Tribes: On Homecoming and Belonging, by Sebastian Junger

I didn’t highlight this one a lot because it wasn’t mine. But here are a few quotes I couldn’t pass up:

“Men in the peaceful areas were depressed because they couldn’t help their society by participating in the struggle” (pg 49).

“Air raids failed to trigger the kind of mass hysteria that government officials had predicted” (pg 51).

“What catastrophes seem to do - sometimes in teh span of a few minutes - is turn back the clock on ten thousand years of social evolution. Self-interest gets subsumed into group interest because there is no survival outside group survival, and that creates a social bond that many people sorely miss” (pg 66).

Grade: B+

There wasn’t much new or groundbreaking, but there were a few great reminders of how important tribes are to mankind and how danger and pain and suffering can actually be agents to draw us together, rather than pull us apart.

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Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers who Ruled the Seven Seas

“As the story goes, Alexander the Great once captured a pirate and questioned him, asking, ‘How dare you molest the sea?’ The pirate answered, ‘How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate and a thief. You, with a great navy, molest the whole world and are called an emperor’” (pg 5).

The “bad girl goes good” archetyp:

“a wild woman is tamed and surrenders to her destined gender role. This type of story is perennially popular with male historians as a way of diminishing the power of a warrior woman’s legend. It is meant to teach the reader that although a woman can have her fun and possibly even do something great, in the end, she will go home and raise babies like she is supposed to” (pg 12).

Grade: C

For a historian nut, this is probably more interesting. As is, outside of the above quotes, it was meh. I actually found she spoke more about the history of male pirates than anything, but I suppose too, that is to her point - men just don’t care enough to write about female pirates. Even great ones.

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MetaHuman: Unleashing your infinite potential, by Deepak Chopra

“Most of the limitations that you feel are imposed on you personally are actually self-imposed. Not knowing who you really are keeps you stuck in secondhand beliefs, nursing old wounds, following outworn conditioning, and suffering a sense of self-doubt and self-judgement” (pg. 13).

“If your involvement changes, so does your experience” (pg 46).

“When you are needy, fulfillment is unattainable” (pg 64).

“You weren’t shaped by what happened to you at birth. You were shaped by what you thought about those happenings” (pg 72).

“Being human means that anything can happen” (pg 77).

“If you want the mind to flow, make the workplace flow” (pg 85).

“Creativity is essential for solving complex problems - the kinds we often face in a fast-paced world . . . we have very little success in training people to be more creative. And there’s a pretty simple explanation for this failure: we’re trying to train a skill, but what we should be training is a state of mind” (pg 86).

“Absolute freedom is terrifying. it expands the unknown as far as the eye can see. That’s the main reaons that human history isn’t about absolute freedom; it is about testing the next boundary, and then moving beyond it to test a new boundary” (pg 99).

“We have defined human nature simultaneously as something to celebrate and something to fear” (pg 99).

“For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evengings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

“Babies are afraid of falling from a very early age, and they can’t learn to walk without testing the precarious state between falling down and staying on their feet. Clearly fear of falling loses out in the end . . . only Homo sapiens turn extreme risk-taking into fun” (pg 135).

Grade: C+

There’s some good stuff here, but to be honest, I didn’t even finish reading it - which is BIG for me! It was just a bit too much out there and not enough tangible, usable, application for the here and now. But, I got some good stuff from it. so there’s that.

Here’s perhaps a better, more fair summary:

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Conor McGregor: Singleness of Purpose, by Alexander Svelnis

“As much as anything, it has been Conor’s ability to absorb the wisdom of others that has transformed him into who he is today” (pg 6).

“Anyone who allows themselves to be controlled by their impulses and momentary desires will be limited in what they can achieve” (pg 11).

“It is only through deliberate efforts repeated day after day, week after week, month after month, that a person can work towards self-mastery” (pg. 11).

“The truth is that there is no single moment when everything comes together. Self-mastery is a process of constant rededication, one that often takes many years” (pg 15).

“We must get absolute freedom from everything that chokes our ambitions and makes us satisfied with mediocrity. We must persistently, painfully, and with all the willpower we can summon, eliminate our bad habits and build new ones that will bring us to the future we desire” (pg 16).

“Our preparation is more important than our opportunities. Our preparation makes our opportunities'“ (pg 18).

“We should focus less on the benefits of the action and more on the momentum created by performing it regularly” (pg 19).

