We just finished up the final quarter of 2021 and saw that year come to a close.

This means it’s time for another quarter-year book review!

At the beginning of the year, I started my official 50 books/year goal for what I hope to be the rest of my life.

This quarter I read 12 books, bringing this year’s total to 59 (23 in the first quarter, 15 in the second, 9 in the third, and 12 in the fourth)

1. 100M Offers by Alex Hormozi - phenomenal book that I cannot recommend highly enough. This is the book that you want to read to take your business to the next level in not only your level of service but also the income produced by it. Alex goes into the mindset behind serving people and why you’re actually helping people better by charging them more. A super fascinating book that has helped me overcome some upper limit beliefs about money and serving. I would almost put this book with some of the all-time good ones, but it was a bit repetitive after a while, and a lot of the ideas could have been condensed down a bit. Overall rating: 9/10

2. The Sacred Search by Gary Thomas - Another marriage book, excellent writing, though not a ton of new content. One thing I really enjoyed about this is the focus on why you’re getting married, and not so much on “the one”. There’s a large part of the culture that is focused on finding “the one” and thinking that literally, every other person must be incompatible. When in reality, many are compatible. I would recommend giving it a read if you’re interested in getting married. Overall rating: 5/10

3. They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan - One of my all-time favorites. It’s another mindset book (with some practical actionable things) talking about how to build your brand, reputation, and sustainable “free” marketing. The primary point of this book was answering the questions your clients/customers are asking and sharing those answers publicly in the form of a blog and social media. This is one of those books that is a long-term investment but I’d say is one of the core structural things you can do for your business to establish your reputation and ensure you are the person people go to get their problems solved. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It applies nicely to solopreneurs, self-employed, and large corporations. I’ve been practicing some of what they talk about for several years and can say it’s been one of the bigger reasons I’ve been able to grow my reputation as fast as I have. Overall rating: 10/10

4. The Holy War by John Bunyan - an excellent analogical book about the battle of your soul and how Satan and his armies attack it. Super interesting, but it does require a bit of attention to reading. This isn’t a light read. I’d say it’s the second part to Pilgrims Progress, though not quite as simple. Really good read, and very eye-opening to things you might be struggling with that you can’t quite put your finger on. Overall rating: 7/10

5. Tribe of Millionaires by David Osborn, Pat Hiban, Mike McCarthy, & Tim Rhode - this is an interesting analogical book about the power of networking and having a cohort of people/peers you’re sharpening and being sharpened by. This is an excellent introductory book to those who don’t know what a mastermind group is and its purpose. It’s very simple, attention-grabbing, and intellectually stimulating! Fair warning: It will probably make you want to join or start a mastermind group after reading it! Great read, and I highly recommend it! Overall rating: 8/10

6. The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday - Fantastic book about taking a different perspective of the problems you might be facing, and how to utilize them to your advantage. I’d say this is another world opener type book and would put it close to the introduction to the entrepreneurial lifestyle category. The illustrations they gave were very intuitive and interesting and really get your gears going on how to apply it to your own life. Unfortunately, it does get a little repetitive about halfway through and it lost my attention 3/4ths of the way. Still highly recommend it! Overall rating 8/10

7. Master Your Money by Ron and Michael Blue - really great book about getting a handle on your finances and putting the infrastructure and order in place that allows you to keep an eye on and manage your money. I’d say this is the more practical version of a lot of the content that Dave Ramsey puts out. Very practical and to the point, though it can be a bit of a difficult read. I will definitely need to go through it again as many of the concepts and ideas were very new to me and I need to get a better understanding of them. Overall rating: 9/10

8. Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis - I’ve always had this on my reading list and recently got an opportunity to listen to these on a long drive. Overall not bad, these are letters that require a bit more thought, and go into the temptations we face as we go through life. I wasn’t fully paying attention to it, and will need to give it another read before putting together a more comprehensive review. Overall rating 7/10

9. A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis - Really good book about the different thoughts and struggles people go through when dealing with great losses. I really love this book because of how raw and honest it is. Many things are shared in it most people would never share with another human being. The doubts, the pain, the uncertainty. Really beautifully written and very interesting. It’s a shorter read, something nice to read by the fire in the evening. Overall rating: 8/10

10. The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis - haven’t finished this book yet, but a really interesting read. This book is about the struggle of living a life in Christ vs worldliness and the desires we have of serving God and serving man. Really interesting read so far! Overall rating thus far into it: 7/10

