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Book Review | Part 2 | The Year Of Less by Cait Flanders

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~MINDFUL CONSUMER~ "When you want less, you consume less and you also need less money." ⁣ ⁣ Three years before the shopping ban, Cait had already started her transformation journey and got herself out of debt, quit drugs and alcohol, and improved her eating habits to stay healthy. But when she realised she was still stuck in the cycle of consumerism, she finally decided to address the real problem - her impulsive spendings. The idea of a year-long shopping ban was thus born to push her into becoming a mindful consumer. She took inventory and decluttered all the things that wasn't adding value to her life. She also started a blog to keep accountability.⁣ ⁣ Easier said than done. Such big challenge comes with even bigger struggles. Changing her daily habits and routines was tougher than she thought as she was emotionally connected to them. The hardest of this was confronting the triggers and urges because our bad habits are never completely gone. They're "lurking b

Book Review| Part 1 | The year of less by Cait Flanders

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~ LESS IS MORE ~ ⁣⁣ I'm currently reading this book about an amazing story of a young woman who decided to change her life over by employing a rather radical step - banning shopping for an entire year. I'll review the book later when I finish it.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ I just want to share a little about the resonance it has with the current situation. ⁣⁣Corona pandemic has put our world to a standstill. People are dying, economy is crashing and fear is creeping. But in every obstacle there is a way. In every difficult situation there is a lesson to learn. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ I don't think there has been a better time than today to understand the importance of why having less is more. I know all of us who are safe today have had a moment of contemplation and maybe for the first time in a long time you have not worried about anything else except your life.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ We often keep our lives so busy, messy and noisy that we don't usually hear our own voices and surround ourselves with things that don't ma

Book Review | Part 2 | The Latte Factor by David Bach

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Add caption ~ LIVE RICH NOW⁣ ~ ⁣ What I love about this book is that it's not only focused on money, but stressed more on the human habits and values that make money more valuable and the use of it more meaningful. It's told in a fictional story of a young woman Zoey who's stuck in a money trap unable to find a way out, which made reading it so much fun.⁣ ⁣ The author has shared three secrets to come out of this trap. ⁣ ⁣ 1. Pay yourself first (saving for the future): Pay yourself the first hour of each day's income, which is roughly about 10% (atleast). This idea is not just about saving money but developing a mindset of putting yourself first by setting aside a certain amount for yourself before you pay to others. ⁣ ⁣ 2. Don't budget - make it automatic: We have always been told to budget but the author here says dont. Inorder to develop a habit of saving, the author says its best to do away with the discipline of budgeting which is hard for most peopl to keep. He

BOOK Review | Part 1 | The Latte Factor by David Bach

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~ YOU ARE RICHER THAN YOU THINK⁣ ~ ⁣ In monetary term, who would you consider rich? Someone who has enough money to buy a house and an expensive car? A millionaire? Billionaire? I will consider a person who is financially independent as rich irrespective of how much money he has simply because he has one less thing to worry about or one more reason to be happy about. ⁣ Most of us wait to get to a place, a position or a figure to become rich and unfortunately wait forever. Most people don't get there and those who get there find themselves waiting again to get to another place. The more we earn the more we spend. "The problem is not making money, it's keeping it." One of the steps suggested in the book is PAY YOURSELF FIRST - making a habit of saving first instead of spending first. When you spend you pay to others, when you save you pay to yourself. This is such an empowering thought. ⁣ I've finished few chapters of this book and what I've learnt so far is tha

Book review | Think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill

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Do you believe that there is such thing as the subconscious mind? I ask because some people think it's pure fiction. Are we at the mercy of random thoughts or are we in total control of our lives?  Napoleon Hill says that the subconscious mind is the connecting link between the finite mind of man and infinite intelligence, the power of which can be tapped voluntarily through auto-suggestion. ⁣⁣⁣⁣ I read this amazing book in March 2020 and learnt some amazing stuffs about the power of the human mind. The book starts off with this powerful phrase "thoughts are things". How true is that. Everything starts from a single thought whether it's our feelings, emotions, perception and actions. It talks about the power of our subconscious mind and how to harness that potential to achieve anything in life. ⁣⁣ The book covers several steps necessary for acquiring wealth and achieving success in life including having a burning desire, complete faith, definite purpose, organised pla

Recursion by Blake Crouch | Book review

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I love reading books that are about time, memory and consciousness. I became a fan of Blake Crouch after reading his book Dark Matter last year. I knew I had to read this one too. I read this last month and he blew my mind for the second time. I'm still on recovery mode 😄⁣⁣ ⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ In Recursion by Blake Crouch, there is a 'False Memory Syndrome' epidemic fast spreading and this is causing people to commit suicide. People are getting flashbacks of memories that do not belong to them, but they strongly feel like they have lived those memories giving them deja vu moments but of the worst kind.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ What is causing this epidemic? An invention of 'The Memory Chair' allows people to travel back in time and change memory to change reality, but not without a repercussion. When a memory is changed in the past to change a reality, the memory of the past reality comes back in the form of false memory. In the new reality, every other person connected in some way or the

Man's search for meaning by Viktor Frankl | Book review

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Do we really understand the meaning when we talk about life, love and hope? We think we do in our comfortable lives and petty problems. But can we still find meaning in life, love and hope even in a state of absolute despair, in hopelessness, in the face of death? ⁣ This is probably the greatest inspirational book ever written. I'm so glad I read this book last month. I'm moved. Here is a story of a person who survived the holocaust because of his indomitable spirit and conviction. But you wonder what gave him such courage and conviction when people around him were dying of hunger, of torture, of losing their minds. How did he find hope in such a hopeless place? How did he survive when there were no conceivable ways of surviving? Here are some of my biggest takeaways:⁣ ⁣ ~ INTENSIFICATION OF INNER LIFE. When you are faced with a concentration-camp-like situation, the only place you can find hope and peace is within yourself. Such times call for soul searching, to look