“What leads to achievement is not so much brilliancy of intellect and vastness of resources, but persistency of effort and constancy of purpose” (pg 33).

“The answer is not out there my friend. The answer’s in here, in your heart, in your belief” (pg 41).

“Fear is one of the greatest enemies of a person’s advancement. it suggests caution at the moment everything depends on boldness.

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise

People of courage and action can take wrong steps and make mistakes - sometimes serious ones. But in a lifetime they accomplish far more than the timid, negative individual who has not enough belief in themselves to trust in their potential” (pg 42).

“Every moment that runs through a person’s mind has the power to contribute to or detract from shaping the reality they desire. Whatever we think about ourselves, whatever we choose to believe about our possibilities, is constantly reinforcing an atmosphere of either success or failure” (pg 43).

“Negativity kills determination, destroys ambition, ruins hope and plans. It makes us traitors to the things we long to do” (pg. 44)

“The person with absolute faith in their abilities is almost always the one most likely to triumph” (pg 45).

I will never shy away from a challenge. I will never shy away from defeat . . . we can either run from adversity, or we can face our adversity head-on and conquer it, and that’s what I plan to do . . . I’ll face it . . . I’ll learn from it (pg 54).

“Few things seem impossible for the person who never weakens under trials or defeats, who pushes forward when everyone else has surrendered, who gets up with greater resolve each time they are knocked down. Anyone who can smile confidently when everything has just gone against them shows that they have the makings of greatness, for no ordinary person can do this” (pg 56).

“Everywhere we see people doing small, trivial things when they have within them great possibilities'“ (pg 69).

“Both apathy and ambition are contagious. No matter how strong our will, we will always take hold of the spirit that dominates in our surroundings. It will make all the difference if we are with people who encourage and inspire us, rather than with those who throw temptations in our path and distract us from our purpose” (pg 70).

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances” (pg 79).

Purposeful Practice, McGregor believes, "is a process that makes refinements through repetition . . . and looks something like this:

1. Identify a weakness in your domain or expertise.

2. Form a clear mental picture of what it would look and feel like to gain the skill that would fill in that weakness.

3. Break the new skill down into its most basic components.

4. Find or design activities that target those components.

5. Perform those activities with intense focus.

6. Use various forms of feedback to refine and repeat steps 2 - 5 until each component can be reliably performed.

7. Carefully integrate each component until they feel natural and will not be forgotten (pg 96).

“What each of us will amount to in this world depends absolutely on the way we spend our time” (pg 116).

Grade: A

A must read for anyone. Packed full of great advice, inspiration, and clarity of how to endure difficulties and pursue dreams. Simple read. Powerful message.

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Flyboys, by James Bradley

“A dehumanized enemy is easy to kill, and Japanese soldiers were instructed that they were not dealing with humans at all but kichiku, or “devils.” The idea of treating the Chinese as beasts was not informal scuttlebutt but a command from officers whose directives had to be considered orders of the emperor” (pg 56).

Both sides played this word game because both sides would not have been able to fight, otherwise. The war and all that was needed demanded that they switch off their brains, their humanity, and simply destroy things that were not human.

“You see explosions all around you . . . these dark, threatening puffs of black smoke. You’re tense in your body, but you can’t do anything about it. You cannot take evasive action, so you get used to it. You think to yourself, ‘This is my duty and I have to do it’” (pg 194).

Kill or be killed. The same moral code all animals live by.

Yet, to see the war on film was to advertise an entirely different story.

Grade: B+

A difficult read, but an extremely important one as well. If ever you considered America to be above the rest decent in war, read again. We are terrible, just like the rest. And we’re better at it, which is why we’ve won so many times.

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Personal and Authentic, by Thomas C. Murray

“As those first few weeks went on, I watched Mark lead. When he’d walk into the faculty room, people would smile. He made people laugh. Never once did I hear Mark complain. He brought his best every single day - and it showed. Mark practiced what he preached to his students. his students loved him for it and so did the team around him” (pg 3).

“If you want to get through to {someone}, maybe it’s you who needs to change” (pg 4).

“I had been so focused on myself that I couldn’t see him. I had been so focused on my needs, so insistent that he conform to my rules and my ways of doing things, that I had completely missed looking at his heart and what it was that he really needed” (pg 5).