11. Standing on the Promises by Doug Wilson - an excellent book about raising children in the Covenant. Not very much of this was new to me (as I was raised in a family that practiced much of what was written) but a really good read for some of the reasons behind why and how you should be raising your Children as believers. Really good read and I greatly recommend it to those looking to raise their kids as strong believers. Overall rating: 8/10

12. Rilla of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery - My favorite all-time historical fiction book, re-reading it for maybe the 14th time (I have a tradition of reading it during the winter). This is a part of the Anne of Green Gables series (the last book), about Anne’s daughter (Rilla) growing from a frivolous young girl into a woman during the first world war. Packed with dread, fear, sadness, desire, and hope, I never get tired of reading this book. Highly recommend! Overall rating: 10/10

We're just finishing up on the third quarter of 2021, and it's that time again for another brief overview of the books I've been blessed to read over the past three months!

It's been an interesting past few months with significant changes from my move across the United States and being out on my own for the first time and it's been difficult to prioritize reading as much as I did before. I'm not as pleased with the number of books I read this quarter, but I've started getting back into the rhythm of things in the past couple of weeks so I'm not too afraid I'll have a similar fourth quarter! 

1) Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne - a business book with the basic premise of finding oceans that aren't full of competition. Many markets are saturated with copied ideas, and everyone has to compete over speed, quality, and price. Where if you create your own market, or find one that has few people serving it, you have the opportunity to set the standards and build a reputation before it starts getting overly saturated. It goes into significant detail as to why you want to do this and how to go about it. Highly recommend!  

2) The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer - a personal development book focused on helping you not lose the forest for the trees and smelling the roses along the way. John Comer goes into detail about how easily we are caught up in the day-to-day stress of our life, and how much of a distraction that is from the life we're called to live in Christ and living that purpose. It goes into a lot of small practical things to slow your days down, enjoy the struggles, and be at peace. Another book I highly recommend! (We got to go through it as our book of the month for our mastermind group)

3) Boundaries by John Townsend and Dr. Henry Cloud - this book is one of those I would mark as a truly great book and I re-read it as soon as I finished it! This book is about setting boundaries with family, work, and "friendship" relationships. And showing that it's not honoring to God to over commit to people as you have to say no to someone, and if you're saying yes to your friends, you may be saying no to your family. It's really beneficial to help put your responsibilities in perspective, and especially for those who overthink things or feel like they're responsible for everybody's problems, it's a fantastic read. Both authors are Christian and write from a Christian perspective. Highly influential to me in saying yes and no to clients over the past couple of months. 

4) Gods At War by Kyle Idleman - Phenomenal book about the second commandment of not making any idols. Kyle walks through many modern-day misconceptions about what idols look like and give examples of placing work, money, toys, etc above God. I was recommended this by a good friend of mine I got to stay with on my move over to Tennesee. While I don't agree with some of the ideas put forth in the book, I do recommend it as an insightful read and helpful to see areas you may be placed above God. 

5) Read to Lead by Jeff Brown and Jesse Wisnewski - a book about reading books! Loved this book as it goes through the importance of reading and how significant of an impact it has on your life and how you lead those around you. They go into many practical tips and tricks to increase the number of books you read and ways to keep it sustainable. Very insightful and consider it an excellent read! As I told a friend recently - I'm still a little shocked at how cheap books really are, considering the amount of wisdom and insight they contain. 

6) What He Must Be ...if he wants to marry my daughter by Voddie Baucham Jr. - as anyone who has had a conversation with me that lasted longer than 10 minutes, knows that it's been on my heart for the past few months to get married and start a family. I was given this book as a thank you for helping volunteer at Fight Laugh Feast a couple of weeks back, and I flew through it in a couple of days! Voddie goes into the basic standards for what a man should be if he wants to get married, and gives a lot of insight as to what the Bible says what a biblical man should look like. While the audience is targeted toward the fathers of eligible daughters, I found it very practical and helpful!

7) Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki - recommended by someone I have a great deal of respect for and look up to @Eric Burton, this book is another one I would put in the category of a truly great book. It breaks down the mindsets of a typical 9-5 employee (your poor dad) and someone who builds and creates wealth (your rich dad). The whole book is written in stories that are extremely engaging and honestly keep you so interested to read the next page it's not even funny. I found it really difficult to put this book down and get to work! The book is about economics and ways to build and create wealth. I highly highly recommend it to everyone, and it could be described as an intro book to entrepreneurship.

