0:00
LinkedIn's AI-powered job search can help you find the most relevant roles based on
0:04
your goals and experience. It cannot help you find something to talk about in the elevator.
0:08
So, uh, ride any dragons this weekend?
0:11
It can help you find your next job just by describing it in your own words.
0:15
It cannot stop your co-worker from describing their dreams.
0:18
So I was flying, right?
0:20
And while we can't help you advance in the office-boosball tournament,
0:23
LinkedIn can help you advance in your career.
0:27
LinkedIn is the network that works for you.
0:30
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:43
I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:45
All right, guys, we're going to be going over some really exciting stuff today.
0:48
I want to go ahead and get into the best books that I read in 2017.
0:52
So I'm going to be going over 10 books that I read that I really want to share with all of you.
0:56
And then also want to talk about some books I'm excited to read coming up for next year.
1:00
Also, this podcast is going to be a little bit longer than some of the normal podcasts
1:04
that you're going to see, obviously, longer than what I promised in our first episode.
1:07
So it's going to go well beyond that 15 to 20 minute markets more around about an hour.
1:10
But I wanted to make sure to go into detail on some of these books just to give you an idea of
1:15
what they are, what they're all about, and also beyond that, I just wanted to make sure
1:18
that you knew enough to where if you wanted to pick up one of these books so you can read it for
1:21
yourself, that I gave you that opportunity with the information I present.
1:24
But before we launch into all that, let's go ahead and address the elephant in the room.
1:29
And that is as soon as I said the word books, at least a portion of my audience was just like,
1:34
you've got to be kidding me books.
1:36
I thought this was a man's podcast.
1:38
What are we doing talking about books?
1:40
That's for nerds, Bob, but whatever the excuse is.
1:42
So let's go ahead and talk about that a little bit because this is one thing that I've noticed
1:46
as a 31 year old man in my life as I've tried to develop as a man.
1:50
The majority of men do not read.
1:53
And I mean like at all, I mean, unless you look at like Twitter or fancy football statistics or
1:57
something like that, they read those.
1:58
But in terms of like reading books or reading anything that is challenging them or helping them
2:03
learn, you don't get a lot of that.
2:06
The majority of my guy friends do not read.
2:08
They do not read books.
2:09
They do not read anything.
2:11
The majority of my family is the same.
2:12
All the men in my family, they don't read.
2:14
And I've always wondered why that is the case because myself, I'm not a big time reader.
2:18
When I was in school, I didn't really read a ton of the books.
2:22
There's a lot of books in literature that I'm having to kind of go back and read more so out
2:26
of guilt because I didn't actually read them when I was supposed to.
2:28
But now that I've kind of gained this appetite for knowledge and for reading really over the last
2:33
four or five years, I've really had to look and try to determine what is that thing in most men
2:38
that makes them think that the last book they should have read was probably when they're 18.
2:43
And that's that's really the thing that I've heard.
2:44
I've heard from most guys that they stopped reading books when they graduated high school.
2:48
But your brain isn't even really done developing until your mid 20s.
2:52
Like the prefrontal cortex of your brain is even done developing.
2:54
So why would you take six, seven, eight years off of like feeding your brain
2:59
with that type of knowledge?
3:01
It's not something that I've ever really understood.
3:03
And you've heard all the quotes, right?
3:04
You know, readers are leaders and try to read X amount of books per year to stave off this
3:08
or stave off that.
3:09
But there are some fairly legit things and concerns when it comes to us reading.
3:14
I mean, you can think fast and retain more information when you practice reading.
3:18
It's just like anything else.
3:20
If you practice throwing, you should get better at throwing.
3:22
If you practice running, you should get better at running.
3:24
If you practice certain lifts or certain things like jujitsu or judo or anything like that,
3:28
you should get better.
3:30
But it's the same thing with retaining knowledge and being able to recall it.
3:33
You have to work your brain out like it is like what it is, which is a muscle.
3:37
And you have to be able to flex your brain muscle and be able to utilize it.
3:40
So when you need to recall that information, it comes up and not to get so like super scientific,
3:45
but there's actually quite a bit of research now that reading consistently throughout your
3:49
life helps you stave off things like Alzheimer's, dementia, and other mental disorders or issues,
3:54
because just think about it, guys, if you live to your life expectancy, right, which is probably
3:59
for most of you listening in your early 80s.
