3 X 5's: Index Card Wisdom from Best of Books

CELLULAR HEALING Joyce Whiteley Hawkes (2006). Cell-level healing:                                                      The bridge from soul to cell. Joyce is a biologist who began studying cells with the electron microscope in the early 1970's and published numerous scientific papers before having a near death experience that changed the focus of her life's work to helping people heal on the cellular level.  cells have information, action, power, and communication characteristics that we can become aware of...she suggest how to identify and clear blockages in the body and uses the principle of "flow" to heal cells with gratitude and compassion...many sections of the book have instructions entitled: "bridge to healing." for removing blockages, imagine a cloud covering a mountain breaking up until a clear sky is created, or imagine melting ice in the...

DEATH & LIFE Peter Koestenbaum (1976). Is there an Answer to Death? Peter was my philosophy of existentialism professor when i was an undergraduate at San Jose State University back in the early 1980's. He was the most dynamic, charismatic, and fascinating professor i ever had. He would stride into the lecture hall with cane and thermos in hand, and lecture straight through to the end of class, only occasionally pausing for questions...he talked of life, death, philosophy, psychology, theology, and quantum physics! In this book, Koestenbaum guides us into the experience of our transcendental ego, our cosmic consciousness, the stream of consciousness that always was, is, and will be...he does this via immortality exercises about death. some of the immortality exercises are: identify at what age you will die, how you will die, writing an autobiography, making a list of unfinished business...in considering our fear and anxiety associated with death, we can accept our finitude and ...

PEACE WARRIOR Dan Millman (1992). No Ordinary Moments:                                     A Peaceful Warrior's Guide to Daily Life. Millman is famous for his semi-autobiographical book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior when, at the height of his gymnastic career in college, he suffers a debilitating motorcycle accident, and begins his long journey of recovery with "Socrates," an older man that works the night shift at a local gas station, learning how to live the life of a peaceful warrior.  This book elaborates, expands, and provides practical exercises to develop the knowledge and skills of the way of a peaceful warrior. There are 37 activities (i did all of them). As a summary statement: we need to use our conscious self to take care of and guide/direct our basic self (child/instinctual self) by cultivating positive habits in service of our high (spiritual) self.  There are many q...

YOUR SH*T Steven Pressfield (2016). Nobody wants to read your sh*t. Pressfield is a self-made writer of ads, screen plays, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help stories...his ideas come from hard earned real life struggles/battles/war in the fields of writing... the main idea is nobody wants to read your shit (your self-centered, egocentric demands for attention)...people want a STORY, something beautiful, fun, sexy, interesting...a story that follows the familiar formula of a hook (the problem that begins as an inciting incident), a build (suspense, tension, conflict, excitement, including a hero and villain), and a payoff (resolution, bringing it home with a universal appeal)...this requires a shift in orientation for most writers...it's bring VALUE to others. For those with a writing project (an essay for school, a short story, a novel, a thesis, a report for work, a lesson plan, a workshop, a blog post...), instead of "tooting our own horn", turn the writing into a good ...

CRAZY MONEY Alex Hormozi (2021). $100M offers. Hormozi's credibility is based on his productivity: an average return on investment of 1:36 over the last eight years, that's 3600%! His book is practical, filled with real life examples and advice, his writing style is no nonsense, down to earth, readable. The topics range from pricing, value, enhancing, and the execution of ideas. Each chapter ends with free access to a short video, checklists from his site: acquistion.com. The most important point is to "make an grand slam offer so good that people will feel stupid saying no." What product or service fills a genuine desire/need for a specific target market that connects with your life dream? How can you add value to that product/service to differentiate it from the competitive low pricing product/service that is currently in the marketplace? What are the roadblocks/issues/problems that prevent people from using/buying your product/service, and how can you take each of ...

7 LEVELS OF LISTENING Victor Pierau (2020). Leadership in listening:                                             The 7 Levels of Listening for Professionals. Pierau was an auditor, psychotherapist, and trainer in the Netherlands, spending 7 years researching listening and another 3 years writing this book.  Listening is ingesting and digesting signals, including objective vibrations and subjective meanings. There are 3 orientations in listening :  1.I (ego parts) 2.You (personality) 3. It (the essence, big picture, spirit) There are 7 levels of listening :  1.self-focused (managing one's energy: physical, mental, emotional, and essence/spiritual) 2.dual focused (self and others) 3.seletive (focused on needs) 4.empathic (focused on emotions) 5.cognitive (focused on beliefs) 6.synergetic (co-creating with others) 7.silent (essence, intu...

HEART  Steven Pressfield (2022). Put your Ass                                           (Where your Heart wants to be). By "ass" Pressfiled means our physical body, and by "heart" he means what we feel called to do in service of humanity (our passion, our dream, the Japanese use the term "ikigai"-our reason for being). The central advice is to put your physical body in the place where your dream is most likely to happen, where other people are already in the process of realizing the dream...by physically moving to this place, we show commitment, magic happens...we meet co-dreamers, friends who are interested in and willing to support our dream because it is their dream too...we find our tribe and are able to actualize our dream. Even if we can't move physically, we can put our minds where our hearts want to be AND we can create a sacred space to work without interruption fo...