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My Top 10 Books 150 150 admin

My Top 10 Books

My intention with this article is to share the top books I’ve read. At the time of this writing I’ve read somewhere between 100 – 200 books. Some things to note before I give this list.

  1. These books helped shape ME. They are important books in MY story. It’s really hard for me to agree or disagree when someone lays out a book list and says “These are the best books on X” because it is shaped by their unique experience.
  2. Much of what was really impactful to me and stood out as being the best for me weren’t books. Maybe a “My top 10 resources that aren’t books” article next?
  3. I listed these in the order I read them, so it’s kinda like a story.
  4. Most of these books I’ve either read as a physical book or an audiobook. I don’t think I’ve ever read a whole book on the Kindle app or tablet.

I look at books like a tool set. There are so many ideas, invitations, suggestions and mentoring out there to fix the problems that will inevitably come up in life – especially with the rise of the internet and online resources like YouTube and Google to go along with books. Let’s get into it.

Alfred’s Basic Piano Library

I know. It’s cheating because there’s more than one book here (a whole ass library yo) but….that’s ok. Sometimes I be cheating.

These were the first books I remember being into studying piano. I spent SO much time slogging through these books (slogging because I didn’t understand the payoffs of consistent practice AND felt that I couldn’t just practice when I wanted to). Both of my great teachers used these books to teach me, and I still use so much of what was in these books today playing piano.

I remember we focused on the books on theory, ear training, song/hymn books and finger exercises.

The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle

This is the best book I’ve ever read…still. It talks a lot about surrendering to the moment, and I think I had to surrender for this book to even show up in my world.

I remember it helping me specifically with emotions. I’ve probably saved SOOO much stress just by reading this book pretty early. When I started reading this book I was feeling so frustrated. The go-to-school get-a-degree and have-a-safe-stable-job-for-life path just seemed so ‘not me’, but I was headed right down that road, and it made me afraid for my future. Meanwhile, I was registered for college classes I wasn’t paying for AND I was skipping them. So mix in some guilt in there too with the frustration.

One of the resolutions was just to have some space from thinking period, which made me feel lighter and more peaceful. It was like erasing a chalk board full of stuff on it. Then, I could deliberately choose what I wanted to add on to it.

This book alone helped me be a match for more upbeat, positive people. This book was my introduction to meditation. It just showed me how much my own mind was beating me down. I hadn’t ever considered that I could actually just turn my thinking off. It was soooo freeing to be able to have some space from my negative thoughts that had gone on for decades.

Meditation and spiritual teachers have been a well for me to go back to when I feel like I’m getting bogged down by life. I can take care of things a lot better when I’m taking care of my own peace of mind.

The Pick-Up Artist – Erik von Markovik

I really wasn’t motivated by pick-up until I moved in with a friend who was naturally great with women. When I lived with him, there were just so many women in our world largely due to him, so it made me curious as to what he was doing to bring them into our world. He invited nudged me to share my love of music more with everyone, which pushed things to a whole nother level. We went out to clubs and bars and events all the time.

I still remember the 5 things from this book. Leader of men, protector of loved ones, preselection, willingness to emote and successful risk taker. If you watch enough nature documentaries you’ll even see these in the animals. It’s like a biological, evolutionary thing.

People were really turned off by the formulaic, forced aspect of pick-up overall and the inauthentic, canned routines – as they should be. But to me, the underlying principle to the formulas and routines that I can align with is this – be a better man (embody masculinity) and the feminine will be drawn like a moth to a flame. And so, the next books you’ll see stem from my desire to learn what it meant to be a better man.

No More Mr. Nice Guy – Robert Glover

I remember this book being about honesty and maintaining integrity – and sometimes that isn’t nice.

Reading these types of books and moving in with three other masculine men helped me see, and more importantly feel what I missed out on growing up. Up until that point, I really didn’t understand why not having a father around mattered. I could write a book on this. It would be titled The Absence of the Masculine.

Growing up around all women led to me HAVING to please women and be nice all the time, and this did a lot to offset my polarity while watering down an already muffled voice.

Luckily there was music to offset this. I felt the total opposite as it relates to music. I was learning music and performing and in the choir so my voice was heard a lot. I could be free and was encouraged to make mistakes.

Outside of music though, my voice was drowned out by a chaotic household. There was no masculine to balance that chaos out and calm it and ground it effectively. I think that’s why The Power of Now was so powerful for me. I read this in college, and that was the first time I felt like I got some peace.

