Readings from Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen

Daily Readings from Your Best Life Now, is a daily devotional adapted from Joel Osteen’s breakout bestseller Your Best Life Now. The primary divisions of the book follow that of the source material. Likewise, the body of each short chapters is adapted closely from the original material. However, this book is organized differently. It is divided into 90 chapters, each one kept short in order to fit into a daily reading schedule.

At the top of each chapter is a reference to a passage of scripture. The chapters in the book are not expositions on the scripture; Osteen is plain in the introduction that that was not his intention. Osteen’s books, like his televised sermons, are topical rather than expositional. I thought that the connection between the scripture reading and the chapters were sometimes tenuous.

I’ll admit I took much longer than 90 days to finish this book (I probably first opened it shortly after it was published in 2005). That may have injured my sense of the book as a whole, but I think that the book was written with the hope that each chapter would be able to stand on its own as a sermonette of encouragement.

Encouragement is a good word for the book. It’s the theme through every part from encouragement to dream bigger to encouragement to press on in the hard times.

That leads also to what I think is the weakness of the book, and Osteen’s ouvre in general. It seems to draw from the theme and concepts of self-help as much (or more) as from the Bible. Even in the introduction, Osteen speaks in one sentence of wanting people to draw near to God and in the next of helping readers “unlock the doors of a fuller life.” These are not mutually exclusive pursuits, but that depends a lot on your concept of a fuller life.

I don’t mean to be too critical of Osteen. Obviously, I read several of his books and books by his predecessors as preachers of positivity in popular culture, Robert H. Schuller and Norman Vincent Peale. I have felt encourage by reading the books of these men, but I also leave there books feeling like something much deeper is missing.

Joel Osteen also wrote

Break Out

I Declare

You Can, You Will

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Be All You Can Be! by John C. Maxwell

Creative Living for Today by Maxwell Maltz

Life's Not Fair, but God is Good by Robert H. Schuller

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

Power in Praise by Merlin R. Carothers

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

Self-Love by Robert H. Schuller

You Can Become the Person You Want to Be by Robert H. Schuller

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Osteen, Joel. Daily Readings from Your Best Life Now. New York: Warner Faith, 2005.

Become a Better You by Joel Osteen

Become a Better You was Joel Osteen’s follow-up to his first book, Your Best Life Now. Osteen even presents the book as a continuation of the theme and purpose of its predecessor.

Each chapter is a topical sermon on reaching your potential in some aspect of life. The aspects are personal growth, positive self-image, relationships, habits, faith and passion.

I have previously criticized Osteen for taking self-help advice and wrapping it up in religion. I see Norman Vincent Peale and Robert H. Schuller in much the same light. A defense all of these pastors might raise is that they are focusing on practical matters of living well. A head full of religious knowledge that doesn’t change your life for the better is doing no good; it’s not the life Christians are called to.

I agree. I also see in Jesus and the apostles teachers who could both delve deep into the scripture and provide very practical instruction based on it. Religious meditation and working to make the world a better place—even if little seems to come of it—go hand-in-hand in Christianity.

In one area Osteen has a strong foundation: relationships. It is clear from the Bible that God cares very much about how we relate to and treat each other. Osteen’s use of scriptures are apropos in these chapters. The sermons hold up when read with a Bible in the other hand; something that is weaker in the other chapters.

Joel Osteen also wrote

Break Out

I Declare

Readings from Your Best Life Now

You Can, You Will

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Be All You Can Be! by John C. Maxwell

Complaint Free Relationships by Will Bowen

Creative Living for Today by Maxwell Maltz

Faith by Jimmy Carter

Life's Not Fair, but God is Good by Robert H. Schuller

The Magic Power of Self-Image Psychology by Maxwell Malts

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

Power in Praise by Merlin R. Carothers

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

Self-Love by Robert H. Schuller

You Can Become the Person You Want to Be by Robert H. Schuller

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Osteen, Joel. Become a Better You: Seven Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day. New York: Free Press, 2007.

Do Less Get More by Shaa Wasmund

The title of Shaa Wasmund’s book was certain to grab my attention: Do Less Get More. The purpose of the book is to show people how to focus on what really matters to them and cut out what doesn’t.

The early chapters deal with the problems of doing too much. I didn’t need much convincing that I spend a lot of time on things I ought to do and too little time on things I love to do. She then gives attention to the ways a life in which we do (or possibly even have) less is better if those things we do or have are those that are the most important, valuable and meaningful to us. Again, I didn’t need much convincing on that part. Wasmund describes it this way, “Happiness isn’t a consequence of living a successful life; success is a consequence of living happy life.”

The final chapters are practical advice on how to achieve the “less is more” life. I won’t go into all of them. The book is short and written in a simple style, so you won’t have to invest a lot of time reading it if you’re interested in learning more.