“When I changed my mindset from what I taught to who I taught, the real work came into focus” (pg. 6).

“Teachers are some of the only people on the planet who go to bed worrying about other people’s children” (pg. 6).

“In our schools and classrooms, we need to ensure that students are not experience rich and relationship poor” (pg 11).

“Education begins and ends with people, and we must own our roles in this process . . . we must love our kids more than we love our past. We must love our kids more than we love our habits. We must love our kids more than we love our own egos. We must love our kids enough to change ourselves when needed” (pg 16).

“We may not get the chance to choose which kids or families to serve, but we do get to decide what kind of climate we want to serve them in” - Jimmy Casas, (pg. 19).

The four pillars to create a dynamic learning culture:

1. Leadership

2. Interactions

3. Trust

4. Risk-taking

“What you do has far greater impact than what you say” - Stephen Covey (pg 20).

“Never underestimate your own unique talents and abilities; they have the power to shape the future of our schools and create a better learning culture that our students need and deserve” (pg 21).

“Toxic school cultures are real. Toxic, egocentric, self-serving “leadership” is real. Innovation will not thrive in these school and classroom cultures, and risk-taking will be minimal. In these spaces, it is ultimately the students who have the most to lose” (pg 22).

“The best leaders don’t point the finger outward before they point the finger at themselves and examine inward” (pg 22).

“If you work in a toxic environment, you have two choices: maximize blame and minimize impact or maximize impact and minimize blame” (pg 23).

“Right now, your school’s culture perfectly aligns with the mindset and actions of the adults in your building” (pg 23).

“In our schools and in our classrooms, every interaction matters . . . A single interaction can change a person’s life forever” (pg 30).

“We must own our actions. We must own our mindsets. We must own the opportunities that we take and those we pass on. We must own our roles in creating the cultures our kids need to thrive” (pg 30).

“to build a team, you must first build relationships” (pg 36).

How to build trust:

1. Be honest.

2. Be authentic

3. Be kind

4. Be Empathetic

5. Be Reliable

6. Be Consistent

7. Be Competent

For Tuesday morning meeting: “What’s your story? What are the life experiences that are core to who you are? What are the things in life that have molded your lens and impacted the way you see the world? How does your unique story impact your work as an educator? “ (pg 43).

“As we walk through the halls of our schools, do we seek to understand? When others walk by, do we see faces or do we see hearts? Do we see data points and test scores or do we see the stories and hearts of children? Do we see colleagues first or the people those colleagues are?” (pg 52).

“Being an educator and showing love for others while your own heart is hurting is an unbelievable courageous act” (pg 52).

“If our habits have more resilience than our purpose, our desired impact will be shackled” (pg 61).

“Informally interview the most senior people on your staff. Ask them to reflect on the changes they’ve seen over time as well as the things that hold true decades later and are as important as the day they started” (pg 65).

“Whether it comes from the school board lever where many decisions are made regarding the future of the district, at the building level where the year has been planned, or at the classroom level related to teaching and learning, one of the most extensive needs evident in today’s schools is a clear vision of the path forward. A lack of vision is often to blame for the feeling of one spinning their wheels or the cause of a large state of confusion” (pg 65).

“Everybody ends up somewhere in life. A few people end up somewhere on purpose” (pg 67).

“Fold a large sheet of paper into thirds horizontally. On the left section, identify five to ten skills or characteristics you want your students to have one year from today. In the center section, identify three to four ways in which you currently help cultivate each on of those skills. On the right-hand section, identify two to three ways you can further build each skill in your curricular area” (pg 70).

“To be learner-centered, it means that we, as educators, have to evolve as the world does . . . to be learner-centered, we have to understand how learners actually learn best. The more we understand how people learn, the more we can understand how to create more personal and authentic experiences” (71).

The Learning Sciences: 10 Key Principles

1. Learning is a process that involves effort, mistakes, reflection, and a refinement of strategies.

2. Thinking deeply about the to-be-learned material help students pay attention, build memories, and make meaning out of what they are learning

3. Communicating high expectations and keeping learners at the edge of their mystery helps students reach their potential.

4. Retrieval practice strengthens memory and helps students flexibly apply what they learn.

5. Spacing out learning and interweaving different content strengthens learning.

6. Students are more motivated to learn when they are interested, have a sense of autonomy, and understand the purpose behind what they are learning.