This book (along with living with very blunt and honest roommates) gave me permission to be honest – and there is nothing more freeing than being honest. It also showed me that people respond well to genuine truth whereas my family seemed to drown it out.

Living Abstinently

Remember the chaotic household? Yeah one of the most chaotic things was our eating habits. We pretty much ate fast food every day, little to no cooking and were all fat!

Foodaddicts.org was a program that FINALLY introduced some structure by way of food that made complete sense, and this book was an overview of that program. There was also other books we used a lot though too.

It was so simple and not profit-motivated. There was no buy-this-food-from-my-company in it – just normal foods you buy on the outside perimeter of the grocery store. It was FINALLY an answer to the question I had for decades on how to TRULY lose weight – specifically fat with JUST nutrition and what I was eating. I lost about 110 lbs through this program. It was like my body was saying “thank you for finally putting some stuff we can really use in here”. I gained the weight back plus more when I left the program, but I can’t erase what they taught me over there. It checked so many boxes, and I will be forever grateful.

The Illusion of Money – Kyle Cease

This is for the money chasers or if you feel like you’re chasing anything period. Chasing can get exhausting if you feel like the chase never ends.

There was soooo much talk of money in my family ALL the time. All that talk heavily influenced me to get into accounting in college (seeing as I have a whole family of accountants). The rap music I was listening to was always talking about money. It made me exhausted of thinking about money. Like damn…we’re not gonna focus on anything else here?

HOW I was making money became a lot more important around this time. Life started to be REALLY good, and for the first time it was starting to feel unbearable to keep doing the flat, boring, repetitive, meaningless slave work that had served me in the past to just stay afloat financially.

I read book this after attending Kyle Cease’s conference Love Rising. And I started working on Social Expansion (now Welcome Home) right there. It felt good to finally work on something NOT for the money.

The Big Leap – Gay Hendricks

So…things were going amazing. It made me feel like, “damn…this was more along the lines of the experience of life I was supposed to have”. Then everything crashed, and it seemed like I made it crash. I remember sitting and tryin’ to figure out WTF happened.

The Big Leap is one of the only books I know that addressed this as what is phrased as an “Upper Limit” problem. Things get too good, and you aren’t used to things being this good for this long, so you get scared and sabotage yourself and bring yourself back down to the comfortable problems you’re used to experiencing. At the time of this writing, it’s the book I want to revisit the most.

Atomic Habits – James Clear

This is one of those books where I just read it off recommendations. It gets recommended everywhere in the personal development space, so I read it and understood why it was recommended. Just reinforced the idea that big things come from the small. There are a lot of ways that idea can be applied, and I hadn’t thought of the ways presented in this book.

Will – Willard Carroll Smith II aka The Fresh Prince aka Will Smith

Let’s go Willard! I loved this book because of the dynamics of the audiobook. There was actually music in this book along with all the twists and turns his life took. It really kept my attention for over 16 hours! That’s damn hard to do. It wove in all the different parts of his story – including the bad and ugly. I appreciated his transparency, and as a creator I learned a lot about creating an engaging EXPERIENCE for the person on the other side of the creation (the reader/listener/viewer).

Can’t Hurt Me – David Goggins

This is up there with me as far as the best books ever – top two next to The Power of Now.

It really inspired me to examine and be curious about the limits of what my mind is telling me is possible on a day-to -day basis, and it’s written by a VERY credible source. David Goggins has really pushed himself and CONTINUES to push himself incredibly hard to find his true potential, and it’s so inspiring to me.

This dude is SO badass that there is ANOTHER BOOK made of someone living with him called Living with a Seal (I haven’t read that one, but I could just imagine what’s in it). If you ever feel defeated, pick this up. Like…now yo.

Give me some time to internalize his work and the messages, and I won’t be so fanboyishly in awe of it.

Honorable Mentions

50th Law – Curtis Jackson (50 Cent) and Robert Greene

I loved only the parts where 50 cent was speaking (at the beginning of the chapters). He would say something short in the beginning of the chapter and then Robert Greene would expound on it. I thought they could have cut Robert Greene’s part off though. It seemed like it was fluff to me.

The MagicRhonda Byrne

This book is all about appreciation and really explores creative ways to appreciate. I’ve loved Rhonda Byrne’s style since her documentary The Secret. She’s so resolute about positivity. Of the author’s on this list that have authored more than one book, she’s the only author on this list where I can say I’ve read ALL of her books (except her latest Masterclasses…I just found out about them yesterday).

