This book is about making small habit/concept change that may yield positive impact on your life. There are roughly 39 ideas on how to shift your thoughts to make your life easier/better. Most of them are common sense. A summary is as follows: A few of them stands out for me: 11. Take a vacation every day, 18. Set your expectations to zero, 19. Are you in there?, 37. Leave things as you found them and
38. Make a small difference in someone’s life every day.

1. A penny for your thoughts: a small shift in the thinking makes a whole world of difference.
2. Paving your way: questions your assumptions and stop being a creature of habit.
3. Be there for yourself: Be kind to yourself and reserve time for yourself.
4. Your life can change at a drop of a hat: Expect changes will happen and be prepared for them.
5. The most basic choice of all: Be grateful or over-extended. It’s our choice.
6. Remember the power of hope: Maintain the hope that things will be better this time.
7. I won’t go there: Don’t allow ourselves to go down the path of worry and dread.
8. Watch your thoughts: next time you become agitated, worried, harried, or simply unable to focus, step back and watch your thoughts.
9. The grass is as green as it needs to be: accept the fact that the grass is as green as it needs to be and it’s possible for us to be happy right now.
10. Take Five: Take a moment, gather yourself and responding with a clear understanding of what you can control.
11. Take a vacation every day: Set aside short period of time every day and bring fun and balance back into our lives.
12. Notice what gets you: become an observer of your reactions. Notice the source of my stress seems to send a signal to my brain that says, “Don’t worry about it.”
13. Recognize when you’re fighting reality: Ask yourself, “how is resisting concrete reality going to help? Is there any chance that fighting reality is going to make you feel better?”
14. Focus on the blessings: As negative thoughts creep into your mind, learn to let them pass and replace them with thoughts about all that’s right instead.
15. Golden pause: take one in moments of stress.
16. Plant a seed of doubt: open your mind to the possibility that there’s a different perspective to consider. An open mind is essential for true happiness.
17. Believe it or not, this too shall pass. Avoid making big decisions when your mood is down.
18. Set your expectations to zero: That way everything you see is a miracle. e.g. expect zero bonus. Once you’re done all you can, you completely let go of your expectations of the outcome.
19. Are you in there? Step forward and offer your full and absolute concentration. When you’re with someone, make that person feel as though he or she is the most important person in the world to you at that moment.
20. Find a way to laugh every day.
21. Turning on a dime: Have an open mind and willingness to make the change.
22. Lay out the welcome mat: Reach out to others and become more welcoming in whatever small way you can.
23. A small secret: use of flashcard.
24. Learn to say no: don’t over commit.
25. Stop the blame game: take responsibility for what happens in their lives – the good and the bad.
26. Be careful what you do and say: we may be influenced others.
27. First things first: focus energy and time on what’s most productive and potentially profitable.
28. Innocent until proven guilty: taking control by not letting our assumptions run our lives.
29. No more regrets: Let them pass and follow up with this thought: “I choose to believe that everything happened in my life happened for a reason. I have made good decisions that support a positive, wonderful life. I will not look back, unless it is to learn or appreciate something or to each someone else a valuable life lesson.”
30. Listen without interrupting: there is no advantage to interruption or mentally critiquing someone who’s giving your advice.
31. Save for a rainy day! Some financial advises.
32. Don’t take notes: relax and enjoy the talk. Don’t approach life wiht an intensity that obscures the bigger picture.
33. My two bits: changing our relationship to the world.
34. Give a little
35. Reading is for everyone: reading more.
36. A little kindness just might keep the doctor away.
37. Leave things as you found them.
38. Make a small difference in someone’s life every day. Create your own list of ideas and start incorporating into your life.
39. Sail way with small change.

I listened to the audiobook. The author/narrator tells a good story of Ben’s turn around from being the “Answer Man” to the “Question Man” and from the “Judger” to the “Learner” mindset. As stated in the book, “Great Results begin with great questions.” It takes discipline and practice to move away from withholding the answers and becoming the “learner” by asking questions and allowing others to provide the answers. I particularly like the Q-storming instead of brainstorming. Sometimes it may seems to be playing the Double Jeopardy.

Overall, I learn to be more conscientious of which role I’m playing when and if I run into a sticky situation. The switching questions help. Ben’s story may be a bit juvenile and dramatic but it drives home the point that being the Judger affects negatively a person’s work and personal life. To be successful as a leader, asking questions is more effective.

The 10 tools are:
1. Empower your observer: Be present with yourself and others.
2. Use the Choice Map as a Guide: choose to be on the Learner path, not Judger path, use switch lane. Use the ABCC (Aware – Am I in Judger?, Breathe – Do I need to step back and look at this more objectively?, Curiosity – Do I have all the facts? What’s happening here?, and Choice – What’s my choice?) Choice process.
3. Put the power of questions (internal and interpersonal) to work.
4. Distinguish Learner and Judger mindsets and questions.
5. Make friends (be aware of) with Judger.
6. Question assumptions.
7. Take advantage of switching questions. (Am I in Judger? Is this what I want to feel? Is this what I want to be doing? Where would I rather be? How can I get there? Is this working? What are the facts? How else can I think about this? What assumption am I making? What am I missing or avoiding? How can I be more objective and honest?
8. Create Learner Teams
9. Create breakthroughs with Q-storming.
10. Ask the top twelve questions for success. What do I want? What are my choices? What assumptions am I making? What am I responsible for? How else can I think about this? What is the other person thinking, feeling, and wanting? What am I missing or avoiding? What can I learn? From this person, situation, mistake, failure or success? What action steps make the most sense? What questions should I ask myself or others? How can I turn this into a win-win? What’s possible?

