world in his trust in the invisible dimension.” —— ⭐️ TAKEAWAY: If life is an insurmountable problem, and we can’t live with the truth of our situation then the question is on what level of illusion to live our lives on. —— This book really checks all the boxes for me: ✅It’s complex and nuanced - yet I don’t feel totally lost (expect that fu*king castration complex.. I just do get it...🤷‍♂️ ✂️ ) ✅ I started the book being one person, came out of it as another. (SWIPE for example 😉) ✅ Checked one book of my reading list - added a dozen! —— Loved it! —— 5/5
Just finished The Denial Of Death. What a read! —— Now, since we humans are so very reluctant to go out and face the overwhelmingness or the world, picking up a new book would be a great alternative to that activity—and at the same time a way to distract ourselves from the anxiety brought by the fact that our lives most likely won’t add up to more than “the digestive noises, wind-breakings, and cries of dinosaurs—noises now silenced forever.” 😉 ——- Here are a few book suggestions: ——— 📖 The Glass Cage 📖 By Nicholas Carr - @poor_bjorns_notes_to_self —— 📖 Do No Harm 📖 By Henry Marsh - @end.notes —— 📖 The One Minute Millionaire 📖 By Mark V. Hansen, Robert G. Allen - @hiphophimself —— 📖 The Boy Crisis 📖 By Warren Farrell, John Gray - @chriserzfeld ————————— #4booksin1minute ————————— Which one would you pick up first? 🤔
Read, connect and share! What better way to improve retention than to discuss what you learn with likeminded people? ——- This months book is Everything is Fu%ked by Mark Manson. A book about hope. (The group will be open from June 15-July 12) ——- DM me or let me know in the comments if you want to join the Reading Group!
Luther rejected the practices of the Roman Catholic Church and the practice of selling indulgences (get out-of-jail-free cards for purgatory, basically.) in particular. Thereby he started the era known to us as the Reformation. —— Let’s jump right into the notes: —— 📝 He was about to become a law student when he got trapped in a lighting storm. Praying for his life he uttered: “Ich will ein Munk werden” (“I will become a monk”). The storm calmed and it was so. ——- 📝 1476 the market for indulgences where expanded beyond the living. Now you could pay for the sins of the dead too! ——— 📝 Luther heroically posting his truths on the wooden church door in Wittenberg is fiction made in hindsight. What Luther actually posted was an invitation to debate....which no one attended. ———- 📝 Two things fueled the Reformation: the printing press and Luther writing in German (instead of Latin). Luther’s writing spread like wildfire which was unintentional. It was as if a hastily written email to a friend was accidentally forwarded to a major news corporation. ———- 📝 “A simple layman armed with scripture is to be believed above a Pope or council without it.” ——— 📝 “This life is the shithouse compared to the glories of heaven” - Luther 😎 ——— 📝 FUNNY STORY: A nobleman asked if he could buy indulgences for a future sin and a preacher named Tetzel said he could. When the peacher was about to leave town the nobleman robbed and beat him up and left with the comment: “this was the future sin I had in mind!”. 😂😂 ——— Overall solid, VERY solid book. I enjoyed it far more than I ever thought I would. Also it felt good to fill another gap in my history education; the Reformation. ——— What biographies have you planned for this year? 🤔 ——— I would like to do another political leader (a president or Churchill) or a Nietzsche bio 💪🏻 ——— 4/5
“One of the main reasons that it is so easy to march men off to war is that deep down each one of them feel sorry for the man next to him who will die. Each one protects himself in his fantasy until the shock that he is bleeding.” - Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death ——- We don’t want to admit our mortality. Instead we lie to ourselves. This lie is known as the Vital Lie because it is absolutely needed for life to have meaning and value; Whatever it takes to forget that we are food for worms. That we are dinosaurs. ——- REVIEW INCOMING! —— Have you read the works of any of the prominent psychoanalysts? Freud, Jung, Adler, Fromm, Rank etc..?
“The struggle of maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child at play.” - Friedrich Nietzsche —— Every time Nietzsche is referenced in books I pay extra attention because I know it’s likely that something utterly profound and insightful is being offered. ——- He intrigues me, but I’m pretty much oblivious about his work and life. ——- Where and how do I get started on studying Nietzsche? What your relationship to this man and his work? 🤔 ——- I need your help here! 🙂 - - - - - - - - #nietzsche #friedrichnietzsche #philosophybooks #nietzchequotes #toberead #Walterkaufmann #theportablenietzsche #bookwormproblems #selfeducation #bookrecommendations #bookreviewer #recommendedreading #humannature #jordanpeterson #nonfictionbooks #igreads #readingclassics #nonfictionbooks #classicalliterature #lifelonglearning #bookish #readersofig #bookworm

Recent Posts

  • Thoughts on: “The Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker 19 June, 2019
  • Thoughts on: “Martin Luther” by Eric Metaxas 14 June, 2019
  • How to Nietzsche? 4 June, 2019
  • Thoughts on: “The Power of Moments” by Chip & Dan Heath 1 June, 2019
  • Thoughts on: “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” by Edmund Morris 29 May, 2019

Pages

  • 5 Outstanding Books this Year
  • A Guide to Quality Reading – Life is Too Short for Bad Books!
  • Favorite Books of 2016
  • Lab Reports – Life is an Experiment
  • Reading List 2016
  • Reading List 2017
  • Reading List 2018
  • Reading List 2019
  • Reading Lists
  • Top 10 Books of 2017
  • Reviews
  • Blog posts
  • Top 10 Books of 2017
  • Reading Lists
  • Reading List 2018
  • 5 Outstanding Books this Year
  • Lab Reports – Life is an Experiment
  • Reading List 2019
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