4:01
And you're the type of guy that thinks that you don't need to do anything with your brain.
4:05
You don't need to exercise your brain or read since the age of 18 or so.
4:11
That's about 60 years or more of you just sitting there doing whatever it is that you're doing,
4:18
not filling your brain with knowledge, not trying to learn different points of you
4:22
or go at things in a different way.
4:24
And really, with and onto life, we're all about mental resilience, right?
4:29
You know, we always talk about physical, mental and spiritual resilience.
4:32
Mental is such a key thing.
4:34
It's doing the hard things.
4:36
It's reading things that challenge you.
4:37
And so hopefully that gave some of you a little bit of inspiration as to the fact that, man,
4:43
maybe you should read.
4:44
You should pick up some books next year.
4:46
Don't set yourself a crazy goal like trying to read 100 books, but read something.
4:50
Try to push your brain in a certain area.
4:51
So I want to go ahead and talk about the 10 best books or it's 10 books that I want to
4:57
highlight that I read from 2017.
4:59
So just a few little housekeeping things.
5:02
These were not all books that were released in 2017.
5:05
Some of them were released in 2017 and I read them in the year that they were released.
5:09
But some of these are older books, but these are just books that I took down in 2017.
5:13
So these are ones that a lot of these actually show up on the Undaunted Booklist,
5:18
which I'm going to talk about a little bit more in a future episode.
5:21
But we compiled the 100 books that every modern Christian man should read.
5:25
You can find that list at www.undaunted.life/booklist.
5:31
And whenever I was thinking about how I wanted to break down this book list,
5:35
I mean, everyone kind of does their top 10 and oh, they're not in any particular order
5:39
or they count down from 10 to 1 or whatever it is at the end of doing.
5:42
So as I was looking at the books that I read this year and the ones that I really enjoyed the most,
5:46
they were all different and they all appealed to me in different ways.
5:51
And so I was looking at them in terms of thematics, like thematically, how did they affect me in my
5:57
brain as opposed to, okay, I'm going to try to rank these from 10 to 1 or that sort of thing.
6:02
So each one of these 10 that I'm about to present to you are appealing to me in a certain way.
6:07
And so I want to be able to go into those in terms of the type of theme and the way that it
6:12
affected me directly. So we're going to go ahead and get into the first book right now.
6:16
And this book is the most informative book that I read in 2017.
6:20
And that is no God but one, a law or Jesus written by Nabil Kureshi.
6:25
That's actually the late Nabil Kureshi. So if you've been following Nabil for any time now,
6:30
he actually wrote the book Seeking a Law, Finding Jesus. So this was a guy who grew up as a Muslim,
6:36
was a Muslim his entire life. It was ingrained into his personality. But you can read in his memoir,
6:42
Seeking a Law, Finding Jesus, you can read about his conversion from Islam to Christianity,
6:47
what it did to him personally, what it did to his family, kind of the reasons why he switched.
6:52
But this book is a really deep dive into the differences between Christianity and Islam. And
6:58
specifically Jesus and a lie. And of course, it brings in Muhammad as well. And so Nabil Kureshi,
7:04
at the time he wrote this book, he was working for RZIM. That's Ravi Zacharias International
7:09
Ministries. So he was an apologist, essentially, he was going around doing Christian apologetics.
7:14
And specifically because of his background, he was looking a lot into what was going on within Islam
7:18
and his experience within Islam. And so for most of you know that Nabil actually passed away this
7:23
year of stomach cancer. So that's very, very unfortunate. But he did leave us several great
7:28
assets for us as Christians to be able to find knowledge. So the two big questions that this book
7:34
looks at is the first question is what are the differences between Islam and Christianity?
7:40
And the second question that goes into is can we know whether Christianity or Islam is true?
7:46
So again, what are the differences between Islam and Christianity? And can we know whether Christianity
7:51
or Islam is true? So it really gets into a lot of minutia. So it breaks down both of those points
7:58
and it takes them several hundred pages to break down both of those questions and to look at things
8:03
from both perspectives. So it's a very fair and balanced view at Islam and at Christianity.
