Set Boundaries, Find Peace (Nedra Glover Tawwab)

 

I've always had the view that boundaries were about being tough and it wasn't something I really valued as part of my personality. I have to re-think that now after reading this book. The truth is, in many aspects of my life, I'm pretty good at boundaries. This book opened up some new categories I hadn't really put much thought into before. Some of it I didn't agree with but there was a lot of new perspectives I hadn't considered. I never thought about boundaries with myself...think self-development! I think this book would be a great one for all obligers to read....and truthfully, I think we all have a little bit of obliger in us. I also really liked her suggestions on boundaries for social media/smart phones:

Limit overconsumption of online content to protect mental health (public interviews and her Instagram guidance emphasize reducing overwhelm).

Be intentional about how often and why you use social platforms.

Mute, unfollow, or block accounts that cause stress, comparison, or emotional harm (a frequent theme in her Instagram Q&As).

Set time boundaries around device use to support rest, presence, and emotional regulation.

Understand that social media isn’t “real life,” and protect your energy accordingly.

Goodreads says:.
End the struggle, speak up for what you need, and experience the freedom of being truly yourself.

Healthy boundaries. We all know we should have them–in order to achieve work/life balance, cope with toxic people, and enjoy rewarding relationships with partners, friends, and family. But what do “healthy boundaries” really mean–and how can we successfully express our needs, say “no,” and be assertive without offending others?

Licensed counselor, sought-after relationship expert, and one of the most influential therapists on Instagram Nedra Glover Tawwab demystifies this complex topic for today’s world. In a relatable and inclusive tone, Set Boundaries, Find Peace presents simple-yet-powerful ways to establish healthy boundaries in all aspects of life. Rooted in the latest research and best practices used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), these techniques help us identify and express our needs clearly and without apology–and unravel a root problem behind codependency, power struggles, anxiety, depression, burnout, and more.

Boundaries (Henry Cloud and John Townsend)

 

This book was really timely and had some great things to think about when it comes to boundaries. The authors are Christian and had many scriptural connections.

Goodreads says:

Having clear boundaries is essential to a healthy, balanced lifestyle. A boundary is a personal property line that marks those things for which we are responsible. In other words, boundaries define who we are and who we are not. Boundaries impact all areas of our lives: Physical boundaries help us determine who may touch us and under what circumstances -- Mental boundaries give us the freedom to have our own thoughts and opinions -- Emotional boundaries help us to deal with our own emotions and disengage from the harmful, manipulative emotions of others -- Spiritual boundaries help us to distinguish God's will from our own and give us renewed awe for our Creator -- Often, Christians focus so much on being loving and unselfish that they forget their own limits and limitations. When confronted with their lack of boundaries, they ask: - Can I set limits and still be a loving person? - What are legitimate boundaries? - What if someone is upset or hurt by my boundaries? - How do I answer someone who wants my time, love, energy, or money? - Aren't boundaries selfish? - Why do I feel guilty or afraid when I consider setting boundaries? Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend offer biblically-based answers to these and other tough questions, showing us how to set healthy boundaries with our parents, spouses, children, friends, co-workers, and even ourselves.

Becoming (Michelle Obama)

 

My big take away from this book is that Michelle Obama is really a good person who works hard to become the best person she can be. She's someone I'd want to have in my life. Imagine if she was part of our Mastermind Group?  Bottom line: She is smart and fun and someone who makes me want to be a better person.

On Goodreads I often read the people who give a book just one star. Not surprisingly, most of them are people who can't get past the politics. They are determined to not like anyone who isn't part of their party. 

Some quotes:

p. 75 On finding your place amongst people: 

It's hard to put into words what sometimes you pick up in the ether, the quiet, cruel nuances of not belonging - the subtle cues that tell you to not risk anything, to find your people and just stay put.

p. 81 On accepting differences:

...thanks to Suzanne [her friend at University that was opposite of her in so many ways, yet they had a great friendship], I am still coexisting with that guy to this day. This is what a control freak learns inside the compressed otherworld of college, maybe above all else: there are simply other ways of being.

p. 283 On being married to a leader:

There is no handbook for the incoming First Ladies of the United States. It's not technically a job, nor is it an official government title. It comes with no salary and no spelled out est of obligations. It's a strange kind of sidecar to the presidency, a seat that by the time I came to it had already been occupied by more than forty-three different women, each of whom had done it in her own way.

