Okay Linda, here's one for you! My former boss gave everyone in our department this book before she left to became the Chief Operating Officer for GiANT Impact, John Maxwell's company. How cool is that by the way? I was telling someone that the other day and she was so impressed that I worked from someone who has such a fancy job now! Anyway, the book was Put Your Dream to the Test by John Maxwell. One of my employees asked me to do a book study with her on it during our weekly one-on-one meetings. Ashlie's such a good employee. :) We actually finished up a while ago, but I realized I hadn't written about it.
The book has 10 questions to ask yourself about your dream for your life. It helps you determine if your dream is really your dream, if it's big enough, if it's really what you want to do, if you can realistically achieve it, and more. It was great to go through it with an employee. It brought us closer together and, hopefully, showed her that I care about her dreams and her as a person, not just her as an employee. It also forced me to talk about my own dreams, which wasn't easy for me. I had to figure out what my dream was for one thing! And no, I'm not going to share it with you yet. I'm still struggling with it, and although the book was extremely helpful in helping me determine what I need to do if that is my dream, and helped me believe that this is probably my dream, I'm still not sure so I'm going to keep it quiet for now. Sorry for the tease! That's not what's important anyway. The book is what's important in this case, and it was a great book. I don't like a lot of business books (despite part of my job being to select books that are part of our campaigns - I only pick ones I like!), I did enjoy this book. It's not really a business book anyway - it's a self-help book (not that I normally like those either). I do recommend it if you have a dream, but you don't think you can achieve it or aren't sure how to. It did help Ryan and I get focused back on our finances. We've always been pretty good with our money, so we had loosened up a little this past year, but this helped me see how financial security is a big part of my dream and how I need to be even better, focusing on getting the house paid off and being able to live on one salary. (Not that either one of us is quitting our jobs! It's just that all the layoffs and things scared us - what would we do if one of us lost our job? What changes would we have to make? What can we do now so we don't have to panic if that happened? One of us could get seriously sick or injured, and while we have good insurance, would it really cover what we make now? That sort of thing.) Anyway, it helped me see how that fits into my bigger picture for my life instead of just being about money.
Sounds like a useful read. I mostly stick to fiction but I do occasionally enjoy a good self help book. My favorite SHB of all is The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. Being the colossal reader that you are, you should check it out sometime. It's basically about how you can use your intuition to avoid being the victim of violent crime.
ReplyDeleteI will have to give it a try. I'm kind of paranoid and have a plan of attack prepared in case I ever get attacked, but it would be good to be even more prepared and avoid such situations altogether.
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