As the holiday season approaches, what better way to celebrate the magic of the Charmed Life Master Mind than by diving into literary treasures crafted by our very own community members? This Book Boss Gift Guide is here to enchant your reading list with works by three talented authors who are not only masters of their craft but also cherished members of our Charmed Life Master Mind.
Let’s embark on a journey into the realms of mystery, fantasy, and intrigue, all while supporting our fellow members. Get ready to discover captivating stories that will make the perfect additions to your holiday reading wishlist.
1. Thanksgiving Treachery (Holiday Cozy Mystery Book 7) by Tonya Kappas Link to the book
Join Tonya Kappas, a distinguished member of our Charmed Life Master Mind, as she weaves a cozy mystery that will transport you to the heart of holiday intrigue. “Thanksgiving Treachery” is the seventh installment in the Holiday Cozy Mystery series, promising suspense, charm, and a touch of seasonal magic. Get ready to unravel the mysteries that unfold in the quaint town of Bliss, where holidays are anything but ordinary.
2. The Broken Bond: The Chronicles of Discovery Book 1 by Lady Velvet C. Peterson Link to the book
Lady Velvet C. Peterson, a visionary in our mastermind community, takes us on an epic adventure with “The Broken Bond.” This fantasy novel, the first in The Chronicles of Discovery series, invites readers to explore a world of magic, ancient prophecies, and a broken bond that could change everything. Immerse yourself in Lady Velvet’s rich storytelling and embark on a quest that transcends time and space.
3. Death by Dissertation (A Cassandra Sato Mystery Book 1) by Kelly Brakenhoff Link to the book
Kelly Brakenhoff, a talented wordsmith within our Charmed Life Master Mind, introduces us to “Death by Dissertation.” This intriguing mystery, the first in the Cassandra Sato series, combines academia, humor, and a dash of danger. Follow along as Cassandra Sato navigates the world of academia and untangles the threads of a perplexing murder mystery. It’s a captivating journey that will keep you guessing until the very end.
Get ready to immerse yourself in these literary gems, authored by the brilliant minds within our Charmed Life Master Mind. Whether you’re a fan of cozy mysteries, fantasy realms, or academic intrigue, there’s a book here for every reader. Happy reading, and may your holidays be filled with the magic of storytelling!
And, if you would like to join the Charmed Life Master Mind, this is a great time to enroll as the Annual Membership subscription is currently on sale!
Did you know that reading is considered to be one of the most universally acknowledged success habits?
Statistics are thrown around all the time about how many books millionaires and CEOs read in a year. It’s always something crazy like 4+ dozen!
I know for some people, that number seems intimidating. They say the average American reads less than one book per year.
But personally, I don’t believe that it’s the exact number of books read that really makes someone successful. What I think is a more accurate predictor of success is that you are someone who values ongoing education and the way that is most commonly and easily practiced is by reading.
That is why as part of the Productivity + Planning Mastermind Membership that I host, we have a bookclub where each month the members who are interested are able to read along with a book chosen by me that addresses an important productivity or personal development topic.
(If you are interested in being part of our bookclub and getting ongoing support from me to help you live out your own personal vision for success, I would love to have you join the Mastermind and my inner circle, so please do click here to learn more!)
So, I decided that in order to share the love of books and truly, the success habit of continuing your education through the enjoyment and curiosity of reading, I am starting a series here on the blog where I will share one of the books we have read in the Mastermind and provide my summary/feedback on the book.
I am calling this series #BOSS Bookshelf!
Today’s book will challenge you to question everything you think about yourself and the way you interact with the world; Conscious by Annaka Harris.
In order to streamline this review, I have an outline of seven questions I’ll be using to frame my summary and key points of the book.
Q1: What was your overall experience of the book?
I really resonated with this book because it combines many beliefs about science, metaphysics and the nature of our experience as humans, and challenges some fundamental assumptions humans have about ourselves. I specifically chose this book for January because as it is the start of a new year and goal setting season, I wanted to challenge your assumptions about yourself in a way that perhaps helps you see that there is no need for us to be so controlling, perfectionistic or set high expectations for ourselves. In this book the author is making a scientific argument for why we as humans may not be in as much control over our lives and actions as we believe.
