Book Review – Sinead Huskisson

Belief Building December 2024

This time of the year is often associated with a review or look back at movies, music or books released during the year.

I like hearing and reading about what others have enjoyed, so this month I’ll share some of my highlights from 2024.

Perhaps a wrap-up is also timely, as I intend taking a break from writing this newsletter in 2025. I have created 36 Belief Building newsletters over the last 3 years. I hope you have enjoyed reading them as much as I have enjoyed putting them together.

Thanks to everyone who shared and recommended inspiring people, ideas, blogs, social media clips, newspaper articles, books or poems. Thanks for your feedback and thanks for reading.

Best wishes for 2025.
Sinead

According to Spotify Wrapped, the top 3 artists I listened to this year were Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Sia. I was a bit surprised by Sia but it seems she features on a lot of the songs that I like!

The 3 books that had the most influence on me in 2024 were:
Chris Hadfield “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth”
Marie Kondo “Spark Joy”
Oliver Burkeman “Meditations for Mortals”.

I enjoyed Chris’ book as it expanded my knowledge of space in a very easily digestible way. It was interesting to read about exercising in zero gravity and the other challenges faced by Chris and his team-mates.

Marie’s book has had a practical affect in terms of how I store my clothes. Folding them and putting them away takes a little longer than usual but it is worth the effort.

Oliver’s book “Meditations for Mortals” has impacted me in terms of how I think about time and success. If I had to sum up his message, I’d say; “Life is for living right now and we shouldn’t wait until we’ve cleared the decks of all the things we intend doing first so we can have the perfect run at what we think will be our perfect life. There is no perfection, what we have is just now, just this moment, in all its imperfection.”

I enjoy many different newsletters but I have picked these as my top 3:
Oliver Burkeman The Imperfectionist
Page Grossman: do5ive
Padraig O’Morain Daily Bell

Oliver’s newsletter is quite infrequent, perhaps one every 2 months or so but generally an interesting reflection on time and productivity.

Page’s do5ive is usually sent fortnightly on Tuesdays and Page offers 5 different things to ponder, often on similar themes to Oliver’s newsletter or often related to the time of the year. She also usually includes The Other 5 which is a short and snappy list of what Page is reading or perhaps a link to a podcast or recipe.

Padraig’s Daily Bell email arrives in my inbox every day. It is usually just a paragraph long but always a nice reminder of mindfulness or taking a breath or pressing pause on unhelpful thinking.

I didn’t include movies or TV shows in the lists above as it is difficult to think of 3 that left a lasting impression on me in 2024.

So whilst it’s not from 2024, I’m going to mention just one TV show, Ted Lasso. Given this newsletter is called Belief Building, I particularly enjoyed the message in the show, epitomised by the poster in the dressing room that said “Believe”.

I’m not giving anything away when I mention that there’s a part in Ted Lasso that includes Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. But mentioning this allows me a segue into a side story regarding Rick Astley which is from a Financial Times article of 28 September 2024 written by Emma Jacobs “What Rick Astley can teach us about giving up”

The article begins with the line “Rick Astley is famous for two things. His 1987 hit, “Never Gonna Give You Up”. And giving up.” It goes onto elaborate that Rick feels lucky to have had the career trajectory that allowed him return to music 20 years after taking a break. The article ends with Rick’s words where he advises that he would recommend a year off rather than quitting completely. I read the article in September around the time that I was thinking about taking a break from writing this newsletter. If I met Rick, I think I would say that I might take a year off or I might take less or I might take more. But I will keep reading Oliver’s advice to live in the moment and enjoy what I have without trying to be perfect about anything.

“I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that alot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.” Anne Lamott

“It may not work out how you think it will or how you hope it does. But believe me, it will all work out.” Ted Lasso

“Things don’t have to be perfect to be a success.” Chris McCausland, Comedian and Winner of Strictly Come Dancing 2024

Belief Building May 2024

May is a beautiful month of growth.

There are beech trees near where I live and they start the month as dry branches with brown, crepey, curled-up leaves. They end the month with soft, unfurled, green leaves, that are so lush and abundant, the branches are hidden.

Nature doesn’t resist change, but sometimes we do.