8:09
And my favorite quote from the book was actually this. So it says, quote, "But in order to follow
8:15
a peaceful Islam, one has to ignore or reject vast swaths of traditions from Muhammad's life as
8:22
well as virtually the entire history of Islamic jurisprudence." So that is an unbelievable quote
8:29
that if you read into the book, you'll see how he can make such a statement that is seemingly so
8:34
counter-cultural. But this is such an important book for Christians, especially with the current
8:39
climate of things that we're seeing. Everyone's so concerned about terrorism and ISIS and Boko
8:43
Haram and al-Qaeda and terrorist attacks on our soil as Americans. And a lot of us don't have the
8:49
foggiest idea of what's going on within Islam. We have no idea what the Quran says. All we know
8:54
is what they say on Fox News or say on CNN or say on your favorite blog or what you saw on a meme
8:58
on Twitter. But this is a book that will actually inform you. So whether you're a theist, a non-theist,
9:04
a Christian, a non-Christian, whatever that ends up being, it's going to give you at least some sort
9:08
of a semblance of an understanding of what the Quran says, what the Bible says, and how you should
9:13
think about them both. So that is the first one that is the most informative book that I read this
9:17
year. No God but one or law or Jesus. So I'm going to move on to the most humbling book that I read
9:23
this year. This book was tried by fire, which is written by William J Bennett. So this is the story
9:30
really of the first thousand years of the Christian church. And so obviously a lot is made in the
9:36
New Testament of the first century Christians and what they've done for us and what they were able
9:41
to do during that period and the things that they went through. But this book goes into a ton of
9:46
detail about a lot of the things that happened in the early church, a lot of characters that you've
9:51
heard of and a lot of people that you haven't heard of. And so why this is the most humbling book I
9:56
read this year is because it really told me explicitly what my forefathers went through for
10:01
the sake of Christ. Because we as modern day Christians, even as Christian men, we complain
10:07
about some of the dumbest crap that you would ever imagine when it comes to, oh my gosh, I'm
10:13
being oppressed. Like people post a scriptural on Facebook or Instagram and they don't get very
10:19
many likes. Maybe they get a couple of sarcastic comments. And it's just like, oh my gosh, I'm so
10:23
oppressed. I just can't believe what it's like to be a Christian in 2017 in America. It's just like
10:30
really like I don't even understand because one of the biggest reasons why I read this book in
10:34
particular is it went into graphic, graphic detail about some of the martyrs that took place
10:41
within the church at this time. And so my favorite quote was it was describing the martyrdom of
10:48
santernius. So here's the quote, santernius, the bishop of Tullos in Spain had his feet tied to
10:54
the rear legs of a bull who had been marched to the top of a very high temple staircase.
10:58
The bull was then whipped and it rushed down the staircase with santernius Intel smashing his head
11:04
to pieces, unquote. Okay, so let's think about our modern day problems and the things that we
11:10
always complain about as Christians like, Oh my gosh, people don't think I'm smart anymore.
