Sunday, October 05, 2008

Books & People ... random thoughts happen when I stay up too late

There's something i've been meaning to blog about ever since we took Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University earlier this year. One of the best things I took away from that course was this quote:

“You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” - Charlie Tremendous Jones

For some reason, this one thing pops into my head more than anything else ... especially lately. I love to read, always have, but I don't read nearly as much as I used to. Kids, business, knitting, kids, spinning, kids .... makes it difficult to keep my nose in a book, ya know? Dave Ramsey really emphasizes the need to keep your brain alive and to continue to grow by reading. He also says the best way to get ahead in your career is to keep learning all you can about what you know. Sounds funny but makes sense. Instead of learning a little about a lot, make yourself an expert by learning everything about something. I find myself in an interesting position with the business Brett and I started back in February. I've learned a lot about civil engineering over the past few years but I still haven't found my niche. I know a little about a lot but there isn't one thing that I really know a whole lot about. I was fine with that for a while but now I'm feeling the need to really dig in to something. Something that fits my interests and abilities. I feel like I finally know what path I want to take which is giving me some new found motivation. It's a good compliment to what Brett is already really good at and I think it fits the future of the country/state/economy etc. We'll see where it leads. (more on this later)

Back to that "books you read and people you meet" thing ... We also learned in Financial Peace University that millionaires read an average of one non-fiction book a month. I'm challenging myself to read one non-fiction book a month for the next year. If I can keep it up for an entire year there is a good chance I will form a lifetime habit. For September I kicked it off by re-reading "Financial Peace Revisited". I think I'm going to get back in to "7 Habits" this month. I've tried reading it a couple of times but never stuck with it for some reason, even though I did find it interesting.

I've also decided to do something about meeting more people. I pretty much spend 98% of my time at home since I live here, work here and don't have many friends close by. Doesn't do much for the meeting new people thing. Pretty much all of my call up/hang out/stop by friends are in Gainesville. Kids and gas prices have made that quite a bit less convenient these days. While I have absolutely no intention of giving up my G'ville friends, I decided to start a craft group here in Lake City so that maybe, just maybe I may be able to find some other like-minded ladies close to home. (Maybe even find a fellow Lake City transplant who doesn't therefore already have fifty plus friends in the area.) We meet later today for the first time so i'm really hoping it goes well. I've met some really great people and learned a lot by going to a mom's group and a knitting group in Gainesville. Those kinds of things don't seem to exist here in Lake City and while I have my theories as to why this is, i'll save that for another day. I decided I might as well start it up myself and see how it goes. Only time will tell ...

Link: Dave's Recommended Reading

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