8) The Travelers Gift by Andy Andrews - another book recommended to me by someone I have a lot of respect for and look up to @Derek Stone. This book is an allegory for taking charge of your life and pulling yourself out of victim thinking. Without spoiling it, it could be described as a similar story to a Christmas Carol. This is another one of those books I would put down with the truly great books of the world. Infinitely valuable and very inspiring. Several points in this book brought me to tears, and others real fear. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone and may pick up a couple of extra copies to hand out!

9) Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris - a book about taking charge of your life from a younger age and doing the good hard things that God put us on this earth to do. I've wanted to write a book for some time now and reading through this, it literally talks about most of the things I wanted to write about! It's an extremely inspiring, engaging, and easy understand book. I highly recommend it for all parents of teens, and teens themselves. You're given a purpose on this earth, and you need to take ownership. You can't wait until you're out of high school or college to begin taking responsibility for it. 

I've got a dozen more books on my reading list and am really excited to be diving into them!

Too often nowadays we are caught up in this sense of safety and security, and to some, it's become the be-all end for life. 

Go to a good school, get a good job with good benefits, and then you'll be secure. 

Planning your life has gotten to the point where you have to get every single duck lined up before you can begin your journey. 

I personally believe that it is not how we are meant to live according to the Bible and that we too often tend to trust in our own abilities and wanting to be "absolutely certain" before entering a new world. But is that really how we're supposed to live as Christians? 

Does God tell us to wait until we fully understand everything before trusting that He will provide, strengthen and guide us? 

Going back to the fall of Adam, the original sin was that Adam wanted to be like God, knowing good and evil.

What are we saying when we have to fully understand every aspect of the journey before beginning on it? Are we not really saying that "hey God, I appreciate the offer, but I got this, I can figure it all out on my own." 

I think this applies to every age category, but especially those of us in our teen years. So much is uncertain and new, and the world around us is clamoring for safety. "You need to get this job, then get this house, save your money, max out your retirement, get married, and have two kids, then you'll be safe and happy." Don't get me wrong, I don't think any of those things are bad, but only the extent to which having your life perfectly planned out before beginning is bad. 

God didn't create us to be robots, just going through the same sequence of life. He created us all to be unique, and all with a specific purpose. He didn't say it was going to be easy. He said to trust Him. 

The parable of the talents is an excellent example of this. God gives us each a portion, and we are not to bury it in the backyard, but rather to go out and multiply that what we've been entrusted. He never said it would be easy or a sure thing, but He tells us to trust in Him and multiply what He has entrusted to us, not to sit on our hands until OUR perfect plan is ready to go into action. 

None of this is to say that planning isn't useful and good. Only that planning can sometimes take president overtaking action.

One of my favorite quotes is “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.” - Eisenhower

Life is a battle, a struggle, but it's a good fight, and one ultimately satisfying and fulfilling.

The books I've found infinitely valuable and I frequently re-read are those written in a purely informative way without any expectation of return from doing so. Some of my favorites in these categories are autobiographies, and some books I like to call "old wisdom."

I just set 30m on the timer and started writing…

Two months ago, I moved out of my parent’s place for the first time to drive across the country by myself to “find my fortune.” 

I just turned eighteen, and I’m in my first weird slump since moving out. I’d been preparing for the time when I’d moved out for many years now, and for the most part, it’s been all that I’ve expected it would be. Finding a place to rent, finding the means for transportation, finding a good Church, finding good friends and work was significantly more straightforward than I anticipated. 

What I wasn’t expecting was how significantly those I spent the most amount of time with would immediately affect my own motivation and actions. 

Growing up, my parents built a business (hardlotion.com) from the ground up, and having nine kids, meant that much of our earlier years were spent in the company preparing products for shipment and fulfilling orders. Because of this, there was always an atmosphere of entrepreneurship and thinking outside the box in the family. Which set us apart from many other families we knew, and many were and are surprised with our upbringing.

Over the years, greatly in part to my parents for instilling a sense of adventure and excitement around building our own futures and not going the traditional path; I’ve been writing and reading very consistently and built it into a habit which I attribute the majority of where I’ve gotten to today and the trajectory to which I am headed. 

That all changed as soon as I moved out. Before, I would have pretty clean and consistent routines and habits that were effortless to maintain and grow. 