11:14
They think I'm so antiquated and old because I'm a Christian or whatever the thing they're
11:18
complaining about today is, and let's just think about this guy. This guy was killed by being
11:24
drug by a bull. I mean, we've all fallen down some stairs or tripped and fallen and things like that
11:30
have happened in our lives before. But this is something completely different. There were stories
11:33
in there of people being boiled alive, people that were initially fed to a leopard and then
11:38
afterwards fed to a bear. There was a story of a guy who was ripped in half because one leg was
11:42
tied to a horse, another leg was tied to another horse and the people made the horses run in opposite
11:47
directions. So this is the most humbling book I read this year because it just lets me know that
11:52
as a Christian in modern day Western society, the things that I will complain about because of the
11:56
sake of what I'm suffering for for the church pale in comparison to the people that lived a thousand
12:03
or 2000 years ago and what they went through. And the other thing about it is is almost all these
12:08
people went to their deaths without they weren't drug to their deaths, I guess is the best way to
12:13
say they were not taken there kicking and screaming saying, No, no, no, I was I was kidding. I don't
12:18
believe in this Jesus guy. It's just a just a wizard. I don't really understand what's going on. None of
12:22
that happened. Most of these people walked calmly to their deaths or they were singing hymns. So
12:28
really, really incredible book is very, very dense. So it's a it's not a particularly easy
12:34
read, but it is definitely a beneficial read for you. All right, the most humbling book I read this
12:39
year tried by fire William Bennett. So we're going to move on to the most interesting book
12:44
that I read this year. And this was one that probably a lot of you have already read that I
12:47
unfortunately just got to this year, but is on combat. And that's by Lieutenant Colonel Dave
12:52
Grossman and Jordan Christensen. And so I'm just going to read to you a description of this book
12:56
from Amazon, because I think it does a pretty good job of giving you a an idea as to what this
13:00
book is about. So quote, on combat looks at what happens to the human body under the stresses of
13:05
deadly battle, the impact on the nervous system, heart, breathing, visual and auditory perception,
13:11
memory, then discusses new research findings as to what measures warriors can take to prevent such
13:18
debilitating so that they can stay in the fight, survive and win. A brief but insightful look at
13:24
history shows the evolution of combat, the development of the physical and psychological
13:29
leverage that enables humans to kill other humans, followed by an objective examination of domestic
13:35
violence in America. The authors reveal the nature of the warrior, brave men and women who
13:39
train their minds and bodies to go to that place from which others flee unquote. So this is the
13:45
book where he introduces the concept that most of us are familiar with now, which is the sheep,
13:51
the wolf and the sheepdog. And so we've heard that in different movies. If you saw American sniper
13:56
that was talked about in that movie there at the beginning when you have the scene with the father
14:00
and the mother at the at the table with the two kiddos and one of the kiddos was beat up that day
14:04
at school and his older brother kind of came to his aid. And that's where some people were introduced
14:09
to the idea of the sheep, the wolf and the sheepdog. But this book really goes into detail
14:13
and describes what that means. And so my favorite quote from from this book, it's actually two
14:18
separate quotes are separated by about 80 or 90 pages. But they go right in line with one another.
14:24
So I'm just going to read them in one fell swoop, just to kind of give you a sense as to why this
14:28
book appealed so much to me and would to you as well. So here's the quote. If you want to be a sheep,
14:33
then you can be a sheep and that is okay. But you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf
14:38
comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheep dog there to protect you.
14:44
If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheep dogs are going to hunt you down and you
14:49
will never have arrest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheep dog and walk in the
14:55
warrior's path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip,
15:01
and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at
15:06
the door. That is why the sheep are destroyed by combat. The sheep dog who expects the wolf and
15:13
is prepared for it thrives in the combat environment. The fog of uncertainty will dissipate when you
15:18
are mentally prepared and accept the fact that on any given day, there are bad people in the world
15:23
who are able and willing to hurt you. This does not mean that the sheep dog's job is easy. It simply
15:28
means that he can exist in a realm that destroys the sheep. Even the sheep dog must learn to live
15:33
and manage stress. It was an unbelievably interesting book. It takes a really deep dive into what
15:40
happens within the body whenever somebody is in a certain situation. It talks about how a lot of
15:46
guys when they first come into contact, whether they're a military person or a police officer,
15:50
a lot of these guys actually defecate in their pants. They crap their pants because their bodies
15:55
are not prepared for what is happening. It's having to take a lot of what's going on internally
16:01
and focus it in a different direction. The most interesting book I read this year on combat.