Q2: What was something new you learned from the book?
There was really no completely new information presented in this book- it was all studies and information I have already encountered in other places, but what I really love is how Harris arranges this information so simply to support her argument. This isn’t an argument freely discussed or accepted in the scientific community, and from history we know that doesn’t mean the information is wrong- it simply means the overall scientific community is not willing to accept this idea because it would mean having to discount centuries of work and understanding that have brought us to this point. So, the newness of this book comes from the perspective and courage it takes to present inconvenient truths in a way that people are willing to consider and perhaps dig deeper into.
Q3: Where did you find yourself in alignment with the information shared in the book?
Now, I’m personally in alignment with the idea that we as humans, need to stop being so hard on ourselves about what we can and cannot accomplish because we definitely have less control over ourselves than we’d like to believe. In her research, Harris explains some studies that show that the impulse for making decisions happens without human consciousness, even though to our experience, it seems like we are actively making the decision. The natural next question in my mind is then, who or what is controlling us? There are some philosophies that use this information to support the idea that human life is similar to a video game where we are characters being played by some other entities, however, I think the answer, which Harris doesn’t really dig into, is that from conception, our neural net is crafted from early childhood experience, and once that net is set, our resulting actions are controlled by those dominant pathways. Dr Bruce Lipton, a notable child psychologist has for years suggested that the experience of a person by the age of 7 will determine the fate of the rest of their life. None of this is included in this book, however, I mention it to support the information Harris shares with us that there is evidence that we, as adults, may not be fully in control of ourselves because default networks in our brains that control the way we think and act based on our past experience in life. Therefore, if we want to make changes, we have to take steps to adjust our neural net as much as possible, which can be done, but only if we are willing to do and think outside of our comfort zones. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr Joe Dispenza is a great book that explains strategies for this!
I am personally also a believer in Panpsychism. If you recall, this is the belief that consciousness is a fundamental principle of all matter. Actually, I believe specifically that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of all energy because matter is energy. To be part of this reality we share means that anything here is conscious. Yes, that means I believe rocks are conscious, water is conscious, my chair is conscious. But as Harris lays out in this book, there is a difference between consciousness and intelligence. I don’t think my chair is having active thoughts (it doesn’t have a brain to think with, it doesn’t have nerve endings to feel with) but I do believe it has it’s own type of life on this planet because it’s made of the same particles and basic matter I am made up of. There are protons and neutrons and electrons swirling around deep inside the fabric of my chair that are the same as mine, what they are arranging is just a different structure. Now I mention this because piggy backing off what we learned from reading The Alchemist, I believe that the universe itself is a conscious system that we can interact and manifest with. “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” There is even another part of The Alchemist where the actual Alchemist is talking to Santiago and says something to the effect of “you may have noticed that even the glasses in the shop were conspiring for your success.” If it is accurate that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of all matter and energy, then this could explain how manifestation works. Our conscious energy and desires are able to interact with the consciousness of every other thing in the world to work together to achieve our ends.
Q4: Where did you find yourself resisting the information shared in the book?
In her discussion of panpsychism, Harris seems to argue for panpsychism and yet against the idea that rocks are conscious. Perhaps I read it wrong but I felt like she was being too delicate in navigating the issue as to not upset people or take a strong stand on one argument. I can understand that maybe she doesn’t want to influence people or look foolish by arguing that a rock has consciousness, but this is one of those situations with science where we don’t have enough technology or information yet to test the theory practically.
Q5: What new action or inspiration are you taking away from what you learned in the book?
Reading this book really just makes me feel like other people on on board with some of the metaphysical beliefs I have. Although the book didn’t teach me anything new per se, it did strengthen my resolve to continue researching this path and executing on practices that stem from my metaphysical beliefs because there is clearly more going on than we understand.