I know some students who are finishing college and others who are finishing secondary school this month. Some are excited for the next chapter, some are nervous and would like to stay put. Endings are difficult as we don’t always want to let go of where we are.

As we get older, people find aging difficult, looking back wistfully at the vibrancy of their youth.

But every stage has something new for us and we would become stale if we never changed and moved forward. Read on for more on this topic…

Have a good month!
Sinead

I recently finished Dr. Maureen Gaffney’s book, “Your One Wild and Precious Life: An inspiring guide to becoming your best self at any age.” Each chapter describes a different stage of life, going from infancy to old age.

Some friends advised me to dive in and start reading from the stage that I was at myself but I read the whole book, cover to cover. I found it easy to read and it left me feeling uplifted about growing older. Every stage in life has its own purpose and we are always learning and developing. As Maureen outlines, we have 3 main drivers; 1. closeness, 2. competence and 3. autonomy and the importance of each one varies over our life stages.

I enjoyed the optimism in the book which showed it is possible to liberate yourself from past beliefs or limiting messages that you tell yourself and embrace every new day, regardless of your age.

In psychologist Maureen’s own words “At any stage, you are never fully formed. The story is never over. The story is always of a life in progress.”

If we are always holding onto the past, we don’t make space for the future.

A couple of months ago, I met a lady who had just published her first book of poetry. She had let go of previous beliefs about her writing and took a risk. Here’s one of her poems about a beech tree that let go of its past to become something new!

Dreamboat by Mary P. O’Sullivan

Miles away from the sea, it grew,
The beech tree in Greenhill.
From seed to sapling
Loving the sun
Loving the rain
Longing and reaching for the light.
Bowing and bending
Curving it’s lovely limbs
While a crookedness took hold.
Down to it’s very roots
where it’s dreams were audible
To nodding neighbours
For they were kind.
A dream, impossible dream maybe,
To maybe, just once,
Be launched, set free
Transformed into a different beauty.

So long years it waited
Until the appointed day
When a master carpenter stopped by
And two dreams fused
Still held within the heart
His artist’s eye recognised
Within the imagined flaw
The curving lines of his dreamboat
The perfect prow, the sturdy hull
A vision of genius and beauty
Launched upon the waves
Carrying it’s cargo of life’s memories
And proud achievements.
It’s precious store of stories
Of faith and love and trust
Of those who bravely took the boats
The ships to sail far away
In search of a new life
Silently holding the broken hearts
Of those still standing on the shore
Waving their tear drenched handkerchiefs,
Praying, believing in their safe homecoming
Once again reunited in laughing joy.

“This realization that neither time nor choices are limitless is both daunting and exciting. This is the moment to take stock and figure out how to make the best of every precious moment of the rest of your life.” Maureen Gaffney

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” John Maynard Keynes

“The Trees” Philip Larkin (if you would like another poem related to this month’s theme)

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Belief Building April 2024

For the last couple of months, this newsletter hasn’t had the time dedicated to it that I would have liked. I was busy and thought once I finish tasks x and y, I’ll have more opportunity to work on the newsletter. In February and March, the newsletter writing was definitely a rush job.

Fittingly, the topic that I want to cover this month is the struggle between product and process. Or another way of putting it might be the push to achieve something (the output or product or newsletter) versus enjoying the journey of getting there (the process of doing and creating).

In my rush to tick the box of having a newsletter ready to send, I stopped enjoying the process of creating it. I even felt that my inspiration was drying up whereas previously there was always a light bulb moment or a serendipitous encounter or something that helped the newsletter writing to just flow.

What changed this month was I read a short article from author Simone Stolzoff – read on for more…

Simone Stolzoff is an American author. His book “The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work” will be released in the UK and Ireland next month. He also writes a newsletter, contributes to various publications, teaches an online course and speaks at conferences.

His book was released in the US about a year ago and Simo (rhymes with Nemo – as Simone introduces himself on his website) wrote an article about his disappointment in not making the New York Times Best Seller list.

He acknowledges himself the irony that his book is about separating self worth from work based achievements and yet he was invested in this ambitious goal.

Simo writes “The greatest risk of a goal-oriented life is that we remove ourselves from our present experience. If we are always striving to grab the next rung on the career ladder or to achieve the next life milestone, we can miss out on where we are today. Lasting fulfillment is the result of presence, not checking off boxes from some achievement rubric.”