16:07
All right. Now we're going to move on to the most challenging book that I read this year,
16:11
which is How Pronography Harms by Dr. John Fobert. Dr. John Fobert is actually a guy who lives
16:18
in my town in Edmond, Oklahoma. He took a super deep dive into How Pronography
16:24
harms the brain because most of the books that you've read on pornography or if you go to a
16:29
church, one in a million churches where the pastor actually talks about it, you normally
16:34
get a lot of the moral arguments against pornography about the things that it actually does. It destroys
16:39
women. It destroys men. It just destroys lives. It really entangles a lot of people, but he went
16:46
into a lot of those areas, but the stuff that was most interesting to me and most challenging
16:49
was the stuff that pornography does to your brain. It can literally rewire the neural pathways within
16:57
your brain as it pertains to pleasure. Everyone's heard of dopamine. You get a dopamine release if
17:01
you use some sort of illicit drug, but the same thing happens whenever you eat a piece of candy or
17:06
you watch a movie or something like that, you get these shots of dopamine. When you're looking at
17:11
pornography, your brain is actually releasing dopamine and you're constantly needing a different
17:18
fix because that's exactly what pornography is. It starts with playboys and ends up with a
17:22
rape porn. You can see direct linkages to something like that. That is not a hyperbole for me to say
17:27
something like that. In this book, he interviews a bunch of people that have been affected by
17:32
pornography directly or indirectly. He gets into interviews with people that have been
17:37
arrested for sexual assaults and they can really link back their sexual assault to them starting
17:43
looking at porn years and years prior to that. He looks at a lot of things in terms of the link
17:50
between pornography and sexual assault, how that manifests itself in a lot of people,
17:55
the link between pornography and erectile dysfunction, the stats that he releases in this book about
18:01
erectile dysfunction in our parents' age or in our grandparents' age compared to today,
18:07
it is absolutely insane. It goes right in line with what we've seen in terms of the
18:13
rise of pornography and the ubiquitous nature of pornographic material. The most important quote,
18:19
because I can't call this my favorite quote because it's so freaking ridiculous and if this doesn't
18:23
make you just buck up with righteous anger, then I really don't know what's wrong with you. You
18:28
should probably just turn off this podcast and find something else. But here's the most important
18:32
quote that I read from this book and here it is, quote, worldwide pornography revenues from a
18:37
variety of sources total approximately $100 billion annually. Child pornography is $20 billion of that,
18:48
bringing in 20% of the revenue to the pornography industry. As with most any business, the pornography
18:54
industry has a vested interest in keeping 20% of its income intact. Research on male pornography
19:00
users has found that 21% view child pornography as part of what they consume. These men are more
19:06
likely than other men to be frequent viewers of pornography and to report that they enjoy new
19:12
and exciting experiences. Not surprisingly, child pornography viewers are more likely than other
19:17
pornography viewers to be interested in engaging in sexual behavior with an underage person.
19:22
Relatedly, when the sexual interests of child pornography offenders are assessed,
19:27
they show more sexual arousal to children than to adults. End quote. All right, guys,
19:34
so obviously this book does not pull punches. It really gets into the nitty gritty and again,
19:38
some of these statistics are a little bit older, but you can just assume that these numbers are
19:43
going up. There are no trends that suggest that pornography use and abuse are going down or sexual
19:48
assault and sexual abuse. And this is where we really have to have real talk about porn. And
19:52
we're going to do a future episode specifically about pornography. But as a guy who has struggled
19:57
on and off with pornography since I was in my teen years, and something that I've really gotten
20:02
tremendous levels of health in this area over the past seven or eight years or so,
20:07
this is something that if you read this book and continue looking at pornography, what it proves
20:13
is that you are legitimately a moron one, or you are legitimately entangled so bad that you can't
20:19
even see it and you need to get help to get out. You cannot ignore the things that you see in this
20:24
book. You just can't not read something about child pornography and think, Oh, that's okay,
20:29
I'll never do that. You just can't do it. So that is why I put this down as the most challenging book
20:35
that I read for this year. Again, most challenging is how pornography harms. So now I'm going to go
20:40
to the most significant book that I read this year kind of shifting gears a little bit here,
20:45
but the most significant book that I read this year was The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller. So
20:51
if any of y'all know me personally, you know, I'm a huge advocate of Tim Keller's. I just love the
20:56
work that he does. He's been compared to CS Lewis. He's actually been called the modern day CS Lewis,
21:00
which I just don't know that you could get a bigger compliment if you're a modern day theologian
21:05
or pastor. But this is simply the best book that I've ever read on marriage. And there's really not
21:12
a close second. So my wife and I are coming on nine years of marriage. And so did a lot of reading
21:18
on marriage before we got married have done quite a bit of reading since we've got married on marriage.
21:23
And there's been a lot of great things that I've read. There's been a lot of great studies that I've
21:26
gone through. And I'll talk about some more of those on on future podcasts. But in terms of a book
21:30
from beginning to end, just being the best book on marriage, this one is just incredible. So
21:35
this book is broken down into eight different sections. And so those sections are as follows.