7. Students learn well when they feel safe and connected.

8. Collaboration and social interaction can be powerful learning experiences because they encourage deeper processing and engage the “social brain.”

9. Student’s physical well-being, including nutrition, sleep, and exercise, impacts learning.

10. The entire environment, from space to temperature to lighting, can affect learning (pg 73)

“Which principles resonate with you the most? Why? What’s one principle you could focus on more in your work?”

“Personal and authentic learning won’t happen if our classrooms are information rich yet experience poor” (pg 96).

“What moments of awe occur in your classroom or school? How do the learners respond? Which ones do they remember years later?” (pg 97).

“You’re always going to have critics and naysayers and people that are going to tell you that you won’t, that you can’t, that you shouldn’t. Most of those people are the people that didn’t, that wouldn’t, that couldn’t” - Tim Tebow (pg 156).

“It often seems that the more we step outside of the status quo, the more adversity stares us in the face. We may not get to choose the difficulties we face, but we must face difficulties to move forward in the work. What we do get to choose, however, is our internal reactions, our external responses, and what we’ll learn from the experience” (pg 158).

“Failure is an opportunity for a fresh start, only with more profound knowledge and understanding than you had the last time” (pg 162).

“It is your display of humility in the best of times and your fail-forward mindset and perseverance during the difficult times that will make those around you want to follow” and “the educators who make the largest impact talk about and focus on opportunities. Less effective educators talk about and focus on obstacles” (pg 166).

“Every time we fail is an opportunity to model how to get up and keep trying to those who look to us for direction” (pg 166).

“The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn” (pg 168).

“Your legacy will not be determined by the content you taught but by how well you served others” (pg 177).

“The legacy that you build and will leave behind someday is something you must own. So teach and lead with no regrets. Your impact can never, and will never, be erased. Your work matters, and it matters every single day” (pg 178).

Grade: A+

A must read for all teachers. Like most books of this nature, the middle can drag every now now and then, but the book end chapters are killer! Great, great stuff.

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Big Sky, by A. B. Guthrie, jr

The following quote says enough about this book:

“Thinking that way made a man feel friendlier toward God. Most folks made God out to be a mean somebody, putting notions in people’s heads and sending them to hell if they acted accordingly. God must have aimed for a man to enjoy himself, so He gave him a hankering for women and put women around him, and when a man pleasured himself, he was doing what God expected all along. Where was the sense in it otherwise? Why were squaws so many and so easy, if not for a purpose?” (pg 219).

Grade: F

Racist, sexist, and truly a pile of garbage.

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The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work, by Jon Gordon

“There comes a point where my kindness is detrimental to all of us. If I don’t change you you’re not going to grow, and if you don’t grow you can’t help us grow” (pg 24).

“Stop being disappointed about where you are and start being optimistic about where you are going. Focus on the future. Move beyond yourself. Instead of focusing on your own problems, focus on healing others with theirs” (pg 25).

“Chronic Complainers - they’re not only hurting themselves but annoying everyone else” (pg 42).

“Let your complaints about problems move you to solutions” (pg 47).

In response to why South America, for all its natural wonders and resources, still lagged far behind North America in terms of prosperity and progress. The President of Argentina responded with, “I have come to the conclusion. South America was discovered by the Spaniards in search of gold but North America was settled by the Pilgrims in search of God” (pg 55).

“In the process of building a positive culture you had to let some energy vampires off the bus . . . one person can’t make a team, but one person can break a team” (pg 60).

A positive environment and culture do not “happen by osmosis. It happens by relentlessly focusing on our culture and weeding out negativity” (pg 76).

“Winning is just a goal and not the focus. Winning is the by-product of great effort, leadership, coaching, teamwork, and positive energy . . . if you lead with truth, success will follow” (pg 79).

“Once you have your principles in place, then you can align your strategies, actions, and processes with our principles” (pg 83).

“Employees should never complain to someone who is not able to help with a solution. Mindless complaining serves no purpose and only sabotages morale and performance. Mindless complaining cultivates negativity and adversely affects the complainer and the person being complained to” (pg 96).

Grade: B

As with most Gordon’s books, it is a simple read packed with nuggets of truth that won’t blow your mind, but it will for sure encourage and remind and inspire a way of living. It’s definitely worth the read.

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Turn the Ship Around, by L. David Marquet

Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves” (pg xxii).

“People who are treated as followers have the expectations of followers and act like followers” (pg xxvi).

