5 Best Books I read this year (2016)

This year has been great for me with books. I have read more than 30 books this year, surpassing my goal of 20 by a good margin. Out of these books, following are the 5 best ones that made an impact on me:


1.  7 Habits of Highly Effective People:


          This book gave me a holistic view of life. It helped me visualise what we are looking forward to life through the habit of  "Beginning with the end in mind". The purpose of a personal mission statement is also stressed in the book that it helped create one for me. In the past, I have often led my life either work-centred, kid-centred or family-centred but with the help of a personal mission statement, it helped me get a better perspective.
          Another valuable nugget from this book is the time management quadrant. By focussing our time more on the tasks which are important but not urgent (Quadrant 2), we can reduce the time we need to spend on tasks that are both urgent and important (Quadrant 1) thereby fuelling our growth.

2. The Alchemist

           This is the book which made me fall in love with reading. It started my book journey this year. The book's main character Santiago, a young shepherd goes on a search of treasure from Spain to the Pyramids. What starts out as a search of a worldly treasure turns into finding his own inner treasure. Paulo Coelho conveys the message of following your inner voice very elegantly.

3. The Power of Habit

           Charles Duhigg with a lot of research and case studies makes the point very clear that habits control your life and decide your destiny. He also gives confidence by proving that it is possible to change one's habit. This book breaks down a habit into a cue, routine and reward thereby providing a clear understanding of habits.

After understanding the anatomy of habits from this book, I was able to practice a few habits consistently every day. To name a few: Waking up early, meditating, jogging, flossing my teeth, reading and so on.


4. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up


          This is one of those books which made me take action on tidying up the moment I read it. After organising the physical space we also found new things which were buried deep earlier like - reading Thirukural, practising Rubik's cube and so on. This book also made us conscious about buying or bringing new things to our home. We also avoid taking pamphlets or free samples understanding its full life-cycle. It also left us a new habit to follow regularly few times a year. 

5. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk

         This book made me more empathic to my kid's feelings and emotions. It also helped me promote their autonomy and appreciate their independence. To my surprise, these days I see my elder kid (6-year-old) using this language of empathy to the younger one (2 years old) as well. He also communicates his emotions such as angry or frustration through words. This book serves as a bible for our parenting life.

If you haven't read any of these books add it to your Goodreads wishlist for next year and I am sure you would thank me for it.

Parenting Experiments

My wife and I were looking for ways to enhance our kid's self-confidence, improve their problem-solving ability, increase their autonomy and also reduce their tantrums. In the process, my wife suggested that we read the book called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish.

The book was one of the best parenting materials that I have ever come across. Unlike other parenting books, the methods suggested in this book really works and more importantly it also gives both the parent and the kid a pleasant feel. As I read along, I also experimented some of the methods suggested in the book.

Here are a few parenting experiments based on the methods suggested in How to talk:

#1 Empathic Listening - Empathic listening is all about understanding and acknowledging the kid's feeling without giving solutions, advice or lectures. This was one of the hardest skills to practice regularly. It was like learning a new language.
           A few days ago, I informed my elder kid A (6-year-old) that it's time for bed and asked him to get ready. As it was clearly evident, he didn't want to stop having fun. He told me that he wants to play a game of hangman. Usually, I would provide solutions such as: let's play tomorrow or start lecturing about getting to bed early. At the end, all this lecturing and solution providing would just increase his tantrum and make him even more stubborn about his earlier idea.
            Based on the learnings from the book, I acknowledged his feeling saying, "I understand that you wanted to play a game of hangman" and then wrote on a sheet of paper "A wants to play a game of hangman" and hung it on the fridge. The moment he saw this note, he was happy to see his feeling  being acknowledged. He quickly added the subsequent day's date on it and hurried to bed.
           I was surprised to see this work, it wouldn't have been possible if I would have provided any  solution or even kept any consequence. The next day we indeed played a few games of hangman.

#2 Describe - Describe is a process which provides information to the kids without blaming or criticising them. They dislike hearing a long explanation. For them shorter the reminder, the better it is.

Last week, A was having a play date at home with a couple of his buddies. They were sitting on a sofa and colouring their books using crayons. I was worried if the colours would damage the sofa. My immediate instinct was to say: don't colour by sitting on the sofa or if they don't listen move the crayons and the book to the writing table. I resisted my temptation to do all that and tried to describe the problem by saying - "Tables are for colouring".

The next 2 minutes took me by surprise all the kids one by one slowly moved to the writing table and started colouring. As you know already no method works all the time. There are times when it backfires as well. However, consciously practising it gives you a learning of what best works for them.