21:41
Number one, the secret of marriage. Number two, the power of marriage. Number three,
21:46
the essence of marriage. Number four, the mission of marriage. Number five, loving the stranger.
21:51
Number six, embracing the other number seven, singleness and marriage and number eight,
21:56
sex and marriage. So the favorite quote of mine from this book is as follows quote. So if your
22:02
definition of love stresses affectionate feelings more than unselfish actions, you will cripple your
22:09
ability to maintain and grow strong love relationships. On the other hand, if you stress the action of
22:16
love over the feeling, you will enhance and establish the feeling. That is one of the secrets of living
22:23
life as well as of marriage. So it's just such a fantastic book. I would highly recommend it
22:28
to all the husbands that are listening in the audience today, but also specifically to those
22:32
who are not husbands. I mean, if you're if you're single or if you're in a relationship right now,
22:37
I could end up leading the marriage. Why not get a head start on trying to have a good paradigm in
22:42
your brain as to what marriage is and what it could be for you in your relationship. So the most
22:46
significant book I read this year, the meaning of marriage. So now I'm going to move on to the most
22:52
inspiring book that I read this year. And that is Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual by Jocko
22:58
Willink. And most of you know who Jocko is if if you're a listener, this podcast, you're probably
23:03
a listener of Jocko's podcast as well. But if you're not legitimately, what is wrong with you? Like,
23:08
how do you not listen to the Jocko podcast? He is legitimately one of my favorite people on planet
23:13
Earth. One of these days, I'm going to have to, you know, do a jujitsu role with him, go surfing,
23:18
go workout like he's just such an inspiring figure. So for those of you who don't know who Jocko
23:22
Willink is, he's a former Navy Seal. He was in Task Unit Bruiser, which is one of the most decorated
23:27
units over in Afghanistan. He wrote the book Extreme Ownership with one of his brothers,
23:32
one of his Seal brothers, Lafe Babbin. And so that's made the rounds in a lot of different
23:38
circles, especially business and leadership circles. But it's just such an incredible concept,
23:43
the concept of discipline, equaling freedom. And so you could technically probably, I guess,
23:48
put this book in the self-help category, but it is not going to wreak like most self-help books
23:54
that that you've read or the ones where you get to the end. And it's just like 300 pages. And
23:58
you're like, what did I even read? Did I even learn that anything actually improve? And it's
24:04
broken down into a lot of different sections he does, he goes into his workouts, he goes into his
24:09
mindset. And most of it is in bite-sized little chapters, whether they're a page or three pages
24:15
long. The text is actually really, really cool. I guess the pages, it's like black pages with
24:21
pictures in the background, like black and white pictures. And you've got the text on front. It's
24:25
a really, really impressive looking book. And the stuff inside of it is really impressive as well.
24:30
And so I'm going to read to you something. It's a little bit lengthy. So just hang with me,
24:34
but it's his concept of good. So if you listen to his podcast, you hear him say good all the time,
24:39
like something goes bad. And he says the word good. And so it really breaks down into why does he say
24:45
something like that? And so for me personally, I'm a naturally kind of a pessimistic type of person.
24:50
And I don't really like to lose. I like to set up opportunities where things can succeed most of
24:55
the time. And so this chapter of this book really, really hit me hard. So I'm going to go ahead and
24:59
read it to you now. So here we go. How do I deal with setbacks, failures, delays, defeats, or other
25:05
disasters? I actually have a fairly simple way of dealing with these situations summed up in one
25:10
word, good. This is something that one of my direct subordinates, one of the guys who worked for me,
25:15
a guy who became one of my best friends pointed out, he would pull me aside with some major problem
25:20
or some issue that was going on. He'd say boss, we've got this thing, the situation, and it's going
25:25
terribly wrong. I would look at him and I'd say good. And finally, one day he was telling me about
25:31
something that was going off the rails. And as soon as he finished explaining it to me, he said,
25:35
I already know what you're going to say. And I asked, what am I going to say? And he said,
25:39
you're going to say good. He continued. That's what you always say. When something is wrong or going
25:45
bad, you just look at me and say good. And I said, well, I mean it, because that is how I operate.