The Courage to Be Disliked

This might go along with No More Mr. Nice Guy. I just happened to read this one later. I think I was also diving into exploring freedom and what that meant, and this showed up. There’s a lot written about systemic freedoms, but this and other books I’ve read deal with freedom internally. It’s about facing a hidden fear of being disliked (if you have that fear).

Well…that’s all folks for now. These were the books that stood out to me as the best.

Lessons I’ve Learned From Investing In Crypto since 2017 150 150 admin

Lessons I’ve Learned From Investing In Crypto since 2017

Crypto has taught me a lot overall about investing – not only in coins, but in everything.  With this article I wanted to share some lessons from the mistakes I’ve made.  I’m doing well in it now, but there sure were some expensive mistakes I made to learn these lessons.  If you’re reading this, you don’t have to make these mistakes.

Short story on how I got involved in crypto

In late 2016, I went to a conference on making passive income in a more heart-centered, courageous way.  I was working at a pretty shitty job, and I was getting frustrated with it, so I took some days off to go to this conference.

The conference wasn’t about crypto at all, but I met up with some people who were invested in crypto.  They not only showed me how to get into crypto, but why I should get into crypto, so I did.  I signed up with Coinbase, and I bought about $100 worth of Ethereum (ETH) when it was then trading at $448.64 on December 7th, 2017.  Within a month it had doubled and almost tripled.  Ethereum had skyrocketed and was selling at almost $1200 per coin.  I remember lookin at this like I had hit the jackpot.   Up until then, I had not made any other investment that had almost tripled my money, and so fast.

I. told. everyone.

Everyone who was in my world at the time knew I invested some money in crypto because I shouted it from the rooftops, and I had friends that jumped in too.

What I didn’t realize about the market, was that that was the peak.  Bitcoin and the rest of the market, including Ethereum, tanked and went down in value for the next two years.

This is when I learned my first lesson, and it continues to be the most important lesson to this day – Fomo will get you wrecked.

Lesson 1:  FOMO will get you wrecked.  

FOMO stands for Fear of Missing Out.  When a coin or stock is going up in value and everyone is talking about it or it gets heavy news or attention, people are like “damn…I don’t wanna miss out!  I gotta invest now!”.  Many times new people invest from this pressured, emotional place, and it might take you getting wrecked to learn not to FOMO into an investment.  The danger in investing when all the excitement is happening is that that coin or stock or other investment could easily dip or even crash in value right after you invested, because you may have invested at a peak.

When everyone is excited and talking about an investment – whether it be stocks, real estate, crypto – anything, it’s way better to be ahead of the herd.  Be in it before everyone starts talking about it.  There are always opportunities to be ahead of the herd – to get in before things go up in price and value and attention, but it means you have to take your focus AWAY from where everyone is right now (the news), and being able to predict where things are going.  You can even wait until things die down and buy the dip, but don’t FOMO in.

Buy low, sell high.  Accumulate in the bear market when nobody is talking about what you want to invest in, so you’ll be positioned to take profits when the bull market inevitably comes and every one is talking about it.

Right now, everyone is talking about Bitcoin,  but there are amazing opportunities in certain alt coins (every coin except Bitcoin) to make life-changing profits if you’re willing to learn and be patient.

One thing that we did in that conference mentioned above was made a list of trends that would be important in the future, so we could be ahead of the curve.  We listed things like online education, self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, robots, cyber security, cloud computing, e-books and audiobooks.  These are trends that are going to be important in the future.  These are places where you can be ahead of the herd.

Lesson 2:  Only invest what you’re willing to go to 0.  Don’t invest more than you’re willing to lose. Do not bet the farm!

I lumped all these together in one lesson.  I ignored them all starting off.  I said to myself, “if this investment is going to triple, why would I not put everything I own into it?”.   Here’s why.

Having a significant portion of money and cash flow outside of your crypto (or any other investment) will lesson your sense of neediness.  You won’t be constantly looking at it every day to see  whether it goes up or down or left or right.  You can leave it alone and not think about it so much because its not a huge part of your net worth.  You can have strong hands when you see your investment take a slight or heavy dip in value and you won’t panic sell.

ALL MY CALLS WERE RIGHT in 2020! but I put almost all my money in crypto.  This was the mistake.  When I needed cash, I had to sell my crypto – giving away all my early positions.  It wasn’t very fun to see the whole crypto market as a whole rise like crazy while I had almost nothing invested in it.

Lastly, if you haven’t bet the whole farm on crypto, you’ll have cash to invest in opportunities you see.  If all your money is in crypto and the crypto market dips, your overall money will dip as well.  If you have cash, you can take advantage of the dips and buy on those dips.

