Giovanni Dienstmann is a meditation and self improvement blogger, and also an iOS app developer. His app WeSync has been featured in national television in Australia. He coaches people in meditation at Coach.me and blogs at LiveAndDare.com. His goal is to “bring meditation and personal growth to a million people”. These are his good things.
Good things to read.
Essentialism: The Discipline Pursuit of Less.This is definitely one of my top three books this year. We all kind of know that we are too distracted, that we need to slow down and focus. How much of our daily activity is really productive and important; how much is just being busy? The author reminds us that we need to say no to many good things, so we can say YES to a very few great things – which are our maximum point of contribution and satisfaction in this world. He explores in detail how we can untangle ourselves from habits and mindsets that compels us to say yes to non-essential things, and gives us tools to live the “essentialist way”. If you like to explore more about keeping to the essential, take a look here.
Predictably Irrational – The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions. I think this is a mandatory read for every human-being. We believe we are very rational in our choices, and yet we are not. This lack of self-knowledge about what actually drives most of our decisions is the cause of a lot of regret, stress, waste of time, and waste of money. You will learn about how to avoid pitfalls when comparing your options, how to not be baited into bad decisions (by marketers, friends, of whoever), how to make more accurate judgements about our behaviour, among other interesting things.
The Personal MBA – a world-class business education in a single volume. If you are a business owner, is starting a side-business, or are thinking about it, and you could buy only one book – this should be it. The author, a successful businessman himself, went to the trouble of studying and summarising thousands of books on business related subjects, in this concise and clear guide. The sections of the book that treat about “The Human Mind”, “Working with Yourself” and “Working with Others” are insightful even for those that have no interest in business.
Good things to watch
Hero, with Jet Li. This is a very inspiring movie for me. Besides the majestic fight scenes, this movie teaches a lot about bravery, sacrifice, virtue, and mastery. If you are familiar with the concept of “Flow” from author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, you will see instances of it all over the movie – from the training of the swordsman to the work of the master calligraphist.
What the Bleep Do We Know. This is not a “mainstream” movie, so probably most of you won’t know about it. It is a mixture of a drama with a documentary on the latest findings of quantum physics and neurology, and how this challenges our world view. Do you think you know what reality is? Are you aware how much you are affecting it? Watch this movie with an open mind, and be ready to ask yourself some very deep and thought-provoking questions.
Inception. By now you know already that I like some “weird things”… I love exploring the idea (or reality?) that our life is a dream, and this movie gives a nice image for it. It has all the elements of a movie to be loved: engaging, mind-bending, surprising, great production. No wonder it is in the top 500 of iMDB!
Good things to use
Your mind. Seriously! The most important skill any human being can develop is how to use one’s own mind. This includes your power of focus, self-control, self-knowledge, and the types of emotions that we house inside of us. If you know your mind, and how to use it, there is nothing you cannot achieve. Like the Buddha said, “Your mind is either your best friend or your worst enemy”. No place in the world we can get away from our thoughts. And, if the mind does not cooperate, no amount of skill, knowledge, or money, can give us either success or happiness.
What do all wealthy people and word-class athletes have in common? They all understand that mindset is everything; they have put time into developing themselves, into personal growth.
One of the most essential tools for personal growth – and for mastering your mind! – is meditation. I have been doing meditation daily for over 14 years and it has transformed my life and taught me so much. Exploring this subject further would be out of scope here, but I’ll be happy to personally guide any reader from 27GoodThings. Just contact me and say you came from 27GoodThings.
Connect with Giovanni on Twitter, @
