The Books That Changed Me Last Year

A brief list of 2021's big players

This year with its ups and downs has been a right ol’ mare. Time just came and went while I tried to launch my brand site Cnota Gaelach approximately 3 times! Each time it seemed I tried to take a bigger bite out of the same apple and through it all I arrived at some crucial insights about myself and the way I’d, up to now, approached the world.

In November I hit my 43rd birthday and yet it only seems like yesterday when I went back to Ireland for a marketing project and had my 40th birthday with friends and family in Dublin. A year since then and I had only just arrived back in Japan again. To think that it is now two years since then and yet I’m still facing the same issues feels like a hard thing to admit.

Why has this been the case? I suppose rewiring my mind over these last two years has been taking some time. Along side a business website that borrows a lot of my personal observations of the world, its pretty clear that I had a lot to uproot.

Although better for it and having recalibrated to some degree the beliefs that I held—throwing away the skewed and negative ones that I’d unknowingly adopted over the years—it’s still difficult to not look back and feel that I should be further along, especially around the time of Christmas and the New Year when it’s difficult to not fall into comparisons with friends and acquaintances. But let me say straight out that that only leads to further reinforcement of the fixed mindset, the ego, status and relying on deeply unhelpful coping methods learned since a young age, just to deal with the world.

How do I know this? Well it’s been a wonderful dig, and some of the big changes are specifically thanks to the following list of books that I wish to share here before the new year gets fully into swing.

Books I’ve gone back to again and again:

• Marketing Made Simple, Donald Miller

• The Unfair Advantage, by Hasan Kubba, Ash Ali

• The Courage to be Disliked, by Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga 

• Skin in the Game, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Dúchas agus Creideamh in Éirinn, by An tAthair Donnchadh Ó Floinn

• Gombeens at the Gate, by Finbarr Bradley

• Take The Stairs, by Rory Vaden

New Additions:

• The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

• Turning Pro, by Steven Pressfield

• 12 Rules for Life, by Dr. Jordan Peterson

• Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life, by Dr. Jordan Peterson

• Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, by Jonathan Lear

• How Fear Works, by Frank Furedi (A must for this day and age)

• King Warrior Magician Lover, by Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette

• Shop Class as Soul Craft, by Matthew Crawford

• Mindset - Updated Edition: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential, by Dr. Carol Dweck

• The Obstacle is the Way, by Ryan Holiday

• Making History by Brian Friel

• The Scent of Time, by Byung-Chul Han

Current reads are:

• A Handbook for Constructive Living, David K. Reynolds

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Others waiting:

• The Tipping Point, by Malcom Gladwell

• The World Beyond Your Head, by Matthew Crawford

• The Fourth Turning, by William Strauss

• St. Ruth’s Fatal Gamble: The Battle of Aughrim 1691, by Michael McNally

• The Madness of Crowds, by Douglas Murray

• The Diversity Delusion, by Heather Mac Donald