Category: Reading For Growth

Useful self-help: ‘The 4% Fix’ by Karma Brown

“The 4% Fix” by Karma Brown is a self-help book that focuses on the concept of small changes leading to big results. The 4% Fix refers to making small, manageable changes that can have a significant impact on your life, such as changing your diet, exercise habits, or mindset.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the importance of setting achievable goals and making small changes to reach them. The author encourages readers to focus on making changes that are sustainable and to avoid overwhelming themselves with too many changes at once.

The second part of the book provides practical tips and strategies for making small changes in various areas of life, such as nutrition, exercise, and productivity. The author also addresses common obstacles that can prevent people from making changes and provides strategies for overcoming them.

The final part of the book focuses on mindset and how it can affect our ability to make changes. The author emphasizes the importance of a growth mindset, which is the belief that our abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort and hard work. She encourages readers to adopt a growth mindset and to embrace failure as a learning opportunity.

Overall, “The 4% Fix” is a practical and motivational guide for anyone looking to make positive changes in their life. The book emphasizes the power of small changes and provides practical strategies for making them a part of your daily routine.

This Is How It’s Going With My Current Read

Think Like a Breadwinner: A Wealth-Building Manifesto for Women Who Want to Earn More (and Worry Less) 

By: Jennifer Barrett

Hello, Neighbour

I am currently on page 67 of this book and I thought I’d share what I’ve learned so far. I started reading this at the same time as Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damnilola Blackburn but I’m finally focusing on this one. Here’s a bit of what I am liking so far.

From a young age, a lot of us buy into the princess ending – that at some point our partners (who take on the “traditional” masculine role) will be the one to carry most of the financial burden in the relationship. Some of us are conditioned to hold onto many false financial beliefs that result in us not preparing for the possibility or the benefits of being breadwinners.

The messages fed to us are also in the media, for example, where men are advised on how and where to invest, women are told to budget (usually for something like the latest designer bag that no one wants to miss out on).

This book raises awareness of how women need to take charge of their financial futures. It discusses the challenges we have with imagining ourselves as breadwinners and how it can be difficult adjusting to that role whether it is by choice or because of circumstances such as divorce. It also helps to challenge ourselves in changing the stories we tell ourselves when it comes to finances, such as, “I’m not good with money, I leave all the big money decisions to my husband.”

I love how it discusses the advantages of this financial freedom which benefits not only the woman but her family as well, if she has one. It also shares stories of the men who earn less than their partners and do not have a problem with it, as opposed to the social belief that men who are out-earned by their partners will cheat, leave or become abusive,

This is what I’ve gathered from the book so far and I can see it promises to be of real benefit.

What are you currently reading?

Reading: The Ten Types of Human

Author: Dexter Dias

Neighbours,

One of the reasons I enjoy reading is to make sense of the world around me, of myself and others. I picked up this book not knowing exactly what to expect (hurried book shopping) and from reading the first few pages I knew it was a book I was willing to pay attention to.

The biggest feature of the book that made it worth my time is the fact that Dexter Dias based all this work on research, and where he doesn’t have the answers he says so. The ten types of human in the book explain our behaviour and what our mental structures have to do with it.

Each type has a name and under each one he strives to figure out why that type is so and if there is any evolutionary explanation to that type. He explores our genetic inheritance and social learning, and how they contribute to our behaviour.

In the first type he explores what (if we do) we owe to those around us. Our ability to empathise, what it costs us and how our brains have systems that help us with this ‘cost’. Another chapter looks at ostracism, how it works and the effect it has on us. Think about how you feel when unfollowed or not followed back on social media, or when you were not picked for a game when you were kid, or not being included in certain gatherings. How do we cope and respond to being ostracised and how do we repair that pain of invisibility?

Dias asks and searches for answers about us and aggression. Are we naturally aggressive or is it an adaptation? One of my favourite chapters (not easy to choose one) was the one on nurturing, where I learned so much about parenting and/or nurturing. There’s a lot of valuable information here on childhood experiences and how they affect, say, our future nurturing, whether parental love is conditional or conditioned, and how nurturing and caregiving impact the behaviour of children and the structure of their brains.

This book is mind-blowing, it is page after page of enlightening information. Dias travels to different countries and meets a variety of people who are these types and their stories are heart-breaking as well as inspiring. Not only does the book ask and attempt to answer these questions about humanity, but it also stirs something in you to ask questions, always.

The Ten Types of Human is necessary to help us engage with each other in a different way, with understanding and an open-mind to how we are and why we do the things we do. It can help you clear some things about yourself and figure out certain things that you’ve probably not been able to deal with within yourself. It’s absolutely great for parenting, in understanding your children and dealing with parenting or caregiving, as well as understand our parents and some of their decisions.

It is a huge book but I promise you, every page is worth it.

Enjoy, Neighbour!