Q6: Which quotes from the book that stood out to you as impactful?
I have some notes written down from listening to the book and I’m not sure if these are direct quotes or they were my summary but I still wanted to share.
“Consciousness is not controlling the system it is experiencing and witnessing the system.”
“The conscious mind lacks of a mode of expression.”
“Psychedelics suggest consciousness survives the disappearance of the self.”
Q7: What were some new or interesting terminology you learned from the book?
Most of these terms were not new to me but I wrote them down as key vocab:
Consciousness is experience itself. What it’s like to be a particular thing.
Intuition is a feeling associated with our unconscious queues from our environment.
Umwelt is the world as it is experienced by a specific organism.
Panpsychism is the belief that consciousness is a fundamental principle of reality.
Emergence in philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.
Quale is our experience of a phenomenon
If you’ve read Conscious by Annaka Harris, I would love to know what your big takeaways were from the book, so please leave a comment and share your thoughts!
Did you know that reading is considered to be one of the most universally acknowledged success habits?
Statistics are thrown around all the time about how many books millionaires and CEOs read in a year. It’s always something crazy like 4+ dozen!
I know for some people, that number seems intimidating. They say the average American reads less than one book per year.
But personally, I don’t believe that it’s the exact number of books read that really makes someone successful. What I think is a more accurate predictor of success is that you are someone who values ongoing education and the way that is most commonly and easily practiced is by reading.
That is why as part of the Productivity + Planning Mastermind Membership that I host, we have a bookclub where each month the members who are interested are able to read along with a book chosen by me that addresses an important productivity or personal development topic.
(If you are interested in being part of our bookclub and getting ongoing support from me to help you live out your own personal vision for success, I would love to have you join the Mastermind and my inner circle, so please do click here to learn more!)
So, I decided that in order to share the love of books and truly, the success habit of continuing your education through the enjoyment and curiosity of reading, I am starting a series here on the blog where I will share one of the books we have read in the Mastermind and provide my summary/feedback on the book.
Big changes have small beginnings: Small incremental changes are what lead to success more than large sweeping changes. Example, British Cycling Team became world champions through small 1% improvements. This makes sense to me because it’s harder to actually sustain large sweeping changes and small things can domino into larger outcomes. Any change in the right direction, is change in the right direction that ripples outward. However, with the example of the British Cycling Team, and truthfully, with any and all changes people make, I question from a metaphysical point of view, whether the small changes really did add up OR if the focus and dedication to making small incremental improvements made them believe they had done enough to win? As someone who does believe everything happens in the mind, I just wonder if it was the focus on the changes itself that caused their expansion.
Trajectory as a productivity concept vs having solid objectives: Where you put your focus and having a goal in and of itself is what supports our productivity. You don’t necessarily need a solid objective, and in fact, sometimes having an objective actually halts progress once you hit said objective. So, you can just choose a direction and overarching goal to go for and make those small incremental changes to establish an ongoing pattern of improvement and success.
The tipping point: As with many things in the world, there is a point where our effort isn’t seen, until it is seen. Example of the Ice Cube melting once the temp raises beyond 32 degrees. This is a perfect example of why we shouldn’t give up on ourselves and the changes we want to make because we may have made unseen progress and then hit a tipping point where all the results of our effort are evident.
Don’t set goals, create systems: I understand this point, I really do, because with many things in life, the outcome you want isn’t just a one and done situation. Examples- weight loss isn’t just reach a desired weight and your done, you also need to maintain. Same with income goals, etc lots of goals we have require maintenance. However, I would adjust the authors words to say, Don’t just set goals, create systems. Because I DO think having that hard concrete goal is important if for nothing more than visualization because it’s hard to hold an idea in our minds of what constant improvement means to us. Until we hit the next level we often don’t know what the next level after that looks like. So for me, I think that hard objective is important to get started, but developing systems as a strategy for goal planning is necessary. I believe this echos my philosophy well of having habit based goals. Goals where the outcome isn’t dependent on a limited sequence of actions, but the outcome requires ongoing work and establishing new habits.
