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Biographies
Neha Sinha has read:
When Breath Becomes Air
By Paul Kalanithi
What makes life worth living in the face of death?
When Breath Becomes Air is a deeply intimate and vulnerable memoir of a young doctor who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He is at the tail end of his medical training as a resident, about to harvest the fruits of his labour, when life smacks him with the ultimate bad news – that there is only very little of it left for him. Kalanithi started writing this book after his diagnosis.
The first half of the book covers his childhood through his medical training, and yet is deeply relatable to any human being. From the gory details of operating on cadavers to dealing with the very real and very flawed humans in the form of patients, there are plenty of lessons for any coach who reads this book.
The second half of the book covers his diagnosis and his journey after the tables turn and he becomes a patient, understanding the prognosis, facing intensive treatments, watching his daughter come to life while his own drains away.
Kalanithi died while writing his book, which was then completed by his wife. I found this book impossible to put down, and it’s one that I will revisit time and again to remind myself of what’s important.
Business
Lucy Ryan has read:
Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society
By Cordelia Fine
Lucy Ryan has read:
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
By Herminia Ibarra
- Don’t fall into the ‘competency trap’, where you just keep getting better at what you already do. Spread your wings and take on a new challenge
- Act before you think. Approach new tasks with a growth mindset and TEST AND TRY!
- Refresh your network. Do the people you turn to for advice on a daily basis help you grow as a person – or are they wedded to you in the job you hold at the moment?
Benay Dyor has read:
Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness
By Frederic Laloux
Steven Poelmans has read:
Business Model You: A One-Page Method For Reinventing Your Career
By Tim Clark, Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur
It goes further than listing up your curriculum vitae. The advantage is that the method can be used every couple of months/years to keep on track of what you desire in your professional life.
I love how this model was inspired by some other work of the authors: Business Model Generation.
Personally, I use this framework, next to some other modalities, to help entrepreneurs into finding their strengths and personal essence of how they can help their customers with their business.
Self-Help
Neha Sinha has read:
Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking
By Allen Carr
Flipped a switch from pack a day addiction to absolute zero craving
The book was really easy to digest. Big ideas distilled into what was essentially a conversation between the author, Allen Carr, and another man – a smoker. In this book, Carr, who was a smoker for 30 years, takes every single argument smokers make and provides rational, science-based reasons for why those arguments are simply not true. This is a systematic disintegration of the brainwashing that has been done by Big Tobacco that “quitting is really hard”. I had found quitting to be hard in previous attempts, but after reading this book, it truly felt easy.
I had the audiobook going in my ears while I read the ebook on my laptop. You can smoke while you read the book. I did. After I finished the book, I set a date to quit in three months, but after 12 days, I stopped completely.
This book changed my life, possibly saved it. Certainly saved me a lot of money and perhaps medical bills I would have to pay. I have passed on this book to every smoker I know, and with some success. If you’re even remotely flirting with the idea of quitting, don’t hesitate for a moment, just dive into this book.
Stephen McVey has read:
Transforming Your Self
By Steve Andreas
Few people would argue against the idea that having high self-esteem is a worthy goal and yet it is rare to find someone that actually knows how to get it. In this book Steve Andreas explains in great detail how we can access the unconscious structure of our identity and how to successfully create congruence between identity and values. The teachings shared in this book lead the motivated reader to achieve a resilient self-esteem that supports the attainment of ‘becoming who you want to be’. To extract maximum value from this book I suggest some exposure to NLP is required, although any experienced coach should also be able to apply the teachings within. As an NLP trainer and coach focused on Life Purpose, this book provided me a powerful set of tools to add to my practice.
Benay Dyor has read:
Untamed
By Glennon Doyle
This book just came out (March 2020) and speaks to women in their mid to late 30’s-40’s. It’s a book of short stories about everything from raising kids, to finding you’re in love with a woman, to racism, to reinventing your identity.
Although I don’t see eye-to-eye on all of her ideas, I’m loving Glennon’s no-holds-barred sharing and her easy, fun to read writing style. If you are on the path of being your own authentic woman and you love to learn through story and metaphor you are likely to fall in love with Glennon. She has inspired me to stand even more in my courage and speak MY truth even if it’s not always easy or comfortable.
Benay Dyor has read:
Conversations With God : An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 1)
By Neal Donald Walsch
A framework for understanding human soul evolution
For me, Conversations with God provides a framework for understanding human soul evolution. It helped me see that we are all created from the same source – we are all one.
Also, we are all on our perfect soul’s journey no matter what our life might look like from the outside. This has helped me tame my ego and show up in greater LOVE when I am tempted to judge someone or think that I am more wise than them – I now re-member.
If your Soul Evolution is calling you to a new level of expression but you still have many questions, I highly recommend you get a hard copy of this book because you’ll want to underline everything!
Dawn Strom has read:
The Wisdom of the Chakras: Tools for Navigating the Complexity of Life
By Ellen Tadd
The writer, Ellen Tadd, is a clairvoyant who has taught, lectured and counseled on spirituality for more than thirty years. She approaches her teaching on the Chakras from her own experience and exploration in her own process and in working with her clients.
The book is divided into eight chapters, and each chapter introduces you to a different chakra starting with the crown chakra and working down to the root chakra. She introduces you to the general meaning and purpose of each chakra as well as how to kinesthetically connect to it. And she talks about how imbalances in the chakras can manifest emotionally and spiritually in our lives. The last chapter is dedicated to a “plan for growth” where she talks about how simple exercises and tools to align and balance your chakras.
I am a long term student of somatic and energy work and what I love about this book is that it is written in a way that facilitates quick integration of complex and esoteric concepts. It is a short read, only 123 pages, and the concepts are presented in an embodied way that helps you to quickly connect to your own body and implement the exercises presented to discover immediate shifts in awareness and insight in your own life.
Fiction
Jenny Mitchell has read:
The Tattooist of Auschwitz: A Novel
By Heather Morris
An Emotional Story of Love Surrounded by Extreme Tragedy
The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a book written based off interviews with Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov. What a life story!
To be honest when I chose to read this book I was completely unaware that this story was attached to a real person. Not that that should change the way that I read it, but it does change the way that it sits with me now that I have finished it. It is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at the same time.
I have read many books about the holocaust, both fiction, and non-fiction, but this book was the first that I felt as though I was there, seeing, smelling, experiencing what Lale was. I learned much from this book.
I would heartily recommend this book because despite the subject matter having the real possibility to make one depressed, this story actually is so positive and shows you the amount that a human can take when they have it in their mind to survive and to love.
Other
Dawn Breslin has read:
Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
By John O'Donohue
Divine Beauty stops us in our tracks. John asks us to see life
through the embrace of the divine, introducing us to a deeper, more profound experience of the ordinary.
Spiritual, Poetic and moving, this book reveals how beauty’s embrace guides us into new levels of passion and creativity
Dawn Breslin has read:
Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
By John O'Donohue
In this mix of philosophy, poetry and spirituality, John shines a light on what it is to be human and divine.
The book guides us into incredible understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.
His writing has illuminated my consciousness like no other.
Celtic, rich and soul stirring. Enjoy!
Neha Sinha has read:
The Prophet
By Khalil Gibran
You know a book is changing you when ‘aha’ moments are out loud!
