One of my goals this year is to read more books. I’m sure you’re probably thinking, aren’t you in school? Yes, I am in school and I do read… A LOT! However, I am tasked to read books that I NEED to read versus books I WANT to read. I committed to reading books that cater specifically to my Faith, Personal Development, Business,and my Purpose. These are areas in life that should ALWAYS be fed and nurtured in order to grow. The use of Audiobooks has made ‘reading” books even easier. I generally listen to a book first, and if I enjoyed it then I’d purchase the physical text so that I can highlight and refer back to something at any given time.

Five Reasons You Should Read More Books:

1.   Reading improves your focus and concentration-Unlike blog posts and news articles, sitting down with a book takes long periods of focus and concentration, which at first is hard to do. Being fully engaged in a book involves closing off the outside world and immersing yourself into the text. Which over time will strengthen your attention span.

2. Reading helps to develop your verbal abilities-those who read tend to have more varied range of words to express how they feel and to get their point across. This increases exponentially with the more volumes you consume, giving you a higher level of vocabulary to use in everyday life

3.Reading Reduces Stress- A study by consultancy firm Mindlab International at the University of Sussex showed that reading reduces stress. Subjects only needed to read,silently, for six minutes to slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles. In fact it got subjects to stress levels lower than before they started. For more information, check out the Telegraph article here

4. Reading Helps to Discover or (rediscover) and Create yourself- Until you become yourself what benefit can you be to others.

5.  Reading helps you to write better- There are two ways to become a better writer: write A LOT and READ a lot. Reading and writing are inseparable. Reading exposes us to other styles, other voices, other forms,and other genres of writing. Importantly, it exposes us to writing that's better than our own and helps us to improve.

  Here’s what I am planning to read in 2020 to feed my Faith, Personal Development,Purpose, & Business Goals

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Faith:

Silent Seasons: Trusting God When you don’t understand

By- Heather Lindsey [Amazon Description]

Are you going through a silent season in your life right now? Do you feel stuck? Do you feel like doors keep closing but nothing is opening in your life? Do you feel rejected or forgotten? Do you feel like you can no longer hear the voice of God or like life has handed you a bad deck of cards? If so, this book is for you.
In Silent Seasons: Trusting God When You Don't Understand,Heather Lindsey shares how silent seasons are an opportunity to grow closer to the Father.
In this book you will learn:-How to stay strong in the midst of tests and trials-How to avoid comparing your life to others-How to be faithful with small-How to stretch your faith to do what God is telling you to do

Transformed Temperaments

By- Tim Lahey

The birth of "four temperaments" The blight of Freudianism Using and abusing the tool Peter the sanguine -- Paul the choleric, Moses the melancholy, Abraham the phlegmatic. The transformed walk. This read was recommended by my Pastor to assist with understanding different temperaments in order to work through personality clashes with in my marriage ultimately helping us to understand one another better.

Relationship Goals: How to Win at Dating, Marriage, & Sex.

By- Pastor Michael Todd [Amazon Description]

A candid, inspiring guide to finding lasting love by getting real about your relationship goals based on the viral sermon series about dating,marriage, and sex with millions of YouTube views.Realer than the most real conversation you’ve ever heard on the topic, Michael Todd’s honest, heartfelt, and powerful teaching on relationships has already impacted millions of people in all seasons of life around the world. Now, in Relationship Goals, Michael tells his own story of heartache and healing, unpacks explosive truths from God’s Word, and tells it to you straight to help you win at relationships in every part of your life.

Personal Development:

Good Morning, Good Life: 5 Simple Habits to Master your Mornings and upgrade your Life.  

By:Amy Schmittauer Landino [Amazon Description]

Not morning person? Not a problem! I want you to wake up on your terms and no one else's." Morning routines. We hear about them all the time. We see them on social media feeds and in online videos. We read about them in memoirs and self-improvement books. So, what's the big deal? What's so important about what we do every morning?In Good Morning, Good Life, Amy Schmittauer Landino- the world's #1 productive lifestyle coach-reveals the truth about mornings and how to create daily rituals that are truly right for you.

