113: Four Books from January 2022

This month, I wanted to read two books. I managed to read four This was only possible because I scheduled 25 minutes for reading every day and entire Sunday mornings for reading. This month, I also read on a couple of Sunday afternoons , one Saturday evening and another Saturday full day for reading!

This is all in an effort to get a lot more reading done this year. In the past, reading has fell through the cracks of my calendar as other urgent things have taken up my time. But I love reading books and feel a great sense of happiness and satisfaction when I can read a book without feeling that I “should be doing work in my business”. And so I have scheduled time in my calendar so I can “officially” read and not have a voice of guilt nagging my conscience!

Here are the three books I read:

1 | Mahamudra by Lama Yeshe

This is book that is a compilation of teachings given by the Tibetan Monk, Lama Yeshe, during a retreat in Australia in the early 1980s. The Australian Buddhist Nun, Venerable Robina Courtin has edited this book. And I found many insightful things about the nature of the mind and about meditation. I highly recommend it.

2| Tax-free Wealth by Tom Wheelwright

This book is one of the books in the Rich Dad Poor Dad series and was written by Robert Kiyosaki’s tax advisor. There are many ideas in here that a self-employed business person in the US can benefit from and the concepts can be used by anyone worldwide. A couple of concepts didn’t sit well for me such as showing your less income on your taxes so you can get the poverty tax credit; that just felt ethically inappropriate. But the author gives context to why he suggests that strategy. Many interesting ideas and strategies in this book which definitely have made me think. This is my first book about taxes and the author made it quite an interesting and fascinating read.

3| Financial Freedom by Grant Sabatier

This has been a very enlightening book about creating financial freedom and giving yourself the choice to retire early and not wait till you are 65 to retire. I learnt many new ideas about building wealth from this easy-to-read book which confirmed some of the things I am already doing and encouraged me to think strategically about creating financial freedom in my life. Very inspiring and I highly recommend it. My last blog #112 was a result of reading this book.

4| The Money Tree by Chris Guillebeau

I finally had one of those days where I did nothing but read. I read this book from start to finish last Saturday. How delightful it is to do nothing but read. I haven’t had days like this in a while so it was a very special treat. Designing my life so I can have many more of those days. In fact, this book is all about finding alternate ways to build wealth other than the 9 to 5 full-time job. In fact, it shows the precarious situation we put ourselves when we only have the job to support our family and our life. What we think, or what he have been taught to think as secure, is actually among the most un-secure thing! Create multiple revenue avenues and help fellow beings along the way! Another takeaway of this book for me was - When creating your content, product pages, products, marketing and so on, speak only to your target audience and to NO ONE ELSE. Big takeaway!

Well, that’s it for the January 2022 books. See the 25 books on 2021 book list here and the 20 books on my 2020 book list here.