25:51
So I explained to him that when things are going bad, there's going to be some good that will come
25:55
from it. Oh, mission got canceled. Good. We can focus on another one. Didn't get the new high
26:01
speed gear we wanted. Good. We can keep it simple. Didn't get promoted. Good. More time to get better.
26:07
Didn't get funded. Good. We own more of the company. Didn't get the job you wanted. Good.
26:13
Go out, gain more experience and build a better resume. Got injured. Good. Needed a break from
26:18
training. Got tapped out. Good. It's better to tap out in training than to tap out on the street.
26:24
Got beat. Good. We learned. Unexpected problems. Good. We have the opportunity to figure out a
26:30
solution. That's it. When things are going bad, don't get all bummed out. Don't get startled.
26:36
Don't get frustrated. No. Just look at the issue and say good. Now I don't mean to say something
26:41
trite. I'm not trying to sound like Mr. Smiley positive guy. That guy ignores the hard truth.
26:47
That guy thinks a positive attitude will solve problems. It won't. But neither will dwelling on
26:51
the problem. No. Accept the reality. But focus on the solution. Take that issue. Take that setback.
26:58
Take that problem and turn it into something good. Go for it. And if you are a part of a team,
27:03
that attitude will spread throughout. Finally, if you can say the word good, then guess what?
27:08
It means you're still alive. It means you're still breathing. And if you're still breathing,
27:12
that means you've still got some fight left in you. So get up, dust off, reload, recalibrate,
27:18
reengage and go out on the attack. So obviously that that type of tone in Tinner is something
27:25
that Jocko brings all the time. He brings out in his podcast. He brings it on the books that he writes,
27:30
even the kids books that he writes. So that is something that I think is incredible. It's like
27:34
truly, truly inspiring. So that is why I put that as the most inspiring book that I read this year,
27:40
discipline equals freedom field manual. Now let's move on to the most fun book that I read this year.
27:45
And that is Manfield's book of Manly Men. And this is written by Stephen Mansfield. He's also
27:50
got a great podcast. He's got two podcasts out actually. So the Stephen Mansfield podcast and
27:55
the great man podcast, I would highly suggest both of those are both short form podcasts. So
28:00
really easy to digest those. So I will go ahead and give you the description of this book from
28:05
Mansfield himself. So Mansfield says this, my goal in this book is simple. I want to identify
28:11
what a genuine man does, the virtues, the habits, the disciplines, the duties, the actions of true
28:16
manhood, and then call men to do it. I mean, that's it. Like, that's exactly what he said. It's like,
28:22
in once in its that is the whole reason for his book. And that's why this book was so fun. So it
28:26
was incredibly informative, but just a really, really, really fun read. So in this book, he had
28:31
four maxims that he put out as the four manly maxims and they are as followers. So the first is
28:37
manly men do manly things. Manly men do manly things. The second is manly men tend to their fields. So
28:44
manly men tend to their fields. The third manly men build manly men, manly men build manly men.
28:52
And the fourth is manly men live to the glory of God, manly men live to the glory of God. And so
28:59
after he established those maxims, he goes into a lot of different subject matter areas that would
29:03
be of interest to a lot of men. So some of those are our honor, legacy, humor, integrity, vision,
29:09
even sacrifice. It goes into a lot of other areas as well. But those are just some of the ones that
29:14
were really, really important. And I really liked the stories. And so all of the chapters are kind
29:18
of anecdotal stories from history from guys that you may recognize or not recognize. And it really
29:23
shows how they use those virtues in their lives. So my favorite quote from this particular book,
29:29
and which is really appropriate for today, especially with what I said initially in terms of why
29:33
guys don't like to read is as follows. So quote, a man ought to invest in knowledge because it is
29:39
part of living in this world fully engaged and glorifying God. Yet our times also make it essential.
29:46
The amount of knowledge in the world is increasing. Technology is transforming our lives.
29:51
Neutrons can rise like floodwaters and sweep devastation into our homes. Men committed to
29:56
attending their fields, learn, study, research, dig out facts and test theories. They know how
30:03
to safeguard their families. They serve well because they serve as informed men. Unquote. Again,
30:09
I cannot stress enough how important it is to be an informed man to cultivate manly resilience.