He goes on to elaborate that process based goals (taking the daily actions and being in the moment rather than being obsessed about the outcome) are actually good for us, precisely because we never finish with them. Also, we can’t control outcomes like making the New York Times Best Sellers list but we can control our daily mindset and actions.

Simo’s article concludes with this advice, “Process oriented goals keep the focus on what you can control. Write most days, eat whole foods, move your body -they’re great precisely because they are never “reachable”.”

In Page Grossman’s do5ive February newsletter, she mentions seeing a TikTok video about how unsatisfying doing laundry is. Just as you get to the end of the dirty washing basket, more dirty clothes go in. She makes the point that we’ll never be satisfied if we focus on outcome oriented goals.

She offers the suggestion of replacing writing a to-do list that you might never get to the bottom of every day, with setting an intention of how you wish to feel throughout the day. This might help us be less focused on “doing” and better able to embrace just “being”.

Reading this helped me switch my thinking. I moved away from the box ticking approach of must create a newsletter to being open for inspiration to strike. I set my mindset to be one of listening and absorbing whilst I tried to move away from the frantic running out of time thoughts. Then I read Simo’s article and this newsletter clicked into place for me. It has been more enjoyable to write than previous months and I hope you like it too.

“I know plenty of people who have achieved incredible ambitious goals, only to keep pushing the goalposts further out. They spend their lives chasing carrots without ever feeling full.” Simone Stolzoff

“We humans were not meant to produce constantly. We were also meant to rest, restore, take-in and absorb.” Page Grossman

“When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running” James Clear

Belief Building March 2024

The clocks change at the end of March, but as I referenced the concept of time last month, I have a different focus for this newsletter.

I am going to mention two Nobel Prize for Economics winners.

Whilst acknowledging the incredible success of Nobel prize laureates, I want to add balance with wisdom from Padraig O’Morain.

As nature is starting it’s Spring flourish, Padraig reminds us that for all its wonderfulness, nature is not striving to be a Nobel prize winner.

“Trees, shrubbery, flowers and other plants are not worrying about improving themselves today. A garden is never perfect no matter how much you work on it. So you have to be willing to sit and enjoy your imperfect garden. You can bring this attitude to yourself also.”

Happy Easter 🐰🐣

Claudia Goldin was the first solo female recipient and only one of three women in total who have won the Nobel Prize for Economics. That prize has been awarded to 90 men.

She won in 2023 and I mention her as we celebrated International Women’s Day on the 8th March. Her research relates to the role of females in the labour market.

Claudia was born in the Bronx in New York to a middle class family. Initially she intended studying microbiology at university but an inspiring teacher led to her to economics instead.

Her contribution to the field is very significant for women, especially those in the workforce. She looks at the challenges that face female graduates when it comes to advancing their careers whilst also managing the challenges of being a care-giver in family life.

Seeing her work recognised is an important step towards increasing equality and inclusion.

Daniel Kahneman died this week. He was 90 years old and most well known for his work in Behavioural Economics. He was one of 2 recipients of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002.

“Thinking Fast and Slow” is his most famous book. Daniel sets out many examples based on his research that demonstrate how humans tend not to make rational decisions. The book is not an easy or quick read but it’s certainly informative if you’re interested in the overlap between psychology and economics.

“Men are able to have a family and step up because women step back from their careers to provide more time for the family, but both are deprived. Men forgo time with the family, and women forgo career.” — Claudia Goldin

“Nothing is as important as we think it is while we are thinking about it.” — Daniel Kahneman

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” – Gabriel García Márquez Nobel Prize for Literature 1982

Mind Full

I saw the book “Mind Full” by Dermot Whelan, appear in book shops in 2021. Initially, I didn’t realise that Dermot Whelan was 50% of Dermot and Dave from Irish radio station, Today FM. Once I had figured out who Dermot was, I thought that he had written an autobiography like other people in the public eye.

However, this book is really only autobiographical in parts. Those parts are necessary to explain how Dermot arrived at meditation.

If you have ever been curious about what meditation is, this is a great book to provide a down to earth explanation.