However, since getting out on my own, I did not consider how significant of an impact my parents and even siblings had on my consistency. It was suddenly much harder to keep to a strict time of when I would go to bed, what I ate, and even my reading and writing. 

Moving across the country into an environment in which I knew almost no one. Trying to figure out all the logistics of getting an apartment when the government doesn’t see me as a real human (except interestingly when it comes to taxes) and finding enough work to not have to get a normal job upon my arrival was something I’d never experienced (nor did I know anyone that had done it before). It was a bit scary in some senses, but my sense of adventure and excitement and faith that this was the direction the Lord had for me well overshadowed any significant doubts I had. 

The trouble was, that since I didn’t know anyone, and I had to discover so many new things on my own for the first time - my internal sense of comfort was completely reset. There was, and still is this weird sense of trust I am living in right now that has actually kept me really calm and what was left of my shyness seems to have gone away. This all sounds great, however, since my comfort compass was reset, I now found it really difficult to be as strict with my dieting habits, when I went to bed, reading, and writing. 

I’m ashamed to say that the blog I was so proud to keep very updated, hasn’t had a post in several months. 

It got to the point where my routines before I left home were so extensive and set, that to any outsider, it might seem outrageous to start up from scratch. Basically, I had built my own systems and quality meters around my habits and routines that would be difficult to fulfill without a lot of work. 

This meant that as my work and social life started to grow, I didn’t feel I had the time to keep up with my former good and healthy habits as I saw them as huge time consumers or mountains I wouldn’t see the benefit from climbing until much later and so wouldn’t begin the climb. 

Recently, I got a little fed up with my own attitude and how much time I am starting to spend on social media mindlessly browsing videos and images that I decided to just “do one small thing” which in this case was writing a blog post.

Immediately in my mind, I started getting thoughts of “but what do you write about” “you don’t have the time” and “it’s not going to be worth the effort.” Some of which were legitimate, but I had to start somewhere, and even if I produced two sentences, that was better than nothing.

So I wrote on my to-do for the day “write a blog post in under 30 minutes” without any other rules. It could be whatever I wanted it to be about, I just had to do it in an uninterrupted 30 minute time block. 

I’ve got 65s left on the timer and just doing a quick once over before hitting publish. 

Hopefully more to come,

-Gideon

I've got a fan pointed at me in the background, and I can snap my fingers all day long without the mic picking up a peep, it's fantastic!

One of the things Dr. Andy Garrett has you do throughout his course answers a few questions to check in on your WHY.

So being me, I decided to build a Monday board for it and have it send me random reminders throughout the day to check in on what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and where it's taking me. On top of that, I created a basic web app on my phone that allows me to pull up the questionnaire and automatically get it time-stamped and added to my database to review later!

I honestly get really carried away sometimes with the features and integrations that Monday has, and I use it for quite a bit of non-work-related things to keep track of everything in one place like these motivation check-ins!

I recorded a short video walking through what I put together today and the ideas behind the creation of the site and why I used which words I did.

I really struggle with putting things into words, and what I do for a living isn't any better.

Anyone that knows me longer than 5 minutes, knows me, knows that I fumble over myself when inevitably get the question "So, what do you do for work?" 

I got called out this morning in my mastermind call as a man in the middle, and with the help of the guys in my group, I'm starting to slowly make some progress on putting what I do into words. 

At the same time, I'm also finally putting together my website and using Canva for the rough outline and design of it before moving it over to WordPress. 

I'm currently going through Dr. Andy Garrett's Authentic Growth Blueprint and this week's module is on Intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic motivation is when you're motivated to do something based on outside conditions - expectations, power, money, acceptance - where your actions aren't necessarily in alignment with what you would do without those outside influences. It should go without saying that being motivated by outside forces not put on by yourself isn't great, especially long term. If you condition yourself to think that you can only be accomplished or successful by how much money you make, or how much power you have, there won't be enough power or money in the world to satisfy that need.

On some level, we all struggle with extrinsic motivation. And you can see figures today who saught great wealth or prestige only to have a mid-life crisis and throw it all away realizing that there is no meaning or fulfillment in those things alone.

Intrinsic motivation is having a higher standard. Not being defined by the outside world, but setting your own standards for success. It's a higher moral power that you answer to. My favorite quote by Dr. Andy Garrett in this introductory video is "Intrinsic motivation makes the only path the high road" meaning that if you're motivated by a higher standard outside of other's thoughts or opinions, it makes the only way forward, the right one.