#3 Problem Solving - The problem-solving method is all about making the kid think for himself/herself as part of the solution rather than part of the problem. It is more about explaining the problem and looking for inputs from them.

I have been trying to make brushing at night a daily habit for A. The more I stressed upon it, the more he resisted. So, I decided to give the problem-solving method a try.
              On a weekend morning, I asked him if it was a good time to talk, he said "yeah", little suspiciously. I sat with him on a table with a clean sheet of paper and told him - "I understand that you don't like to brush but I am worried that it might cause you a decayed tooth later in the years. So, I asked if we can look at a few options to help solve this problem"

We started listing down all the ideas,

A: I don't want to brush at all. 
I wrote it down on the list without evaluating it.
Mommy: Play a brushing song in youtube while brushing.
Me: I can get you an electric toothbrush but I want you to brush 2 times a day for at least a month before I can get that for you.
A: Buy a new star wars toothbrush from the nearby store.

Once all the ideas were listed we started clearing out those options that don't work for us.
A said playing a brushing song sounds like a baby so we cleared it off the list.
I said not brushing at all is not an option and cleared that one too.

Once we have finalised our solutions, he wrote on a sheet of paper as "We will buy a new toothbrush (star wars one) today and start brushing with it from tomorrow morning for 30 days (2 times every day), so I can get a Sonicare toothbrush".

See the below image for his reminder on the bathroom door:

I am amazed at the originality of the solution and the commitment to it. This has been in effect for more than two weeks with very good results.







Parents need to have quite a few tools in their toolset to induce a growth mindset to the kids and more importantly stay sane and enjoy the process. I personally found the methods listed above to be very effective.

If there were any other methods that you tried and found to be effective do leave it in the comments.

Happy Parenting!

PS: For privacy reasons, kid's name is not disclosed.

How I cured my inaction towards Tidying?

      "Our trouble is not ignorance, but inaction" - Dale Carnegie


Our family had a great vacation this summer in India. Along the way, we also did acquire quite a lot of stuff. As we came back to our home with 7 huge suitcases we were on for an organising disaster. The stuff we brought in was way too much to fit into our available space.
                  This is not the first time we were faced with such a challenge. In earlier occasions when we had a space crunch, we resorted to finding a new space saving storage equipment such as - a hanging wardrobe, wall storage or even a new bookshelf. Though a new kind of storage would have solved our problem now, I felt it's just a ticking time bomb. A new storage space only creates an illusion of an organised space. So I decided to seek help to do a long-term fix.

Luckily I stumbled upon this brilliant book called "The life-changing magic of tidying up" by Marie Kondo. I am happy that I read this book now than a few years later. It is by far one of the best books in the space of tidying up. The KonMari method of organising as termed after the author handles the art of organising elegantly.

# Why Tidying?
                 You might ask me why to focus on tidying at all? This explanation in the starting few pages of the book convinced me

"Organising your physical space gives much clarity and focus to your mental space"

                 With items out of order in our house for the past few weeks, I could say this is absolutely true. A cluttered physical space does create a distraction, after reading the book I believe by organising the physical space one can lay the foundation for a calmer mind.

# Tidying starts with discarding:
                 Marie explains that focusing just on the storage solutions is just a trap. This is why tidying must start with discarding. I have heard about discarding as an effective way to organise. Even heard about strategies such as discarding whichever items you haven't used for a period of time say 6 months or a year. Though these ideas sound easy and practical it never sprung me into action. It's because of this inaction many of our homes are filled with clutter.

By reading this book, I was able to convince myself to let go some of my things - either understanding that it has lived its life with me or it has taught me a lesson that I don't really need it. One truth I understood is - reading a book is not just for knowledge but also to cure inaction.

# Does this Spark Joy?
                The author says the best way to choose what to keep and what to discard is to take each item in one's hand and ask: "Does this Spark Joy?" If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it.

By using the above yardstick I was able to donate 50% of my wardrobe to Goodwill. Applied the same technique to my books, kid's toys and so on and donated them. Organising the items this way made me love those things that I have. Also, it helps to understand my real tastes and thereby to make better buying choices in the future.

I can relate more to Marie's statement - "Tidying is more like meditation". It's about understanding yourself.

# Fear for the future:

     "The way you do one thing is the way you do everything" 
                           
                Marie gives two reasons on why we can't let somethings go: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.

While tidying I discovered my underlying fear for the future. When I came across some of my clothes, which were bigger - I found myself asking what if I gain more pounds in the future? It's because of this fear I had been storing all those out of size trousers in my closet. Understanding that fear helped me to let it go.


Next time when an untidy bug bites me, I know where to look for a cure.