To continue with the theme of the last few post on Where to begin and 5 Steps to Setting Effective Goals, I read the book Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average, & Do Work that Matters by Jon Acuff.
Jon is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of 4 books, as well as the guy behind the blog Stuff Christians Like, and can also be found at his personal blog Acuff.me. His blogs have been read by over 4 million people and he has a huge following on Twitter, currently just over 236K followers.
I have followed Jon for the past few years and love his passion for helping people chase their dreams. Also, he is hilarious and I highly recommend following him on twitter @JonAcuff.
I highly recommend you buy the book and learn from Jon how to start doing work that matters!
In this book Jon talks about the 5 stages of an awesome life, which he came up with by examining the life of Dave Ramsey. He says that every awesome life goes through each of the 5 stages. While the stages used to correspond with your age, Jon says that in todays world that is no longer true.
Whether you are a 20 year old trying to come up with a direction for your life, or you are a 50 year old looking to find a new path after getting laid off from the job you spent the last 30 years doing, Jon’s book offers some great tips and questions to ask yourself to help you get there.
Here are 3 reasons why I think you should read this book:
- He explains how to start. Many times getting started with anything can be the hardest part. Fear tells us that we can’t, that we shouldn’t. Jon gives some great insight into conquering the fear of starting.
- It gives you a roadmap to follow. Jon breaks down the 5 stages of an awesome life:
- Learning
- Editing
- Mastering
- Harvesting
- Guiding
- It provides motivation to start. After conquering the fear of starting and outlining the roadmap for the 5 stages of an awesome life, Jon provides lots of great motivation to begin right away. He gives you examples from his own life and the lives of others he worked alongside, and shows you how they have approached starting, both their successes and their failures.
Below are some quotes that I pulled from the book as I read:
- The best map in the world doesn’t matter if you don’t know where you are.
- The path to awesome is much narrower then the other, more common path.
- The trouble is that on this wide path, you don’t end up at awesome. You just end up at old. This path is called “average.”
- The opportunity and speed at which you can reach awesome has never been greater.
- If taking the first step on the road to awesome were easy, then everybody would already be on it.
- You have to be brutally realistic about your current circumstances, and wildly unrealistic about your future circumstance
- Purpose is not a final destination
- Nothing cripples you like trying to “find your purpose,” or “figure out your dream,” or “name your passion.”
- Thats the first secret about purpose. The door has been open the whole time. Push the door open and take the next step into awesome.
- Purpose is attracted to momentum.
- If you work hard, you tend to expect results
- You don’t get “happily ever after’ unless at some point it was in doubt, unless the whole adventure was in question
- But the road is not free. It actually costs you a different currency – in fact, the most expensive currency there is: time.
- If I died today, what would I regret not being able to do?
- Are those the things I’m spending my time doing?
- What can I not stop doing?
- We love complex problems and are terrified of simple solutions
- Most of us never get there. We never ask the question “what gives me the most joy?
- Don’t buy the lie that changing the world has to be a chore or make you miserable
- It’s actually really easy to find your diamonds. They’re hidden in plain sight right on your calendar.
- Critic’s Math: 1 insult + 1,000 compliments = 1 insult
- Don’t be a jerk
- The desire to help others is the natural by-product of being awesome
If you want to escape average and do work that matters, this book is for you!
Buy it on Amazon or from Dave Ramsey’s bookstore