[It's just like women in the church! So many roles with no handbook]

p. 407 On the decline of civility since Donald Trump came on the scene:

Since childhood, I'd believed it was important to speak out against bullies while also not stooping to their level. And to be clear, we were now up against a bully, a man who among other things, demeaned minorities and expressed contempt for prisoners of war, challenging the dignity of our country with practically his every utterance. I wanted American to understand that words matter - that the hateful language they heard coming from their TVs did not reflect the true spirit of our country and that we could vote against it. It was dignity I wanted to make an appeal for - the idea that as a nation we might hold on to the core thing that had sustained my family, going back generations. Dignity had always gotten us through. It was a choice, and not always the easy one, but the people I respected most i life made it again and again, every single day. There was a motto Barrack and I tried to live by, and I offered it that night from the stage: When they go low, we go high.

p. 408 On reporting on Trump's Access Hollywood tape reporting:

In the end, the standards of decency were simply lowered in order to make room for the candidate's voice.

p. 411 On the 2016 election:

In the end,Hillary Clinton won nearly three million more votes than her opponent, but Trump had captured the Electoral College thanks to fewer than 80,000 votes spread across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. I am not a political person, so I'm not going to attempt to offer an analysis of the results. I won't try to speculate about who was responsible or what was unfair. I just wish more people had turned out to vote. And I will always wonder about what led many women, in particular, to reject an exceptionally qualified female candidate and instead choose a misogynist as their president. But the result was now ours to live with.

p. 414 On her goals as First Lady:
....we'd focused ourselves on doing more than trending for a few hours on Twitter. And we had results. 45 million kids were eating healthier breakfasts and lunches; 11 million tsudents were getting 60 minutes of physical activity every day through our Let's Move! Active Schools program. Children overall were eating more whole grains and produce. The era of supersized fast food was coming to a close.

[I wonder how Melania feels about her Be Better campaign...considering her husband's tweets and name-calling]

Goodreads says:

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Stillness Is The Key (Ryan Holiday)

 

Books like this are changing my life. Love it! I've been trying to meditate daily since March and I believe it is making a difference in how I handle the back to school stress of school during a pandemic. 

Quotes and notes:

Page xiv

To Seneca and his fellow adherents of stoic philosophy, if a person could develop peace within themselves - if they could achieve apatheia, as they called it-then the whole world could be at war, and they could still think well, work well, and be well. "You may be sure that you are at peace with yourself, "Seneca wrote, "when no noise reaches you, when no word shakes you out of yourself, whether it be flattery or a threat, or merely an empty sound buzzing about you with unmeaning sin." In this state, nothing could touch them (not even a deranged emperor), no emotion could disturb them, no threat could interrupt them, and every beat of the present moment would be theirs for living.

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention - Herbert Simon

p. 31 Napolean was content with being behind on his mail, even if it upset some people or if he missed  out on some gossip, because it meant that trivial problems had to resolve themselves without him. We need to cultivate a similar attitude - give things a little space, don't consume news in real time, be a season or two behind on the latest trend or cultural phenomenon, don't let your inbox lord over your life.

p. 32 In her diary in 1942, Dorothy Day, the Catholic nun and social activist, admonished herself...."Turn off your radio," she wrote, "put away your daily paper. Read one review of events and spend time reading." Books, spending time reading books - that's what she meant. Books full of wisdom.

(Stillness is the Key, Ryan Holiday, p. 32)

April 2025: There are so many sections of this book that I love. The "Take a Walk" chapter really struck me this time. I need to get walking back into my daily life.

Take a Walk (p. 192) A cantankerous Danish philosopher, Soren Kirkegaard, was particularly eloquent in his writing about walking, but he was by no means alone in his dedication to the practice - nor alone in reaping the benefits. Nietzsche said that the ideas in Thus Spoke Zarathustra came to him on a long walk. Nikola Tesla discovered the rotating magnetic field, one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time on a walk through a city ark in Budapest in 1882. When he lived in Paris, Ermest Hemingway would take long walks along the quais whenever he was stuck in his writing and needed to clarify his thinking. Charles Darwin's daily scheduled included several walks, as did those of Steve Jobs and the groundbreaking psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, the latter of whom wrote that "I did the best thinking of my life on leisurely walks with Amos. It was the physical activity in the body, Kahneman said, that got his brain going.

p. 196 Consider who may have walked in this very spot before you. Consider the person who paved the asphalt you are standing on. What was going on with them? Where are they now? What did they believe/ what problems did they have?

When you feel the tug of your responsibilities or the desire to check in with the outside world, push yourself a bit further. If you're on a path you have trod before, take a sudden turn down a street or up a hill where you haven't been before. Feel the unfamiliarity and the newness of these surroundings, drink in what you have not yet tasted.

