Mo Ma, did you see the musical reference? I got you man! The weird salts aside, I got you! The final trilogy in the Mo Ma meme. I am anxiously awaiting the results of you folks doing the meme so please get to it.
8 Things I Say a Lot
1) I laugh a lot
2) No…but
3) Yup, aha
4) Ummmmmm (As I listen and try to process what you just said 10 seconds ago, when I wasn’t listening)
5) Close the door! (People keep opening the door to where I work without closing it)
6) Sema? (Sheng for what’s up?)
7) The blog did this/ This happened at the blog today etc etc etc
You should……(anytime I hear a problem it’s kinda automatic)
To be honest I don’t really hear myself talk that often but this list feels about right and so we move on to……….
8 Books I Have Read Recently
As I have said in the past, I am at a stage where I physically can’t read a book because anytime I pick up literature, my mind rejects it by telling me:
You have enough information do something with it
For that reason, this won’t be a list of books I have read recently but rather books, reports and audio resources (all information, right?) that have really affected me:
1) Harry Potter series:
Though I haven’t read the last book because of my aversion to literature, I loved this book. J.K. is an absolute MENSA genius when it comes to creating fictitious worlds in the minds of readers. I always read them in one seating (which was sometimes interrupted by trivial things like sleep, school, class etc etc). Once I picked it up the latest volume, the bolt-headed kid was all I wanted to read until I knew what was going on between Harry and He-who-must-not-be-named-but-is-really-called-Voldermont….oh no, I said his name. I’m melting, I’m melting, I’m melting………….
2) Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky:
Oddly enough the most profound thing I picked up from this book wasn’t even from its content but rather the way it was written. This book taught me how I best learn….from hearing interactive conversations. I am one of those people who may not be able to tell you the statistics and facts delivered in a lecture but will be able to tell you the emotional tempo I detected in the way he spoke and in the room that day.
This huge volume was an absolute genius (genius in the sense of he had taken time and really narrowed in on a topic area and understood it, namely geopolitics of the US and the West) talking, just talking. No attempts at creating a Pulitzer prize winning piece of literature. Just talking in an intelligent, insightful way and that’s why I love Podcasts one of them being:
3) All in the Mind: If you love Psychology as much as I do, go to Itunes, type in All in the mind together with the initials ABC into the Itunes store and subscribe to All in the mind. I cleaned the bricks that built the house I am currently living in. For those of you who don’t know what that means, when a house is demolished, you take the bricks that are still whole and healthy, seperate them from the mortar and cement that bound them to other bricks and build a brand new habitat from that. It took me about 3 weeks of working 8 hour days and while I sat there in the sun, a couple of resources absolutely rocked my Ipod (well not really an ipod, I was broke at the time, let’s call it my portable mp3 player):
a) All in the mind podcast
b) Martin Luther King and Malcolm X’s speeches: If you have never heard MLK on an ipod while you sit somewhere quietly do it. That man is a brilliant orator.
c) Lectures on food stability, geopolitics, Roman history etc etc from radio4all.net conducted by other geniuses that I highly recommend such as Vandana Shiva and Michael Parenti.
d) Preachers like Erwin Mcmanus of Mosaic (find him on the Itunes store by searching for Mosaic, Mcmanus).
4) Strategy of Preeminence by Jay Abraham: I think I have also spoken about this before but in brief, Jay’s whole philosophy to business goes a little something like this:
You should sleep like a baby at night knowing that because you entered the market place, the world is a better place. You should strive to find clients you care about and be a confidante, a friend and an advisor who will make their lives better.
He made business seem like something other than institutionalized greed ( this isn’t empty rhetoric by the way, check out the definition of greed and the definition of profit and tell me that both don’t have remarkably similar definitions especially as pertains to the constant pursuit of excess) and that together with his ideas on upside leverage (use what you already have to make profit rather than going to build new assetts) made huge impacts on the way I think about the dollar.
5) and 6) Four Hour Work Week and Blog Profits Blueprint: I thought I would throw these two together because over the course of this blog, you have heard about them and will continue to hear about them so need to go into much depth. Absolutely awesome resources………
7) Get the Edge:
The 7 day audio course by Anthony Robbins combined with an interview he did on Larry King, were the catalysts behind my going to a wonderful life of semi-homelessness (no lie, it was a true growth stage it was) in Sydney. If you feel stuck in a rut and want to kick your life into high gear, listen and apply the teachings of Tony Robbins. He’ll help you get to your peak experience.
The Bible: I haven’t read the Bible in years now BUT I would be lying if I didn’t say that this book has affected me, does affect me and will continue to do so until the day that I die. This book is the foundation for how I understand morality and good vs evil and a lot of my favourite thinkers reference this book. It’s the best selling book ever for a reason, make sure you at least read it. We are having a little debate about it over on this post.
Hmmm, not enough fiction in this list so I will throw one work of fiction into the mix:
9) FAMBO/Fimbo or whatever it was called, the oral story told by Wallah bin Wallah: As Mo will probably be able to tell you, Bwana Wallah bin Wallah was universally known as two things: a man NOT to be messed with and one of the greatest gifts to the language of Kiswahili. He actually, off the top of his head, orated a suspense novel to our class over the course of a month or so. To say we were on the edge of our seats would be an understatement. He reminded me that once upon a time Africans did all communication orally AND to this day, no one can tell a story quite like an African.
8 Movies I Have Seen Eight Times
I want go into too much detail on those…so I say before I begin typing…..first of all there are almost no movies that I have seen more than once, actually now that I think about it, I wrote an article on this, my 7 Movie Classics article, I’ll just add one to the mix to make it 8.
1) The Game Plan:
The Rock + heart warming story + cloyingly sweet fun = A good day at the movies for Mwangi and his younger siblings.
Well Mo, I hope I did your meme justice. I know I butchered it, changed it and tweaked it but I hope I made it look good. Thanks also to intricately me for tagging me. If you enjoyed this meme and feel like memeing me too, then just create a meme, contact me about it and I should be good to do it (make it something other folks can get some use from though).
Anyway, you know where the RSS and email are to subscribe.
Enjoy,
Mwangi
12:04
