Books Are Magic

Every decade or so a book comes around that causes a kind of life-shift, a sort of glitch in your own personal matrix. These books have a kind of magic in them, refocusing your perspective. The world just doesn't look quite the same after you read them.

For me, personally, the transformational guideposts that fell into this category have differed according to what particular phase of life I was in. Some I remember off the top of my head were Ben Franklin’s autobiography and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in my late teens. It was The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda in my twenties.

In my thirties The Secret by Rhonda Byrne consumed me, which in hindsight seems a little “woo-woo” but the book really did have a positive effect on my life and how I viewed the world. My forties were heavily influenced by Choose Yourself by James Altucher—this was actually the book that indirectly led me here to Hive and cryptocurrency. I'm grateful to all these authors whose work played a big role in my life-journey and who I am today.

Sometimes, on the surface, it doesn’t seem rational that a particular book can cause that significant of a shift. However, it’s something more than just the book’s subject matter; it's your personal mindset and needs in the particular moment you read it that causes a kind of spiritual and evolutionary alchemy that makes the transformation work.

Only four chapters into The Myth of Normal by Gabor and Daniel Maté I can already tell that this book would be one of my guideposts for the remainder of my fifties. This book is so groundbreaking for me because it not only highlights the importance of stopping the cycle of childhood and generational trauma for our own mental and physical wellbeing but also how intricately intertwined our mental and physical health actually are.

According to much of the research and stories cited in this book an unbalanced/unhealthy psychological state is likely the highest risk factor for all diseases. If this is true, and I believe it is, then good mental health is infinitely more important than contemporary medicine gives it credit for. This means it's absolutely essential to our individual mental and physical wellbeing to process generational and childhood trauma.

I’ve believed for years that the single greatest thing a person can do to make our world a better place is to have the courage and desire to work on themselves. The Myth of Normal substantiates this belief better than anything else I’ve read.

The truth is we all have trauma to work through and life becomes infinitely better for both us and those around us when we make a commitment to do that.