The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware

After reading Bronnie Ware’s book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, I decided in 2012 to give up my job in an American company to pursue one of my dreams: to become a director. I will then spend more than 8 years independently producing video content for advertising agencies, big brands, companies or entrepreneurs.

A poignant book, touching, shouting of authenticity that fell into my hands after reading an article which summarized its content. It was the butt kick I needed right now. Yet it will take another five years before I dive into reading for good.

Le Miracle Spinoza, Frédéric Lenoir

This book is the one that will click in my mind. I discovered a pleasure reading, a breath of fresh air while I was in my second cycle of chemotherapy in the oncology department at Annecy’s hospital. A voluntary librarian will give it to me when I let myself be tempted by a book. The screens made me nauseous, I told myself that reading could surely calm my mind.

Only fatigue and the side effects of the treatment protocol will disturb this pleasant reading. A truly superb book that I recommend to everyone. For the anecdote, I left the hospital without being able to finish it – it had landed in the hands of another patient in the meantime – I received it as a gift in order to finish it. I then went through the books and the great finds…

Atomic Habits, James Clear

It’s the book that best describes how to build good habits and get rid of bad ones. Much more than that, it is a book that looks back on the psychology of behavior, its influence on human beings and on our life in general. One of my favorite books that I often reread for fun. James Clear is also the author of one of the best newsletters to which I have subscribed, you will find it on his site by searching for it on Google.

Reading this book, I confirmed what I thought was essential. Create good habits, stick to them, to move forward and progress every day, whatever your goals. Turns out there is a useful framework that can make it easier for you to stick to new habits so that you can improve your health, work, and life in general. I highly recommend reading this book!

Grit, Angela Duckworth

Do you believe that talent alone can enable you to succeed in whatever you undertake? For a very long time, I was a very good footballer and then when my coach tells me that I will have to fight to regain my place in the first team following an injury, I decide to give up football. I was then 16 years old, a rebellious teenager but above all on his talent. So sure of this talent, that he did not admit even constructive criticism to progress from benevolent people around him. I didn’t really know the value of hard work, resting on my laurels.

At the beginning of introspection a few years ago, I wondered a lot about my abortive football career that I had dreamed of since I was little. Thanks to Angela Duckworth’s book, I was able to put many of my personality traits into perspective and understand that all my choices in the past have been based purely on talent and not on the value of the effort over time. term. In her book, she returns in detail to the psychology attached to effort and the art of mastering the grit as opposed to natural talent. I highly recommend this book especially for the education of your children.

Indistractable, Nir Eyal

Let me guess… I’m pretty sure if you lose your phone you’re going to experience greater pain than if you lost your wallet with all your documents, right? Our phone has taken a huge place in our lives. For some, smartphones have become so important that he keeps unlocking it to see if they have received new notifications. I’m no longer a social media consumer like I used to be. I would scroll for hours at times without really knowing what I was looking for. In fact, it is. I was looking for distractions.

So that’s one of the themes of the book: how notifications have become real distractions in our lives. Nir Eyal talk about the psychology of distractions, which are not just digital. It also explains how to get rid of them and live a life that is almost unfazed by distractions in general.

The Bullet Journal, Ryder Carroll

I have to make a confession… When I was 11 years old, I started to write in a diary. My sister had one, and because I always thought of her as a role model growing up, I wanted to copy her. I wrote things about my day-to-day life and every day I put it back in a drawer for the next one. I did not know really what I was doing, but it was the start of a long writing journey. After that, I wrote some rap songs and poems that fortunately enough will never exit this diary. Years later, I’ve discovered in the local library this book : The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll. It made me reconsider having a diary.

This book explains how anyone can benefit from having a bullet journal. You can create it and customize it for yourself. It is a mix between a diary, a calendar and a list of things you want to do. I recommend highly the reading of this book to anyone, really.