Get lost. Be unreachable. Go slowly.

It's an affordable luxury available to us all. Even the poorest pauper can go for a nice walk - in a national park or an empty parking lot. Goodreads says: In The Obstacle Is the Way and Ego Is the Enemy, bestselling author Ryan Holiday made ancient wisdom wildly popular with a new generation of leaders in sports, politics, and technology. In his new book, Stillness Is the Key, Holiday draws on timeless Stoic and Buddhist philosophy to show why slowing down is the secret weapon for those charging ahead.

All great leaders, thinkers, artists, athletes, and visionaries share one indelible quality. It enables them to conquer their tempers. To avoid distraction and discover great insights. To achieve happiness and do the right thing. Ryan Holiday calls it stillness--to be steady while the world spins around you.

In this book, he outlines a path for achieving this ancient, but urgently necessary way of living. Drawing on a wide range of history's greatest thinkers, from Confucius to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius to Thich Nhat Hanh, John Stuart Mill to Nietzsche, he argues that stillness is not mere inactivity, but the doorway to self-mastery, discipline, and focus.

Holiday also examines figures who exemplified the power of stillness: baseball player Sadaharu Oh, whose study of Zen made him the greatest home run hitter of all time; Winston Churchill, who in balancing his busy public life with time spent laying bricks and painting at his Chartwell estate managed to save the world from annihilation in the process; Fred Rogers, who taught generations of children to see what was invisible to the eye; Anne Frank, whose journaling and love of nature guided her through unimaginable adversity.

More than ever, people are overwhelmed. They face obstacles and egos and competition. Stillness Is the Key offers a simple but inspiring antidote to the stress of 24/7 news and social media. The stillness that we all seek is the path to meaning, contentment, and excellence in a world that needs more of it than ever. 

Rising Strong as a Spiritual Practice (Brene Brown)

I feel like I don't always get Brene Brown....but I get a few things here and there. I have had so many thoughts about it - the biggest one being, we are on the right track in our mastermind group. Some of my take aways:

-Writing is really important. It moves things from your flight or fight part of your brain to your logic thinking part of your brain, so those of you doing journaling, yea! For me it was interesting that I've had a few promptings lately to record negative experiences/relationships and I think that prompting was the beginning of dealing with those things.
-boundaries are dope. One of the keys to successful relationships!
-having someone to talk to changes everything
-it's okay if situations aren't pretty
-learning to believe that everyone is doing the best they can is the beginning to world peace


There are more....but those are the ones that really seem to fit with what we're doing. I totally recommend this audio book. It is a recording of a presentation she did on Rising Strong. I think Rising Strong needs to be one of my core texts.

Goodreads says:

With her previous bestsellers, Dr. Brene Brown helped us realize that vulnerability is the birthplace for trust, belonging, joy, creativity, and love. Yet a willingness to be vulnerable means accepting that life will sometimes knock us down. Where do we find the strength to get back up? In her research for her breakthrough book Rising Strong, Brene discovered a key factor. Without exception, she says, the concept of spirituality emerged from the data as a critical component of overcoming struggle.



On Rising Strong As a Spiritual Practice, Brene offers an in-depth exploration of this critical and oft-misunderstood aspect of wholehearted living. Here she defines spirituality as something not reliant on religion, theology, or dogma rather, it is a belief in our interconnectedness and in a loving force greater than ourselves. Whether you access the sacred through traditional worship, solitary meditation, communion with nature, or creative pursuits, one thing is clear: rising strong after falling is a spiritual practice that brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.

Don't Touch My Hair (Sharee Miller)

I picked up this book because both of my kids don't like it when people touch their hair.

A great conversation starter about personal boundaries. Often kids don't know how to respond appropriately when people do things they are uncomfortable with. Also, it's good for children to learn to ask permission.



Goodreads says:
An entertaining picture book that teaches the importance of asking for permission first as a young girl attempts to escape the curious hands that want to touch her hair.

It seems that wherever Aria goes, someone wants to touch her hair. In the street, strangers reach for her fluffy curls; and even under the sea, in the jungle, and in space, she’s chased by a mermaid, monkeys, and poked by aliens…until, finally, Aria has had enough!

Author-illustrator Sharee Miller takes the tradition of appreciation of black hair to a new, fresh, level as she doesn’t seek to convince or remind young readers that their curls are beautiful–she simply acknowledges black beauty while telling a fun, imaginative story.