Taking a lead in from my previous post on the book Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald, let’s talk about my favorite section of that book. In a section called ‘Recapturing My Time’ MacDonald presents ‘MacDonald’s Laws of Unmanaged Time’. I found myself constantly referring to this list. It was so simple, but made so much sense. I will introduce the four laws and my brief interpretation, and then cover them in depth in the subsequent posts. Unmanaged Time Flows Toward my Weaknesses – We often find ourselves spending an inordinate amount of time on the tasks that we [...]
Read MoreApril 2007
Finally, we come to the last book that has made a deep mark on the life of the The Happy Rock. Well, at least for now…..I am sure that this list will grow over time. I already have a possibility or two on the horizon, but it takes months and years to truly figure out the impact a book may have on your life. Order You Private World by Gordon MacDonald Now that I had my dream, I started evaluating my behaviors and thoughts in light of this revelation. I honestly didn’t have the skills or track record to convince [...]
Read MoreThe Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkinson Another motivational book, although this one was about finding and seeking your dreams in life. This book is quite obviously Christian. I read The Dream Giver for the first time as my wife and I were wrapping up our multi-year get out of debt plan. The first half of the book is an allegory about the main character finding a dream, escaping his comfort zone, fighting obstacles on the way to realizing his purpose in life. The second half is a breakdown of this allegory. Simple format, very short, yet amazingly motivational. I have [...]
Read MoreFinancial Peace: Restoring Financial Hope to You and Your Family Out of my growing desire for personal freedom, I had already started the journey towards being debt free. I stumbled upon a copy of this book in the local library and thought it aligned with my current focus. Dave Ramsey is a personal finance talk show host with Christian flavor. More motivational speaker than finance expert, although I found that helpful at the time. My wife and I had 70,000$ in debt, so his energy was refreshing. We had a big hole to dig out of, but as degreed DINKS [...]
Read MoreThe second book that changed my life is : Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts: Seven Questions to Ask Before (and After) You Marry My wife and I read through this book and workbooks on our own while in college. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. Again it is quite a simple read, and has a decidedly Christian slant in the last chapter. My wife and I both wanted to connect and create a solid foundation going into our marriage, and this is a way that we could agree on. This book facilitated some very interesting conversations, and caused us to [...]
Read MoreI am having trouble finding the right way kick off the blog, so I decided to skip the long introduction and just jump right in. I am planning a multi-part series on the books that changed my life. The books will be posted in chronological order according to when I read them. First in my teen years…. Dragonlance Chronicles Trilogy Gift Set and The Hobbit I read these books as a teen, and fell in love with the worlds the authors created. The Hobbit is by far the best Tolkien book I have read, and pure fantastic fun. With the [...]
Read MoreA blog about efficiently managing your finances, productivity, and faith. Let’s shed those shackles that keep us from claiming the life we always envisioned. The goal is to have an outlet for the ideas about growth that I am wrestling with in my life. Hopefully you can learn from me, and I can learn from you. The desire is for this to be an open forum where everyone respects and values everyone involved. -HappyRock
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