Today I had two visits over the bridge in New Jersey, and a college fair in the same town tonight. I saw no reason to drive all the way home and drive back for the fair when in fact it is an hour drive away. That is a waste of mileage that can be used for other things.
After spending a decent amount of time at a local diner, I decided to browse the isles of Barnes & Noble in Branford, NJ. I do not consider myself much of a reader to be honest. I don't really OWN that many books, and the majority of the ones that I do own are either textbooks that I couldn't sell back from college, or a few books I have received as gifts.
What made today different? I knew I wasn't going to eat anything at the Starbucks inside the bookstore. To be honest, I spent the first 45 minutes walking around aimlessly. But while looking around in the "How to ... for Dummies" section, I stumbled acrossed "Marketing for Dummies". I considered buying it, but then stumbled into the more refined books about leadership, motivation and personal pride.
The first book that I saw was "Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It." by Peggy Klaus. This title caugt my attention because I got a few comments about a past article on this Blog about me doing well at something, and how it "seemed like I was trying to humbly gloat". I am hoping that this book will help me to alleviate such comments in the future.
I also picked up a copy of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey. I have heard about this book a lot, and the only barrier to reading it is/was my own stupidity. I have committed to reading this book, not only to be a better person that reads, but to hopefully learn a thing or two (or 7) from it.
Finally, today I purchased "100 Ways to Motivate Others" by Steve Chandler. I will be the first to tell anyone that I have been through lots of leadership training, and feel to a certain extent that lots of it is useful, and lots of it is useless. I feel that it still takes a certain type of person to lead. You can't learn to lead from a text book or a film. To some extent the training that I perform is more of an eye opener for the "naturals" to see what processes they acctually go through in everyday situations. Some people just don't "get it", and never will. I am hoping that I can be proven wrong by this book ... and hopefully learn a thing or two.
Something happened in me today that resulted in me purchasing these books. I don't know what came over me, but I want to read. I will read all of the books that I have that I have not read, as well as buy new ones that suit my interests. I recommend the same to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment