Curating Articles and Learning from the Best in Medium

I'm still going to dip in and out of Blogger with random thoughts about random things. I've been here for years (albeit with a big sabbatical in the middle) and it feels like a waste to just ignore this site totally.

But instead of reinventing the wheel with my writing, I'm going to more often provide links to articles I've written on Medium. 

I'll also, on occasion, have links to interesting articles spotted there.

Today's articles talk about getting ready for a recession. Whether we like it or not, one's coming (if it's not here already). I'm not pretending to have a crystal ball. It's just the nature of economic cycles. They happen. They have to happen for cycles to regenerate. The issue is always about the timing of such events. But winter will come - it always does.

Here, I try to approach the topic from a work, money and "self" perspective - looking at how to prepare in each of these areas.

I originally planned to put all of my musings into one article, before I realized there was too much good stuff to fit into a single piece.

So it's split into three. Hopefully, the articles can help better prepare readers for the inevitable...

Links to the articles are below:

• Recession-Proof Your Life - Part 1

• Recession-Proof Your Life - Part 2

• Recession-Proof Your Life - Part 3

And if you want to get full access to, and support, the wide-ranging work of thousands of Medium writers (including myself), how about becoming a member? 

For $5 a month (you can cancel at any time) you get access to the writing of luminaries ranging from Deepak Chopra and Ryan Holiday, through to Jeff Bezos, Gary Vaynerchuk, Hillary Clinton, Tim Ferriss and Tony Robbins. 

Click the link below to join:

https://medium.com/@spiritworth/membership

Enjoy!

Ride On Time

Riding a bike. At 79. For some odd reason that was one of the first things that jumped out at me when I read about the recent passing of Steven Covey, inspirational speaker/self-help guru/motivational leader. Engaged in life until the end, unfortunately, Covey never recovered from a cycling accident he'd had just a few months ago. I guess you could say he went with all guns blazing. His "Seven Habits of Highly People" is a landmark book I've mentioned before in this blog and something I sometimes turn to for inspiration. I highly recommend it.


By a twist a fate, another notable 79-year old passed away on the same day - Barton Biggs, one of the leading investment gurus of our time. He was best know for accurately predicting the economic rise of China and the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s. 


Covey and Biggs, in my view, were two men of brilliant minds, leaving legacies and many followers across the world. But on a personal level, they kind of reflect two parts of me - one's world was more closely connected to what I do; one’s world was more closely connected to what I am. As a day job, I work in finance - not in the rarefied world of high investment finance like Biggs, but still broadly in that space. It's what I do and it pays the bills. Covey's world, however, touches on many areas of my existence. I've been into personal development, life coaching et al for many years, and I continually look to apply new principles that I've learned. Yes, Covey's work did bridge more business-related areas such as management principles, but ultimately for me he was about helping you find direction in life and making sure you did something with it.


It may be too simplified but, personally, Biggs' world represents making a living, Covey's represents making a life. Riding a bike. At 79. Says it all really. Either way, their deaths have helped re-focus my own thoughts on what is important to me. A fond farewell to both of you.

Finding yourself, creating yourself

There are a crazy number of books providing a template for life. How to speak to your inner soul, how to speak confidently within thirty seconds, how to become a millionaire overnight, how to deal with stress, and so on. And I, for one, have read a trailer load of the above.

I see nothing wrong with this kind of literature as they do a lot of good for a lot of people. Personally, however, I prefer to view them from a certain angle. Different bookstores will categorise the same books under different criteria. Maybe it’s just my bugbear but you walk into certain bookstores and it will be “Self Help", walk under others and it will be “Personal Development”.

I prefer to see it all from the development rather than the help angle. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of self-valuation. In fact, an unobserved mind and all that can be a little dangerous.

But while some people may see life as being about finding yourself and these books are a tool for doing so, I’d prefer to see life as more about creating yourself, which these books are perfectly positioned to do as well.

There’s probably no right or wrong answer to this. It’s probably more down to how we individually prefer to see the world.