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Get out of your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts.

By: Jennie Allen [Amazon Description]

Are your thoughts holding you captive? I’ll never be good enough. Other people have better lives than I do. God couldn’t really love me. Jennie Allen knows what it’s like to swirl in a spiral of destructive thoughts, but she also knows we don’t have to stay stuck in toxic thinking patterns.
 
As she discovered in her own life, God built a way for us to escape that downward spiral. Freedom comes when we refuse to be victims to our thoughts and realize we have already been equipped with power from God to fight and win the war for our minds.
 
In Get out of Your Head, Jennie inspires and equips us to transform our emotions, our outlook, and even our circumstances by taking control of our thoughts. Our enemy is determined to get in our heads to make us feel helpless, overwhelmed, and incapable of making a difference for the kingdom of God. But when we submit our minds to Christ, the promises and goodness of God flood our lives in remarkable ways. It starts in your head. And from there, the possibilities are endless.

The Productivity Project: Accomplishing more by managing your Time, Attention, & Energy

By- Chris Bailey [Amazon Description]

Chris Bailey turned down lucrative job offers to pursue a lifelong dream to spend a year performing a deep dive experiment into the pursuit of productivity, a subject he had been enamored with since he was a teenager. After obtaining his business degree, he created a blog to chronicle a year-long series of productivity experiments he conducted on himself, where he also continued his research and interviews with some of the world’s foremost experts, from Charles Duhigg to David Allen. Among the experiments that he tackled: Bailey went several weeks with getting by on little to no sleep; he cut out caffeine and sugar; he lived in total isolation for 10 days; he used his smartphone for just an hour a day for three months; he gained ten pounds of muscle mass; he stretched his work week to 90 hours; a late riser, he got up at 5:30 every morning for three months all the while monitoring the impact of his experiments on the quality and quantity of his work.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven way to build Good habits and Break Bad Ones:

By- James Clear [Amazon Description]

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress andsuccess, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform yourhabits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organizationhoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quitsmoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.

Purpose:

It’s not supposed to be This Way

By- Lysa Terkeurst (This can also fall under Faith) [Amazon Description]

New York Times bestselling author Lysa TerKeurst unveils her heart amid shattering circumstances and shows readers how to live assured when life doesn't turn out like they expected. What do you do when God’s timing seems questionable, Hi slack of intervention hurtful, and His promises doubtful? Life often looks so very different than we hoped or expected. Some events may simply catch us off-guard for a moment, but others shatter us completely. We feel disappointed and disillusioned, and we quietly start to wonder about the reality of God's goodness.

Business:

Follow the Feeling: Brand Building in a Noisy World

By- Kia D. Wright [Amazon Description]

 Elevate your brand, rise above the crowd, and build tribe

In Follow the Feeling,strategy advisor Kai D. Wright answers a critical question plaguing entrepreneurs, brand strategists, marketers, and leaders: how do you grow your brand in a noisy world? Analyzing, 1500 fast-growing companies from Alibaba to Zara, the Columbia University lecturer and Ogilvy global consulting partner unpacks five branding secrets.Starting with behavioral economic principles and ending with a new systems-based approach to brand building, Wright offers readers one metric that trumps the hundreds entangling brand value, feelings.

Follow the Feeling will show you how to best build and position your brand so you can stand out from competitors, build a tribe,and engineer a positive feeling across five important branding territories—lexicon, audio cues, visual stimuli, experience, and culture.Sharing real-world lessons and practical advice he has gained helping everyone from Sean Diddy Combs and Meghan Trainor to Bank of America and HP develop and implement shareable, culturally-infectious branding strategies. Through storytelling, global research, and practical tips, this valuable book will help you and your organization.

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Do you have any other recommendations or review of ones listed that you have read? Share and comment to let me know!

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XoXo,

Angie

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