Lesson 3:  Start small, find good projects and be patient enough to let it grow

It doesn’t take much to start investing in crypto.  I put $200 in PAINT and it gave me a little over 100,000 coins.  If PAINT goes to being worth $1, in maybe 2-5 years then that’s $100,000 off a $200 investment.  If it goes to being worthless then I’m out $200.  PAINT is in the NFT space and NFT’s are on fire right now, so I think it’s a good bet, but I’m willing to be wrong.  (This is not financial advice and I’m not a financial advisor.  Also, PAINT has not sponsored me.  I just like the project).

That same $200 isn’t going to get you very far if you just invested it in Bitcoin.  I would bet bigger if I was investing in Bitcoin or Ethereum because they’re the safest bets.

Good projects have a good team, solid roadmap, good use case.  It takes time to sift through and find the solid projects amongst the thousands of coins – that’s why they’re called gems.  The lower the market cap, the higher the risk of the investment.  I start with low to mid-size market caps and play the waiting game for them to rise in value.  Coin Gecko and CoinMarketCap tell you market cap information on coins and much more.  I use them all the time.

I start with YouTube.  It’s in a YouTuber’s interest to give you good, solid information that’s valuable.  It helps their channel grow.  That being said, I only use it as a starting point.  I do my research on specific coins AND the YouTuber that mentioned the coin and put it against my own knowledge and reasoning.  You are ultimately responsible for your profits and losses.

Lesson 4:  Take profits

You’re not going to want to do this.  When you see your investment rising in value, it will be hard to sell a portion and actually take some profits because you think it will continue to rise.  It might, but nothing goes straight up and continues to go straight up.  There are twists and turns and peaks and valleys – lots of them in a relatively new and emerging market like crypto/blockchain.  WHEN to take profits is a personal choice, but take them.  In 2018 many crypto investors, including myself, learned this lesson the hard way when the crypto market came crashing down and we rode those coins all the way to the ground.

Lesson 5:  Look at the world like a sea of opportunity

How you see the market and how you relate to the market will affect how you trade.

If you look at the world like a sea of opportunity, then you won’t panic sell or be stressing out when a coin doesn’t do what you want/expect it to right when you want it to.  You won’t be dejected and down in the dumps when another coin that you don’t have rises in price.  You’ll know there are opportunities that come along all the time, so there won’t be any need to stress about an opportunity you think you missed.   Jay Z said “There’s a million ways to get it…choose one”.  If you can see the ocean of opportunities that are always there, you won’t be as attached to the outcome of any one particular investment.  You won’t be hanging on its every move.

Imagine you’re a surfer and you’re trying to catch a good wave (your investment).  If one wave doesn’t go how you want it to, just wait.  There are plenty of good waves comin.

Lesson 6: Develop trust in yourself

Notice I said “develop”.  You’re not going to start off with trust in yourself, but it will come with time and more engagement with the market.  You’ll be able to see the places you can get in early.  More importantly, if you’ve developed a string of small wins (meaning you’ve done a lot of step #3 already), you can start to trust yourself to bet bigger, and thus bigger profits come.  Trust will come from learning what to look for and conditioning yourself to buy good projects low and early and sell high.

Lesson 7: The gold is in private communities.  Pay to be in them if you have to.

Private communities, private telegram groups, and private memberships are all ways to get exclusive information.  Many times people have done research in those communities for you and are trying to help everyone do well and/or find the hidden gems.

You’re going to need to learn the language.  Here’s a great article on some common phrases and what they mean.  I would also give Coinbase Learn an in-depth look.  They might seem boring now, but learn about them again when nobody else wants to learn.  If you don’t take away anything else from reading this, take this message away – be ahead of the curve.

That’s all I got for now!  Have some fun investing!

What is Your Relationship With Money? 150 150 admin

What is Your Relationship With Money?

In this article I will give you direction to find out what your relationship with money is – almost immediately if you want.  When I actually examined my own relationship with money and dived deeper into the rabbit hole, I started to see results and a severe improvement with my relationship with money.

If you want to examine your relationship with money – or any part of your life – write a litter to it.  Start it off like this:

Dear money,

*insert all the feelings and thoughts you have about money*

When I did this exercise it came out similar to this:

Dear money,

I think about you all the time.  You’re always on my mind.  You’ve been on my mind so much I’m tired of you – and you’re not even around!  I’m mentally exhausted of you, and I wish I didn’t have to think about you all the time.  Sigh.

