by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Recommended Books
Chaos: Making a New Science
by James Gleick
To purchase through Amazon.com, click here.
See other recommended books.
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Page references are to the soft cover edition
[Items enclosed in brackets are paraphrases or commentary by Tony Mayo]
Two favorite excerpts:
p. 38 Shallow ideas can be assimilated; ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility. A physicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Joseph Ford, started quoting Tolstoy: “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
p. 231 “Rigor is the strength of mathematics,” Peitgen said. “That we can continue a line of thought which is absolutely guaranteed–mathematicians never want to give that up. But you can look at situations that can be understood partially now and with rigor perhaps in future generations. Rigor, yes, but not to the extent that I drop something just because I can’t do it now.”
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals, Quotes and Aphorisms, Recommended Books, Stress Management
To live is to suffer.
–The Buddha
But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, there must be a in meaning in suffering. … Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
— Viktor Emil Frankl
Man’s Search for Meaning
One always finds one’s burden again. … The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
–Albert Camus
The Myth of Sisyphus
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals, Quotes and Aphorisms, Recommended Books
What a wonderful power the machine gives you but, is it going to dominate you? The statement of what the need and want is must come from you not from the machine. Not from the government that’s teaching you or not even from the clergy, it has to come from one’s own inside and the minute that you let that drop and take what the dictation (dictator) of the time is instead of the dictation of your own eternity is you have capitulated to the devil and you are in hell.
–Joseph Campbell
The Hero’s Journey
by Tony Mayo | For Executive Coaches, Quotes and Aphorisms, Recommended Books
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or
have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Recommended Books
The Economist offers a fascinating summary of the new book by Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer, Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t. The key requirement is to get into the right department and specialty. As with starting a business, riding a rising tide by choosing a growing, lucrative sector makes everything else easier and success more likely. Once you are in the right place, three practices help you rise to power:
- Manage up. Ask for help and mentoring; flatter your seniors; and make a good impression.
- Be a bridge or node. Nurture relationships across departments and levels; be able to call on the right person to get key information or smooth a transaction.
- Practice loyalty. Persevere with difficult postings. Don’t change companies for short term advantage.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Recommended Books
And the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character, and will. No one is compos sui if he have it not.
An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.
–William James
The Principles of Psychology
1890 Page 494
See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Salespeople, Recommended Books, Sales Techniques
This short and entertaining book has been making the rounds of both my executive coaching groups. Invest an hour reading Mr. Shmooze: The Art and Science of Selling Through Relationships and consider how you might deepen and expand your network and your life. This book is not primarily about making money; it is about creating a large and rewarding life.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, For Salespeople, Recommended Books, Sales Techniques
On Killing:
The Psychological Cost of
Learning to Kill in War and Society
by Dave Grossman
Capsule Review
I read this book and I review it here not because of any particular interest in sanctioned killing, rather because of my interest in institutional means of getting people to do difficult yet important tasks. I train salespeople and other business leaders.
I first heard the author, Dave Grossman, on a radio interview promoting this book. I heard him say that that in the history of combat from Alexander the Great through World War II only about 15% of soldiers in battle were trying to kill the enemy. He’s not talking about the long administrative and logistical tail of the army. Only 15-20% of the people with guns or swords in their hands, who were facing a threatening enemy, were willing to kill that enemy. I know this is hard to believe. I first heard this statistic from a pacifist and I called him a liar. Then I heard it from this author, a former US Army Colonel and military historian, who references the research of the US Army’s official W.W.II historian as well as many other scholars.
(more…)
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, For Salespeople, Meetings, Recommended Books, Sales Techniques, Videos & Podcasts
Here is a complete toolkit for implementing one of my most powerful and versatile techniques, The Conversation Contract™. Leading psychologist Thomas Harris, author of the bestselling I’m OK–You’re OK, developed the basic process to help people conduct the most important and stressful conversations in their lives. I have refined it over the past fifteen years in my work with salespeople, managers, government officials, and CEOs to its present form. You can use it for better meetings, telephone calls, and family interactions.
Start with this video and reinforce your skills with the printouts linked below. You may also want to use my 12 Step Program for productive confrontation by clicking here, Conversations that Make a Difference.
(more…)
by Tony Mayo | Recommended Books
The Mind’s I
by Douglas R. Hofstadter, Ph.D.
& Daniel C. Dennett, Ph.D.
Capsule Review: A fascinating tour of fundamental issues too often ignored or finessed.
Philosopher scientists Hofstadtler and Dennett offer an anthology of probing essays along with their own running commentary on the topics of identity, consciousness, and reductionism vs. holism. More compelling and less of a challenge to read than Hofstadtler’s more famous book, Goëdel, Escher and Bach, it nonetheless guides the reader to reconsider many of his assumptions about what he is and where he fits in the world.
The book, unfortunately, was written just as complexity theory was (more…)
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