When I was a young boy I was a huge reader. I learned to read a bit early and I remember wanting to read everything I could get my hands on. Dr. Seuss, dictionaries, encyclopedias, you name it. This carried on until junior high and the advent of puberty. This is when most of us in our culture learn to stifle our imagination and uniqueness and trade it for acceptance into the herd.
People do it every day. They talk to themselves. They see themselves as they’d like to be. They don’t have the courage you have, to just run with it.
-Tyler Durden
This situation seems to me like a bit of a double edged sword. There is definitely safety in the heard. If you stray too far from the herd you risk being “labeled” something undesirable. My lord, nobody wants that. You have to learn to do the “social dance” in order to function effectively in the world. It is important for us to learn
the many, many lessons about how to get along in this human situation that can only be learned in social settings. Even our blood family just another kind of social institution.
The problem is that a large percentage of us trade a little bit too much of our individuality and curiosity and start conforming to a model of life that doesn’t really promote health or personal happiness. The movie Fight Club really hits a nerve the protaganist says, “We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.” We get so afraid to go against the grain that we might live the rest of our days without ever returning to that childlike state.
Child-LIKE but not child-ISH. Being child-ISH would just pertain to farts and toys and other tomfoolery. The word child-LIKE alludes to the way a 
child is imaginative, open-minded, and free of assumptions and prejudgments. A child has an honest-to-god genuine curiosity about the world and wants to solve any mystery they become aware of.
Lets Face it, life does not get easier as you get older. It doesn’t get easier when you have to support yourself away from the nest. It doesn’t get easier when you get married or when you are responsible for raising children. These can be amazingly positive events, but they do complicate things. There are also life events that are hard to find the bright side of. Some things happen to us or to the people around us that carry the power to completely derail your trajectory in life and leave you unhinged.
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
-Viktor Frankl
Life doesn’t get easier when you get blindsided by a divorce or lose your job out of the blue. Life most certainly doesn’t get easier after you lose a young child to cancer or if one of your parents commits suicide when you need them the most. Lets face it, shit happens, and we have to deal with it. How you deal with it and the story you tell yourself in your head every day determines the quality of your life. That voice in our 
head is actually the only thing you can have any TRUE control over.
I love the example set by Viktor Frankl, the Jewish psychiatrist who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp. His message was that regardless of the physical, intellectual, or psychological abuse he was subjected to in the camp, no one could cause him to think something he didn’t want to think. The same is true for us whether we want to believe it or not. When the shit hits the fan it is the hardest, but also of the utmost importance to maintain control of “that voice.” We need to be thinking in a way that is going to lead us down the path of learning and growth.
I went through a series of life changing events in a relatively short period of time and the way I looked at myself and reality had to be shaken up like an etch-a-sketch. It was right at this time that rather than slipping into depression and complacency I picked up a book that changed everything for me. Then I picked up another and another. I rekindled my love for reading and my curiosity and enthusiasm for learning new things. I now only seek out books that have the power to completely change a person’s life.
Seriously, just pick one of these and read it. It doesn’t matter which one you pick. They’re all amazing in no particular order, but after you pick one, you’ll be looking to quickly pick a second one. I wish I would have read books of this caliber ten years ago and that’s why I want to share them. These books have the power to change the way you think about yourself and the world WITHOUT having to go through a traumatic life event.
Consider each one of these a way to undo some bad programming and upgrade your operating system:
The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton
Through the research of Dr. Lipton and other leading-edge scientists, stunning new discoveries have been made about the interaction between your mind and body and the processes by which cells receive information. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology, that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our thoughts.
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
Don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform your life to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. Be Impeccable With Your Words, Don’t Take Anything Personally, Don’t Make Assumptions, and Always Do Your Best!
The Art of Living by Bob Proctor
This book just came out in Dec 2015 and I am already blown away by how profound it has been. The topics span what our creative faculties are and how to use them, why we need to unlearn most of the false beliefs we’ve been indoctrinated with our whole lives, and how our intellects have the ability not only to put us ahead in life, but also to be our biggest detriment. Erase negative thought patterns and retrain the brain for success.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Napoleon Hill and his philosophy of success and effectiveness in the world is the first book that condensed the wisdom of the great thinkers and billionaires of the early 1900s. His mentors were men like Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. This book is highly recommended by every single successful person whom I have studied. Simply put, we become what we think about. So we need to be disciplined and direct.
We are so amazingly lucky to live in a day where we can literally come online and have any book imaginable shipped to our house in many times less than 48 hours. We need to sit for a minute and reflect on the fact that we live in a time where information and wealth is more abundant than it has ever been before. I am grateful from the bottom of my soul for the fact that I am alive at this very moment. Every trial and tribulation that I have been through on this journey pales in comparison
to what amazing things are possible to achieve.
I am so thankful that I can now pass the knowledge I learned from these books, and many more like them on to my children and grandchildren. If none of these books even slightly peak your interest, please look around and find something that tickles your fancy. Let today be the day you start reading again. I heard someone say the other day that in the age of information, ignorance is a choice. That is a damn fact that you simply can’t deny.
For Knowledge itself is power.
-Francis Bacon
My family and I moved down to Southern Texas in 2014. Prior to that we had been living in Chicago, so we couldn’t get enough of the sun and the year round pool access. Being in the sun much more than we were previously accustomed to had us using way more sunscreen than before. Having to apply sunblock on my two young daughters’ bodies almost every day (sometimes multiple times per day) really caused me to start paying attention to the ingredients in this stuff.
The two brands I had in my bag at the time, along with about every major name brand, and even the cheap-o store brands contain toxic chemicals that actually accelerate damage to the body and skin they are supposed to protect. Be on the lookout for these 5 dangerous chemicals on your sunscreen and put it back on the shelf if you haven’t bought it yet!!!
Linked to lowering the birthrate in babies whose mother’s had high exposure during pregnancy. Some also say it my be linked to higher rates of melanoma, the very cancer we are trying to protect ourselves from. Also linked to hormone disruption, the development of allergies in the body, and cell damage. Releases free radicals.
Quickly breaks down under UV exposure and is one of the biggest free radical generators. Free radicals are high energy particles that damage cells and DNA, cause cancer, and speed up the aging process.
Although vitamin A is a necessary nutrient for health, it degrades under UV exposure and releases the same free radicals causing genetic mutations and increasing cancer risk. When used by pregnant women, it has been linked to fetal brain swelling, organ toxicity, and developmental toxicity.
A common preservative in many beauty products shown to cause estrogen disruption and immunotoxicity. Also associated with infertility, neurotoxicity, abnormal testicular development, allergies, benign tumors of the uterus and digestive tract, asthma, breast cancer, and even contribute to obesity.
Sunblocks use a plethora of chemical fragrances to make their smell more tolerable to the user including phthalates. Usually called “artificial fragrance” which is the umbrella term for this group of chemicals. Known to cause neurotoxicity and immune system toxicity. Linked to cancer, allergies, birth defects, and even nervous system disorders.
want to steer clear. I don’t know about you but I buy just about everything but food online. What you want to be looking for instead is one with the main ingredient ZINC OXIDE or even Titanium Dioxide. These sit on the skin differently and don’t come with the host of alleged side effects. Even your buddy Dr. Oz recommends making the switch so please don’t take my word as an expert authority. Do your own homework.