Even so, I’ll mention a few things that resonated with me. It’s important to ask for help. Don’t let fear of appearing stupid or weak prevent you from getting help; asking for aid and counsel is one of the smartest things you can do and the humility it takes is a great strength. Concentrate on your strength; working on your weaknesses eats up a lot of time and probably won’t lead where you want to go. By focusing on what you do best, you’ll achieve more and increase your expertise. Concentrate on one thing at a time, especially the best thing you can do right now. Clean up your clutter, get organized, let go of stuff that holds you back.

Especially, value your time. When you value your time, you’ll want to spend it on those things that are most important and valuable to you, that produce the best results in your life.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein

Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Wasmund, Shaa. Do Less Get More: How to Work Smart and Live Life Your Way. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2015.

Superimmunity by Paul Pearsall

Psychologist Paul Pearsall was an early proponent of current notions of mind-body medicine. For Pearsall, it was important to heal a person’s life even if it wasn’t possible to cure their disease. Often a disease can be the body’s way of getting a person’s attention, and letting him know a change is needed. People who make those changes can experience healing, sometimes in the form of a cure and sometime as health and happiness in the midst of disease. Pearsall described some of his ideas in Superimmunity.

In this book, Pearsall draws from Eastern medicine an organizing theme: hot and cold thinking. Hot thinkers are fast, impatient, black-or-white thinkers. They can be judgmental and prone to exaggeration, overreaction and isolation. Cold thinkers overreact to trivial things and underreact to important things. They are prone to passivity and feeling of inadequacy. They are isolated in their own way, and though often out of touch with their emotions, they often despair.

The body responds to these thinking styles. Hot reactors are always on the attack, and their immune systems attack their bodies. Heart disease is associated with hot people. Cold reactors are inactive, so their bodies may respond with excessive activity, particularly cell growth (i.e. cancer).

Pearsall does not eschew medicine. If you are facing a serious illness, the likes of heart disease or cancer, you need a lot of medical help. However, you also need to enlist the aid of your own immune system, which may be doing something counterproductive if it is very active at all. You’re immune system is closely linked to your brain, more so that was commonly thought when Pearsall was writing in the 1980s, so getting the best immune response calls for leaving hot or cold thinking for something more balanced.

“Until recently, we have behaved as if the immune system were somehow separate from us, doing its job secretly, automatically, beyond our control…. Research now tells us that our immune system functions within a supersystem of mind and body,” Paul Pearsall, Superimmunity

Superimmunity includes many tests to help you identify if you tend to be a hot or cold thinker (you can be both). From there, Pearsall offers strategies for cooling off or warming up your thinking as needed. This can mean observing your body, listening to your disease and getting in touch with your emotions in ways that can be unfamiliar to one in the throes of hot or cold reaction. This self-evaluation that reveals the underlying dysfunction, and your own exploration and imagination may uncover your path to healing.

Pearsall does not suggest that changing your thinking will always lead to a cure, though sometimes it might. Disease and mortality are part of being a human. However, you can truly live while you are alive, and in this since experience healing. Life is more than surviving, eating, drinking and breathing. It is important to live as fully as you can.

Paul Pearsall also wrote

The Beethoven Factor

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need

Toxic Success

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Bnson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Timeless Healing by Herbert Benson with Marg Stark

Pearsall, Paul. Superimmunity: Master Your Emotions & Improve Your Health. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987.

400 Books Reviewed on Keenan's Book Reviews

I’ve posted reviews of 400 books on this blog. It’s hard to believe.  Here are links to the 50 most recent posts. Further down are links to more reviews.

First Time Reviews

A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin

Amazing Fantastic Incredible by Stan Lee, Peter David & Colleen Doran

Amos

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

Break Out by Joel Osteen

The Caped Crusade by Glen Weldon

Circles by James Burke

Daniel

Do Less Get More by Shaa Wasmund

Ecclesiastes

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

The Explorer King by Robert Wilson

Ezekiel

General Epistles

The Grid by Gretchen Bakke

Habakkuk

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

Hosea

How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley

In Memory Yet Green by Isaac Asimov

Jeremiah

Joel

Jonah

Lamentations

Lights Out by Ted Koppel

The Magic Power of Self-Image Psychology by Maxwell Maltz

Micah

Nahum

Obadiah

The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People by David Niven

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Psalms

Readings from Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen

The Real World of Sherlock Holmes by Peter Costello

Reckless by Chrissie Hynde

The Right to Write by Julia Cameron

Rising Tide by James M. Barry

Rust by Jonathan Waldman

Song of Solomon

Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey

Why Science Does Not Disprove God by Amir Aczel

The Wright Brothers by David McCollough

The Writings

You are a Badass by Jen Sincero

You Can Become the Person You Want to Be by Robert H. Schuller

You Can, You Will by Joel Osteen

Continuation of list of 400 books reviewed

First 25 Reviews

Reviews 26-50

Reviews 51-75

Reviews 76-100

Reviews 101-150

Reviews 151-200

Reviews 201-250

Reviews 250-300

Reviews 301-350

New & Interesting Stuff February 18, 2017

Energy, Transportation & Missouri News

Ezekiel

“Free” Bridges in Missouri

Habakkuk

Jonah

Micah

Nahum

New & Interesting Stuff December 10, 2016

Obadiah

The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People by David Niven

Readings from Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen

Robert Heinlein Inducted Into Hall of Famous Missourians

St. Louis moves a step closer to NGA move

Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi

For some, the promise of technology for easy access to information that was supposed to make us more free has devolved into constant distraction that can feel like enslavement to a cell phone. Even people who have less extreme views might still feel that it is too easy to get lost in games and social media, browsing online instead of being present, procrastinating instead of getting things done.