This book describes the history of Hawaii, how it was like originally in its own kingdom, which was savagely consolidated by King Kamehameha, to its being annexed by the United States and its statehood. In a way, all the people, the whalers, sailors, imported labors and the foreign conquerors are all unfamiliar fishes to the native Hawaiians.

The incestuous tradition of the early Kamehameha kingdom was not different than the Egyptians. Also, the Mormons were one the earliest settlers that influenced the religion of people and gave them their written language there. But given the economic necessity of growing sugar canes, many of the Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos workers were imported into the islands. The islands turned into a melting pot. After many generations of mixing, the people are all “cousins” as they often referred to one another.

The politics of US’s annexing Hawaii in the early 19th century coincided with the peak of imperialism was rather interesting. Politics have a way to explain away all evil doings in the name of precedences and strategic importance for the future.

This book also gave the history behind the famous Hawaiian song, Aloha Oe, written by the last Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani, who sang this song to Teddy Roosevelt during his inauguration. Of course, this book would probably not be of interest to people if it were not for President Obama’s being born and growing up in Hawaii.

The organization of the book is bit hard to follow on audiobook which I listened to. The author’s voice is not your usual professional voices but OK and there were many quotes voiced by a few famous people including Keanu Reeve. Overall, it was a casual, interesting book – well researched, not too serious and occasionally funny. I’ll be sure to bring this book along next time I plan to vacation there.

The author went to a great length to convince me and readers that our brains are plastic (changeable, not local/non-changeable) and are capable of changes if we push ourselves to use the under-/un-developed areas of our brains. Neurons that fire together stay together in the same area of the brain and neurons that stay apart in the brain if not used together. This is the reason why the sensors for our arms got mapped to our chins/lips, where the phantom pains/itches often got mapped into for those who got their arms/hands amputated.

The author also covered topics on sexual plasticity (addiction to porn) and presented evidences that autism may be affected by noisy environment that cause many unrelated neurons to be firing, resulted in the malfunction of our neuron filter that screens out unimportant/unrelated signals. Very interesting theory. Of course, one cannot rule out the gene defects as the possible causes.

There are examples of masochism/sadism that can be related to the brain development, which requires its re-wiring to be cured. The effect of Oxytocin is mentioned. Evidences of the brains’ being re-wired after a stroke are presented. The last example described is about a half-brain woman who didn’t have a left hemisphere at birth and how she was able to have the normally left-brain functions remapped to the right brain – a solid evidence that the brain is capable of rewiring.

Overall, this is a good read. A bit technical but full of supporting examples and evidences. It further encourages me to explore new areas of learning like a new language at my age to extend the brain health or suffer the atrophy of the brain. As the author repeated throughout the book, “if you don’t use it, you lose it.” And if you use it or learn new skills to nurture the unused areas of the brain, you’d see your renaissance at your old age.

The author went to a great pain to elaborate why we get fat, not from eating too many calories and/or exercising too little – calories in and calories out theory – but from eat carbohydrates causing a spike in insulin which in turn shut down the burning of fat. The science was explained and it was convincing.

The bottom line is to avoid carbohydrates or reduce its consumption down to 20 grams a day or less and eat fat the rest the way until you feel full. That’s it. Simple as that. The strange thing is that this method has been known since the 1950’s and yet the health organizations continue to debunk what has proven to work – probably due to the pressure from the food and health industries.

This is a good easy read and well worth the time if controlling/reducing the weight is your goal.

This is an hilarious account of Tiny Fey’s rise to fame from an unknown Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” writer/actor leading to the producer of the 30 Rock show. Of course, the imitation of Sarah Palin was the opportunity that brought her the fame in the national TV. The sketch scripts for the imitation of Sarah Palin was extremely funny and brilliant.

In the book, there were funny stories about her honeymoon cruise that ended in an evacuation from the ship due to an engine fire, climbing the old rag mountain with no preparation to accompany/please a “potential” boyfriend who ended up bruised in a slip, male comedy writers who pee in jars, her experiment starting the 30 Rock with Alec Baldwin, and her Greek upbringing and growing up with a scar.

The audiobooks is narrated by Tiny Fey herself – very funny. Well worth listening to.

Tony Blair really poured out his guts in this book about his political life. There were interesting stories about Lady Diana, the facing down of terrorists after 911, the Kosvo war, the Iraq war. There were more mundane descriptions of the political life and his “New Labor” initiatives. He sounded very genuine and enthusiastic about

He didn’t have a lot of nice things to say about Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, who succeeded him or forced him out. I thought he wined too much about Gordon. Tony should’ve got rid of him despite of all, in my opinion. Surprisingly, he had a lot of nice things (like integrity) to say about George Bush.

Many people including myself thought that Tony Blair was an US puppet, claiming to be shoulder-to-shoulder with US. But I sensed that he really believed that the it’s in UK’s best interest to be aligned with the US interest.

I got to learn a lot about Britain’s political systems, the parties (Tory vs. Labor), the precarious relationship between the prime minister and the Royal family. I thought the role of the Chancellor is a bit strange and counter-productive. In addition, the PMQ (Prime Minister Questions) with the House of Commons is interesting; it’s like a weekly session of putting the prime minister’s butt against fire.

Tony Blair held the office for a good 10 years – an awful long time in today’s democracy system. I think at the end people just got sick of having him in power, not because his policies were wrong and detrimental to the Brits.

This is an interesting book for someone who wants to learn about being a good leader, the politics, and Britain’s political system – all for the price of one book. I listened to the audiobook recorded by Tony Blair himself – very personal and believable.