“We can all be leaders and, in fact, it’s best when we all are leaders” (pg xxvii).

“One of the things that limits our learning is our belief that we already know something” (pg 9).

“Are you and your people working to optimize the organization for their tenure, or forever? To promote long-term success, I had to ignore the short-term reward system” (pg 11).

“Do you give employees specific goals as well as the freedom to meet them in any way they choose?” (pg 21).

Great Questions:

• What are the things you are hoping I don’t change?

• What are the things you secretly hope I do change?

• What are the goods things we should build on?

• Why aren’t we doing better? (pg 24)

“Little things like lack of punctuality are indicative of much, much bigger problems” (pg 29).

“Achieve excellence, don’t just avoid errors” (pg 46).

“Resist the urge to provide solutions” (pg 50).

Great Questions:

• How do you respond when people in your workplace don’t want to change from the way things have always been done?

• What are some of the costs associated with doing things different in your industry?

• Do we act first, and think later? Or do we think first, and then change our actions? (pg 68).

Shift away from, “Request permission to . . . I would like to . . . what should I do about . . .” and move towards, “I intend to . . . I plan to . . . I will” (pg 83).

Great Questions:

• How comfortable are people in your organization with talking about their hunches and their gut feelings?

• How can you create an environment in which men and women freely express their uncertainties and fears as well as their innovative ideas and hopes?

• Are you willing to let your staff see that your lack of certainty is strength and certainty is arrogance?

• To what degree does trust factor in the above? (pg 107)

“Control without competence is chaos” (pg 128).

“Continually and consistently repeat the message” (pg 149).

“Specify goals, not methods” (pg 155).

“Clarity means people at all levels of an organization clearly and completely understand what the organization is about” (pg 161).

This book was another easy read that was packed full of great insight and wisdom. Perhaps my favorite part were the questions at the end of each chapter - great to use with staff and leadership.

Grade: A

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The Energy Bus, by Jon Gordon

“Positive people, positive communication, positive interactions, and positive work and team cultures produce positive results” (pg. XV)

“Optimism, trust, enthusiasm, love, purpose, joy, passion, and spirit to live, work, and perform at a higher level . . . to share contagious energy with employees, colleagues . . .” (pv xvi).

For every event in your life, “You can choose to ignore it or ask what that reason is and try and learn from it” (pg 7).

“He and most of his team had spent most of the day dealing with conflict and putting out fires rather than getting something done” (pg 18).

“How could I love myself if I don’t love you? How could I love myself if I don’t love everyone? (pg 20).

“If you don’t take responsibility for your life and control your bus then you can’t take it where you want to go” (pg 26).

“No one can choose your attitude but you” (pg 28).

“Every crisis offers an opportunity to grow stronger and wiser; to reach deep and within and discover a better you that will create a better outcome” (pg 40).

“Thoughts are magnetic. What we think about, we attract. What we think about expands and grows. What we put our energy and attention on starts to show up more in our life. And the energy we project through our thoughts is the energy we receive . . . so it’s important that you spend your time thinking about what you do want rather than what you don’t want” (pg 43).

“I don’t know all you are facing. But I do know that if you want to change your situation you must first change your thoughts. Because if you keep on thinking what you have been thinking you’ll keep on gettin what you have been getting” (pg 45).

“I am not bound to win, I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have” - Abraham Lincoln (pg 62).

“He had spent so much time thinking about the three wolves that he had completely ignored the people who wanted to be on his bus” (pg 71).

“You have got to be strong enough to tell people that you will not allow any negativity on your bus” (pg 74).

“Your positive energy and vision must be greater than anyone’sand everyone’s negativity. Your certainty must be greater than everyone’s doubts” (pg 77).

“A positive company with a positive corporate culture will outperform their negative counterparts every time” (pg 111).

“When you love someone you want the best for them. You want them to shine. And the best way to do this is to help them discover the value inside them” (pg 117).

Three words of wisdom from “a bunch of ninety-five-year-olds" . . . “1) They would reflect more. Enjoy more moments. More sunrises and sunsets. More moments of joy. 2) They would take more risks and chances. Life is too short not to go for it. 3). They would have left a legacy. Something that would live on after they die” (pg 144).

I highly recommend this book, to everyone. It may be simple and a bit cheesy, but it sure ain’t wrong neither.

Grade: A

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