The Daily Stoic

Many, many, many, many years ago I read a book called A Fighter's Heart by Sam Sheridan and then he wrote another book called A Fighter's Mind. Both are very good.

I believe I carry one of them here at the Painted porch. I think one of the best books I've ever read about the mindset of what it takes to be a champion, not just in sports but in like a brutal combat sport.

Pete Buttigieg talks about this really well in his memoir, being the mayor of South Bend, how it took him a couple years before he realized that when he showed up at a funeral for somebody, it wasn't received by the people there like, 'oh that's Pete, he showed up'. It was that South Bend saying that this person's life mattered.

I think one of the another great book that I read as before I became mayor that's been so helpful is Jonathan Alter's book about FDR's first hundred days.

And kind of one of the central premises in that book is that what FDR did in his first hundred days was really not all that different than what Herbert Hoover had been doing leading up to that.

The difference was that FDR projected a sense of confidence and gave the citizens a sense of empowerment that yes we can get through this.

And I was like, oh, I bought this in Bondi Beach last time I was in Australia.

His book, The Signal and the Noise, it's also great.

One of my favorite books is The Seemed Talibs, The Black Swan. Black swans are real. They exist. They catch us by surprise.

Right doing the right thing matters in America, it matters as a military officer, it matters as a human being and it matters as a stoic.

I encourage you to read his book Here Right Matters,

I loved your book and we're going to talk all about it.

I didn't know fully uncover every kind of nuance of the way I thought through things but I was very thoughtful about understanding that this was a that was an vindictive administration about selecting council that would not necessarily kind of Republican council that would not you know telegraph or overly alarm White House council because they had direct rapport with them you know some interactions with a with the White House that was being belligerent and sending out what talking points and say say Brownling as much as I could as a uniformed officer on my own.

it's a great book by guy Kawasaki called Enchantment about creating like a wonderful sort of product experience i very much recommended this is a book that's sold well when it came out as continued to sell it's still relevant even though it's 10 plus years old i would venture to guess though that this book has sold much better than a book he wrote after called what the plus Google Plus for the rest of us

some parenting books I love there's a self-driven child there's a better man the good news about that behavior how to raise kids who aren't hassles to get to failure reading for our lives expecting better they're all really good but I found that reading them once wasn't nearly sufficient what I needed as a parent was the thing that I'd check in with and read every day seeing parenting as an ongoing process

the reason that holly woodikers book Quit Like a Woman has done well is that the first section of it really is about the fact that if we stop needing to attach a name to it like okay I took the test am I an alcoholic am I not an alcoholic that kind of thing that that's not useful that if we just worry about whether or not it's getting in the way of our lives then that would be a lot more effective than having you know it would help more people get to that place maybe of whatever