If you have ever tried meditation but couldn’t connect to it because it felt too abstract or far removed from your life, this is a great book to help meditation be relatable and attainable.

In different parts of the book, Dermot uses analogies that I appreciated as they offer very easy to understand explanations.

In talking about what meditation might do for us, Dermot describes it as “a vacuum cleaner for your mind”, cleaning up the unproductive and dusty thoughts going through our heads.

I like the next analogy as it is a perfect description of how to let your meditation efforts just be. There is no need to force a result.

“When we are able to engage with something like meditation without expecting any particular outcome, we allow the benefits to unfold naturally. Just as a sheet hanging on the washing line isn’t trying to get dry – it merely rests there in the wind and getting dry in the outcome.”

Dermot’s writing is amusing and easy to follow. Reading the book is almost like having a friend cajole you into trying something that is good for you. It is practical too. Dermot trained as a meditation teacher and offers simple descriptions of different types of meditation.

If you are in a hurry to find out more about Dermot and meditation, Dermot has a website which provides some background on Dermot’s story, some beginner guided meditations and a link to buy his book.

Awaken Your Power Within

Gerry Hussey’s “Awaken Your Power Within” covers many elements. Gerry introduces us to aspects of science, elements about our own beliefs, exercises to encourage self-reflection and meditation, advice to help us find our potential as well as Gerry’s own personal story.

It has taken me 3 months to read this book. I have never met Gerry but if he was open to a suggestion from me, it is that I think structuring the book as a 3 month course similar to, for example, “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron might make it even more accessible and perhaps more actionable. Maybe that suggestion is also to help me feel better about taking so long to read the book!

Overall, this is an excellent book packed with insight and advice, that’s why I had to progress slowly!

A key message that I took from the book was, whilst being connected via external relationships is essential as we are social beings, we must also be important to ourselves. If we don’t prioritise our link with our authentic selves, we lose sight of who we really are and constantly seek external approval to fit in and please others.

One of my favourite exercises that Gerry offers is about how to construct and sustain positive thoughts. He uses the analogy of crossing a 100m wide river using 10 pieces of timber, each 10m long.

He gives an example of someone who has an initial thought that they will start a business but relatively quickly this is followed up with doubt thoughts and so this person talks themselves out of their initial ambition. Gerry suggests trying to create a sequence of 10 thoughts all of which sustain the initial idea, so that plank by plank, we cross the river.

Sustaining 10 thoughts in a row is firing new beliefs in the brain and creating a pathway that cements our self-belief in our own ideas. It’s a way to help us beat the fear thoughts that will always pop-up. I liked this as its simple but I can see how it would be effective. It’s challenging to get to 10 thoughts in a row without succumbing to negative beliefs.

I enjoyed this book and I’m grateful to Gerry for sharing his personal story as well as his expertise as a performance psychologist and coach.

I’ll finish with 3 of my favourite quotes from the book.

“We can’t arrive at a new destination using the same old roads of the past.”

“Today is either one day or day one.”

“We only die once, we get to live every single day.”

One Red Paperclip

Belief, Courage, Action

One Red Paperclip is an interesting and entertaining read. The author, Kyle MacDonald, a then 25 year old Canadian, decides he wants to trade a red paperclip for something bigger and better, ideally a house!

Belief

The idea sparked from a childhood game called ‘bigger and better’, where he started with something small but tried to turn it into something ‘bigger and better’ by trading with friends and people in his neighbourhood. When Kyle was 16, he had full belief in the potential of this game. He recalled stories of a clothes peg becoming a fridge and he had heard a rumour that trades, that began with a toothpick, had culminated in a car.

Courage

Now in his mid 20s, Kyle had let his belief fade. The red paperclip hung around in Kyle’s wallet for a few weeks before he got the courage to do something with it. He procrastinated initially, feeling he needed to do more preparation before he could begin his plan. His father asked him, “what would you do if you weren’t afraid?” Finally, Kyle got the courage to take a photo of the red paperclip and upload it to Craigslist, (a classified ads website) with a message outlining his intention.