If you’ve read Atomic Habits by James Clear I would love to know what your big takeaways were from the book, so please leave a comment and share your thoughts!
Did you know that reading is considered to be one of the most universally acknowledged success habits?
Statistics are thrown around all the time about how many books millionaires and CEOs read in a year. It’s always something crazy like 4+ dozen!
I know for some people, that number seems intimidating. They say the average American reads less than one book per year.
But personally, I don’t believe that it’s the exact number of books read that really makes someone successful. What I think is a more accurate predictor of success is that you are someone who values ongoing education and the way that is most commonly and easily practiced is by reading.
That is why as part of the Productivity + Planning Mastermind Membership that I host, we have a bookclub where each month the members who are interested are able to read along with a book chosen by me that addresses an important productivity or personal development topic.
(If you are interested in being part of our bookclub and getting ongoing support from me to help you live out your own personal vision for success, I would love to have you join the Mastermind and my inner circle, so please do click here to learn more!)
So, I decided that in order to share the love of books and truly, the success habit of continuing your education through the enjoyment and curiosity of reading, I am starting a series here on the blog where I will share one of the books we have read in the Mastermind and provide my summary/feedback on the book.
So this is how I feel about the Alchemist. I’ve already told you this is essentially my favorite book because to me, it’s not a story, it’s an illustration of the principles of Alchemy at work in “real life” situations. For those of you who are not as familiar, Alchemy was an ancient science and the precursor of chemistry, but it was so much more than that. Early Alchemists theorized about the world and physical science and many of their predictions were ultimately proven true through modern research. They had no science or evidence at the time to rationalize their belief, instead, their belief came from pure intuition and engaging and learning from the world, the way the Alchemist in the book taught Santiago to engage and learn from the desert to gain true knowledge or gnosis.
For example, the belief that all things are a manifestation of just one thing, that is true from a quantum mechanics perspective. All things known to us in the universe are created by the arrangement of energy into matter (E=MC Squared), we know this know and it’s a major pursuit of science to understand how we can manipulate the arrangement of energy to create whatever we want or need.
The concept that everything evolves, even seemingly inanimate elements evolve, we also know to be true now via the Theory of Evolution and the fact that coal becomes diamonds, fossilized remained become oil etc. A grain of sand was once a particle of star matter. The dunes of the desert take the form of solid waves, referring back to the fact that the dessert itself was once an ocean.
The great mystery of life is unraveled in this book if you read it deep enough because it is a principle of both this book and alchemy that you can look at the face of any thing in our world and read the entire history of the world in it. It’s quite profound and thats why every time I read this book I learn something new about life and how to evolve myself into the person I want to become.
As the book points out during the scene when Santiago is tasked with turning himself into the wind to avoid death, all of us, each human, plant, animal, mineral, are part of the story of the world written by the one hand (God) and because the one who wrote us is infinite, so are we. We have a story to live out that was written inside of us, and to uncover our purpose we need to get our hands dirty and get down to the business of living.
This is the thing I love about this book the most- it comes out and tells you the thing many religions and world philosophies simply dance around. That you were put here for a reason, that your story began long before you were ever conceived and it will go on as you evolve past your current form. You yourself are not a god but you live inside of God and are connected on a metaphysical level to that single power and every other thing in existence known or unknown to you. Your life has significance and meaning, and it’s up to you to live it out or not, the choice is yours.
Now, I have also come up with a few discussion questions to help us dig a little deeper into the lessons and meaning of the book. Feel free to share your thoughts on these questions as part of our ongoing discussion of The Alchemist.
Question 1:What was your favorite or most impactful lesson from the book?
Question 2:Do you use a system of signs or omens to help you tap into your internal guidance system and what are they?
Question 3:Can you think of a time when the pure expression of enthusiasm and a solid work ethic brought you to success?
Question 4:What is your personal legend?
Question 5:What was the moral of the story for you?
