Being Point

Tag: learning

  • Reading Historical Fiction And History For Pleasure

    For those readers expanding beyond reading novels, biographies and historical fiction are hits among our readers. It’s useful to read outside the genre that you normally read so that you can broaden your experience.

    Hearty thanks to the readers who wrote in!!! Here are some of their replies to questions about biographies and historical fiction:

    “I also LOVE historical fiction. When The Tudors series first came on TV, I became fascinated with that period of English history and began reading all of Philippa Gregory’s novels about Henry XIII, his reign, his wives, his heirs and the entire Tudor and Elizabethan periods.”

    “Her books, on which the series was based, are steamy page turners (some are better than others) but to your point, I learned so much about the history that I was able to justify reading and enjoying them. They transported me to another time and were great escape fiction. Some of the titles are (if I can remember): The Constant Princess (about Katherine of Aragon) The Virgin’s Lover, The Queen’s Fool, and The Bolyen Inheritance.”

    AND

    “I also read a great many biographies when I was younger. You’re the first person besides me I have heard say that! I read just about everyone I got my hands on, so the list is long and actually a lot were autobiographies. Isak Dinesen, David Niven & Hildegard Neff come to mind.”

    “One of the best things I learned from this reading is to persist. Over and over you see the pattern that people who become famous (perhaps mostly in the arts which was what I read about) succeed because they ‘would not take no for an answer,’ because they did ‘not know how to do anything else,’ and because they ‘ignored all the people who told them to give up on their dreams.’ Well, I think these things work, personally.”

    Please share your favorite biographies and books about history with the group. What have you learned from this kind of reading outside of business and self-improvement reading?

  • Some Of The Key Indicators For Whether Or Not You Have Done Your Personal Best

    Some of the indicia of whether or not we have done our personal best include:

    Have we improved a situation both for ourselves and others?

    Have we grown by stretching ourselves beyond what is easy and convenient?

    Have we stopped and chosen where we want to focus our best efforts, all the while knowing that best efforts in one area are likely to result in less than best efforts in another?

    Lincoln said, “I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”

    Being wiser each day, learning from mistakes, understanding hidden dynamics that impact our ability to act from our best selves:  how do you feel about these as indicators of doing your best?