Action

To Kyle’s surprise, he got many responses. Now he had to take action, he emailed people back to find out where they were located, as he wanted to make the trade in person. For his first trade, he changed the red paperclip for a pen shaped like a fish. Around one year and fourteen trades later, Kyle had a … I won’t spoil the surprise in case you want to read the book. If you are impatient to know more about the story, Kyle recorded a TedX talk in 2015.

He believed he could do something, had the courage to give it a go and started taking action.

Who knew a red paperclip could be so inspiring?

The Monk who sold his Ferrari

“There is a huge difference between well-being and being well-off”.

This is a quote from ‘The Monk who sold his Ferrari‘ by Robin Sharma. The book grabs attention from the start as we are intrigued by the transformation of a hot-shot lawyer into a serene monk.

As the book progresses the monk shares the secrets of his transformation with his former protégée, who is now a stressed lawyer with his own busy legal practice.

The 7 fundamental pieces of advice offered are:

Feed your mind with quality thoughts
Find your purpose
Pursue self-mastery and improvement
Cultivate willpower
Be disciplined with your time
Contribute to others
Live in the present

I have read other similar books. What sets this apart is the storytelling and use of fables, which leave a memorable picture in the reader’s mind. The author, makes what could be very abstract and difficult to grasp an easy-to-follow story.

Here are 7 of my favourite quotes from the book.

“There are no mistakes in life, only lessons.”

“The only limits on your life are those that you set yourself.”

“One must never live in the thick of thin things.”

“The only thing standing between most people and their dreams is the fear of failure.”

“Time is a non-renewable resource.”

“A little bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.”

“The journey is to be enjoyed. The road is just as good as the end.”

I am grateful to the friends who recommended this book to me, it’s an inspiring read!

The Fly

Have you ever watched a fly hammering itself against a glass window trying to get out? I usually get a piece of paper and guide it towards the opening to set it free but of course the fly doesn’t always cooperate. Sometimes I come back the next day and see a dead fly on the window sill.

At the start of the book, You², Price Pritchett uses the analogy of a fly beating itself to death against a window as a way of explaining that sometimes doing the same thing over and over is a waste of energy and that perhaps we should look around and find a different way.

The fly is probably doomed because it is so small relative to the size of a window, it can’t really see the big picture that there could be another option.

I can relate to the fly’s thinking that there is only one route. For many years I wanted to write blogs but thought it was impossible. I thought that to be a blogger, I needed a website.

However, unlike the fly, I have the benefit of greater perspective and a conversation with a friend led to the suggestion that I could post the blogs to LinkedIn. It would be a simple way to test how interested I really was in blogging before incurring any cost that might arise from creating a website.

I started writing and posting to LinkedIn over a year ago.

Now, I have evolved. I’m more like a spider than a fly, as I have a WEB-site!

Feature Image credit: Chris Curry via Unsplash

Brain Hacks

I was lucky enough to win a copy of Keith Barry’s book ‘Brain Hacks’ recently. If I had paid for this book, I would have got good value as this book feels like 3 books in 1.

It is part autobiography, part positive thinking and part mental techniques.

I usually enjoy reading about mindset, habits and positivity and this book offers plenty on these topics.

Keith shares his TARGETS strategy, (Take Aim, Act, Record your progress, Gamify, Expect Obstacles, Team Up, Success) and offers his personal experiences as examples. In particular, I found his story about physiotherapy following a car accident a very compelling account of determination.

I liked his advice that everyone should take a reorientation day (or at least half a day) every month. He explains it’s a day when he switches off his phone and retreats to a space where he thinks about his purposes, goals and progress. He records his observations in his journal and uses this to plan and propel forward.

The power of the mind, and how Keith uses his own mind power is evident throughout the book. Keith shares tools and techniques about using visualisation and reprogramming to change some of our automatic responses, which may not be serving us well.

As a lecturer, I always try to remember student names and Keith has given me some new memory hacks for this. He suggests using repetition and visuals to recall a name.

Here are some of his examples. A coincidence for me that my own name was one!

“I see a key going through teeth… Keith.”

“Sinead could be somebody with a plaster covering a deep cut on their shin – shinaid.”

At the end of the book, Keith offers insight to some of his mental tricks, so the next time you meet me, I may be able to astound you with my mind power… of course I can’t divulge anything here due to “Rule 1. Never reveal the secret.”