Books, Podcast, Blogs – I never really thought I would be a writer and I guess that my go hand in hand with the fact that I have never been a big reader either. Those that knew me in high school or growing up know the struggle I had to get through any required reading or writing assignment. In college, I was thankful that my Engineering curriculum had minimal English Literature classes and so the amount of novels and heavy reading started to reduce. That is not to say there wasn’t plenty of reading needed, but at least it was a little different.
It took years before I finally would pick up a book and read for fun. I still didn’t do it often but I at least would grab a book when I would head on vacation or maybe a little bit in the evenings before bed. I know some of you can’t imagine this but for me it was never enjoyable and honestly I am not a very fast reader so that probably is why I avoided it. I would rather wait until the movie came out and typically it would before I would finish the book anyway.
In the last few years, I have started to embrace reading a bit more and finding books that I enjoy. It is still typically only when I am on vacation or have enough down time where I can get lost in reading to get started with a book. Once I am started I can pick it up and read it a little at at time to finish it. It can still take months or even a year or more to finish a book by the time I have picked it up and put down so many times. A few years ago I discovered a love for audio books and since then I am loving current books in a whole new way and finishing them before they are old news. Last year I “read” 12 books through listening to them. I also finished another two that I read in print version too!
In addition to audio books, I have also fallen in love with podcasts and discovering new ones that I can enjoy. I have always known I was an auditory learner but this has been fun to embrace the technology and trends we have available to us and enjoy books and inspiration in new ways. I will share some of my recent favorites but I would love to hear what books, podcast and even blogs you enjoy and find inspiring too.
A few recent favorites….
Several of these books led to podcasts I am following too so we will group them together.
Bob Goff has two books that I have really enjoyed in the last year (or last couple of years if I am honest). I received the first Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World as a gift from my friend Lisa a couple of years ago. I was thankful for the book at the time but as I shared above I am not a quick reader so it has taken a while to finish it. I am so glad that I finally finished reading it earlier this year so I could fully appreciate the value of this gift. All of the proceeds from sales from Bob’s book Love Does are donated to work he has in Uganda at the Restore International Leadership Academy. This book is a gift of inspirational short stories that will lift you up and encourage you to push forward to Love in more real ways everyday as well as to find the out of your mind ways to LOVE BIG too plus this book also continues giving through it’s sales to further one of those very stories as it invests in big ways in the lives of young people in Uganda. In the mean time while I was slowly making my way through the print version of this book, I knew I was liking Bob’s spirit and grabbed Everybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People as an audio book as soon as it was available. I was not disappointed with this one either. Both of these books have challenged me to see people around me differently and look for ways to show love in my own unique way. The fun thing about finding an author you start to enjoy is when you discover they have a podcast and you can continue following along that way. Just this month I have finally checked out the Dream Big podcast and started listening to some of the recent episodes. It is fun to hear stories referenced from the books and even people from our own area here in North Carolina.
In the last year, I have become intrigued with the Enneagram system. It is an ancient personality type system that has a way of outlining just how many of us are wired and how we are motivated and react to those situations and circumstances around us. I heard that the book The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron & Suzanne Stabile was a good place to start to learn a bit more about this so I added it to my list of audio books and enjoyed learning more. As my sister and I have shared some books and podcast we are listening to, she shared about a podcast that she was enjoying that had a summer special on Enneagram and suggested I might enjoy it too. I did and have since really enjoyed other episodes from Annie F Downs and her That Sounds Fun podcast. Her EnneaSummer series was so fun to listen to in June. She had friends of hers who were in each of the different categories join her over 9 episodes. She would ask them to share answers to questions to prompt what their motivation or drivers were to responding in different ways. As the listener you could hear how same response from different types might be for different reasons because of what motivates each of them. We are all wired uniquely and understanding some of those motivators can help us relate to one another more effectively.
I have shared before about my love for Lara Casey’s book Cultivate What Matters. Through following her and her recent blog and social media posts, I recently discovered a dear friend of her’s Nancy Ray. She has a new podcast Work and Play with Nancy Ray. What a fun title and what sweet nuggets she has been sharing each week about how to live fully awake and with purpose through transitions. I am finding myself anxiously awaiting the post each Tuesday when a new one is added.
This list goes on but we will keep it to these couple for now. I hope you will enjoy exploring a few new inspiring books or podcasts. I would love to hear what is inspiring you too in the comments here or through e-mail or messages.
For those that know my sister, you will not be surprised to know that she and I think a lot a like and will be into similar things. The funny thing to me was that I had drafted this post about my favorite books and podcasts for you all and check my social media to fine her blog post below shared. You may find a few similarities here – we often share a few of our favorites with each other so it is no surprise that our lists have some authors in common.