Dude…talk about creepy!  I think about you all the time, but I’m mentally exhausted of you?  WTF?!?!? Come on Broderick, what the hell man.

After seeing this in front of my face, I realized I had to put myself in a position where I’m not thinking about money nearly as much.  I needed some mental space from it.  I don’t think I ever would have seen that had I not written the letter.

I had a stressful job only because of the money, so I quit.  Again, the main focus was to get myself in a position where I’m not thinking about money.  It was great being free, and so I started to work on my creative output and made a course and hella articles.  I started independent contract work through Door Dash and moved in with parents to lower my expenses.  Gifts and opportunities just started coming, and I had the space to wait for them to come and to wait for the right places.  I realized that keeping money around was more important than how much I made.  Today the letter to money would be very different.  It would go something like this.

Dear money,

Hey.  HEY.  2020 was pretty badass right?  We gotta do that shit again! 

🙂

Listen, I know what you’re thinking – “Broderick is a genius”.  This letter-to-money thing wasn’t my idea though.  It actually came from a book called You are a Badass at Making Money.  Pretty badass book yo.

 

Stretching Financially to Make Bigger Purchases 150 150 admin

Stretching Financially to Make Bigger Purchases

About 3 years ago and a half years ago, I really stretched myself and made a purchase to attend a workshop. The workshop itself was $500 and I had to pay travel expenses. Right After that I invested in a ebook publishing course and ultimately spent $2400 on a group coaching program.

These were all stretches for me. I started off with a $10/hr job and really wasn’t saving money, so I had to figure out a way to pay for these things that I wanted to attend.

The biggest factor was where I started looking. While I was at my $10/hr job I started looking for $15-20/hr jobs. I knew I was going in a circle as long as I stayed in the $10/hr jobs. This meant I stopped looking for 1$0/hr jobs and when they came my way, I declined. There is a super abundance of $10/hr jobs, which is why it was hard for me to take them seriously. If I got fired, then I could find another one the next day because there are so many available. Hella companies want cheap labor.

I realized that these purchases were just bigger in my mind. As soon as I started hanging with people who made way more than I did, they got me thinking bigger. Now you bring in some contrast! And if you can surrender and allow that contrast and disharmony within you to resolve itself, you find that you end up with a new perspective…a new lens to look through where these purchases you thought were “big” no longer seem like that much of a challenge.

The Effects of Forced Money Fasting 150 150 admin

The Effects of Forced Money Fasting

So…rewind to June 2017.  I had a job paying me about $650 dollars a week doing purchasing and doing deliveries on the side which payed me an additional $200 / week ….so about $850 dollars a week take home.

Not the greatest of incomes, but enough to live as a single male in Texas on my own.  I went to Evolving out Loud and immediately quit my job soon after …sooo my income went down to just whatever I was making during deliveries (about $300-$400/week).  I ended up living in my car for a while really avoiding moving in with family or friends because I didn’t see where this road would end and eventually ended up living with family…and my life as I knew it collapsed.  This was all as a result of listening to what I felt I was hearing.  The world around me was telling me to “get a job” or looking at me like I was crazy for quitting a job I had.

Did I mention I also was paying a car note and (getting help with paying it) for a 2015 Dodge Charger to the tune of $675/month?  It was around March of 2019 when this all started, so now here’s an assessment of the good and bad up until now.

The Bad

  • My income was low
  • Dealing with living with family was regressive
  • Letting go of a car was embarrassing

The Good

  • I got to do more of what I wanted to do and I didn’t look at money as my master.  Normally money would be my excuse to stop doing what I wanted to do OR I would be so wrapped up in doing things to make money, there would be little space to do what I wanted to do.
  • My expenses were low
  • I said the things I wanted to say
  • I got so many unexpected gifts
  • I got to come face to face with why I wasn’t generating income and places I wanted to grow
  • I got to come face to face with my fears
  • I can look at myself and know that my actions aren’t coming from desperation
  • I created a course
  • My mind went into so much depth to places I didn’t think it could go.

Eventually I started to realize…hey…I’m not gonna die, so what’s gonna happen?  Some discomfort?  Missing out on some things?  You can find other ways to make money if you’re willing to connect with people.  There’s plenty of P2P services now like Uber, Turo, Swimply (I haven’t used this one yet, but it’s coming!).  I ended up doing lots of odd jobs that support me pretty well living with family, and I’m looking to blogging to support in the future.

You start to really feel like you’ll be supported no matter what – so when are you going to do what you really want to do?  What you’re really called to do?