 I’m in that camp. I’m not an obsessive user of my phone, but I have found it easy to reach for it in quiet times when I have nothing pressing. That used to be time I spent staring into space. That could be very relaxing time. More importantly, I came up with some of my best ideas in those times or shortly afterward. My brain was hard at work behind by vacant visage, but now it is hard at work scrolling Facebook or watching YouTube videos.

 Manoush Zomorodi took this problem to the listeners of her WNYC podcast, Note to Self, and challenged them to be more aware of their use of technology and wean themselves from it to some degree. That experience, with some refinements, is described in Bored and Brilliant, and Zomorodi hopes it will extend the challenge to a wider audience.

 I expected Zomorodi to focus on how technology has captured our attention and eroded our ability to concentrate. She touches on this. However, the theme of her book is that we need boredom for deeper cognition and creativity. In order to reach their most creative states, our brains need a break from stimulation—we need to get bored.

 The benefit of boredom, in addition to training us to handle tedious tasks, is that it put our mind into its “default state.” In this condition, our minds wander. We daydream. We can imagine things and make connections that would not be available to us if we were concentrating on something or stimulating our brains.

 The default state isn’t universally good. We can fall into ruminating on problems and failures, berating ourselves. That is not useful.

 However, for most of us daydreaming is positive. The lives we dream up for ourselves in such moments, Zomorodi refers to it as “autobiographical planning,” can help us identify what we want, solve problems and see ourselves as more capable.

 Zomorodi presents seven challenges to her readers. The idea is that readers would do one challenge a day for a week. Some of the challenges are adaptable for continued or periodically repeated practices. She describes how several Note to Self listeners responded to the challenges and made them their own.

 Bored and Brilliant is not about abandoning technology by a long shot. It is about making space in your life to think in different ways, especially for the daydreaming that arises in the dull, unstimulating moments in life.

 Zomorodi writes in a journalistic style. The book is not loaded with notes, or even a bibliography, like a more scientific text. However, she sites research, interviews with specialist and other books within the text. The benefits of boredom are documented. If you want to research the subject deeply, you might skim this book for other sources. If you want to loosen your ties to you cell phone or tablet, get out of the mental rat race and give your brain space for a deep breath, try the challenges in this book; it is a good place to start.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Mind for Numbers by Barbara A. Oakley

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Quiet by Susan Cain

 Zomorodi, Manoush. Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

I’ve had friends complain about feeling spread thin. They’re doing so many things that they’re doing none of them well. The worst part of it is, they spend a lot of time on things that just don’t seem that important. I’ve felt that way myself.

According to Greg McKeown, there is an answer to this problem, but it takes discipline. He describes it in his book, Essentialism.

The practice of essentialism begins with a mindset. First, you control how you spend your time and energy. If you don’t control it, someone else will. Next, very few things are important. Finally, life is about tradeoffs, and choosing to do some things also means choosing not to do other things.

I other words, you can’t have it all. You can concentrate on the things that matter most. In this way, you can get more value out of what you do while doing less.

The discipline of essentialism begins with applying this way of thinking all the time. McKeown devotes close to half of the book to fleshing out this mindset before moving on to the process of applying it.

Perhaps it should not be surprising that that doing “less but better” involves taking time to think. Because it boils downs to the decisions you make, it’s worthwhile to make time and space to think. You have to know what is important, meaningful and valuable to you before you can start making choices about what to agree too and what to cut out. We get into trouble by saying yes to too many things without weighing the decision first.

You have to discipline yourself to cut out the less important stuff. You have to say no a lot. Perhaps some of the best advice McKeown offers is tips on saying no to people.

Oddly, McKeown doesn’t focus on making things happen in the manner of others writing about productivity. Instead, he suggests clearing the path. Find and eliminate constraints. Protect your time by allowing for plenty of it; be realistic about how much time and energy things really require. Pay attention to what is important right now. In order to spend time on the important things, you need to make space for it and protect that space. Over time, you can build systems and habits that help you.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested

Be All You Can Be! by John C. Maxwell

Developing the Leader Within by John Maxwell
The Difference Maker by John Maxwell 

Genesis

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

The Thinking Life by P. M. Forni

McKeown, Greg. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. New York: Crown Business, 2014.