30:14
And you can really do that by utilizing books, reading a lot of books. And so obviously,
30:19
would suggest this one as the most fun book that I read this book, read this year rather,
30:23
Mansfield book a manly men. So now I want to go into the most exciting book that I read this year.
30:30
And that book is The Operator by Robert O'Neill. So if that name sounds familiar, that is the
30:36
Navy Seal who was in Dev Guru or Seal Team Six who fired the shots that killed Osama Bin Laden.
30:41
So that is obviously what put Seal Team Six on the map. This guy was again, the guy who ended up
30:48
coming through the room, firing those shots. He was also on the mission that saved Captain Phillips.
30:53
Whenever he was kidnapped by the pirates out of Somalia. And so this book is fairly similar to other
31:00
Seal memoirs except for the fact that he is talking specifically about one of the most famous missions
31:06
in the history of the Seal community. And so it is a really exciting book because it goes into,
31:11
yes, his early years as just a kid, his early years as a seal, him going through buds. It's not
31:18
necessarily a unique view in terms of how difficult buds is. That's kind of something we see in all
31:23
Seal memoirs, but it is a really, really incredible book. And once it gets into all the things that
31:28
surrounded the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden, it gets really, really awesome. So my favorite quote
31:34
from this book is really after they did a couple of direct action missions. This was kind of the
31:40
quote he put out there and it was really, really fantastic. So here it is quote. In our after action
31:44
assessment, my boss and I were going through the list we'd made and started counting. With two dogs
31:49
and 17 seals, we'd killed all 19 of the terrorists without hurting one woman or child or taking any
31:56
casualties. The next day, the locals who'd been terrorized by this al Qaeda cell for four years
32:02
realized that all of their oppressors were dead. We could see their reaction because we had aircraft
32:07
circling overhead, watching in case any more bad guys showed up to bury the dead. No more bad guys,
32:12
just a big celebration. The party got so big with all these jubilant people drinking juice and
32:17
dancing in the street that the newspaper and Baghdad sent a reporter up there. He asked,
32:22
who did this? Who came last night? The woman responded, ninjas, and they came with lions.
32:28
That was the headline the next day in Baghdad. I mean, that is literally one of the coolest quotes
32:34
that I've ever read read in any military memoir. So when this woman responded to the reporter,
32:38
ninjas, they came with lions. Like that is just so, so cool. So I know that seeing that was really
32:45
a big boon for the guys. And that really helped them as they went on future missions that that's
32:49
what they were over there for. So a lot of people get twisted up in the politics of of what's going
32:53
on over there. And they tell you all the conspiracy theories about oil and all this garbage. But
32:57
really, they're over there and they're taking these oppressed people out of the jaws of these
33:03
monsters over there. And so it was really, really cool to hear him specify a book or a sorry, a
33:09
occurrence like that that went on over there. So again, the most exciting book that I read this year,
33:14
the operator. Now I got two books left, I'm gonna do my least favorite and my favorite book of the
33:20
year. So let's go ahead and start with my least favorite. My least man, it's like I get mad all
33:25
over again whenever I think about this book. So my least favorite book that I read this year is
33:29
Find Your Why by Simon Seneck. Some of you, as soon as I said that, you're like, wait a minute,
33:35
Simon Seneck's like, he's a big time guy. He's like a TED talk guy. He wrote, you know, start with
33:40
why, which was a big successful book and you know, New York Times bestseller. And he does all this
33:46
business consulting and everything. And yeah, I'm sorry, this book was not only the worst book that
33:52
I read this year, like the least favorite book that I read this year, it might be the worst book
33:58
I've ever read in my entire life. And I'm not trying to be exaggerative. I'm really not. It was just,
34:03
I couldn't believe how bad the book was by the time I finished it. It only took me about an hour,
34:08
hour and a half to read it. But this book Find Your Why is the prequel to his book Start With Why.
34:13
So Start With Why took everybody by storm and business and all the TED talk circles
34:18
several years ago. But people got to the end of the book, start with why and they're like,
34:22
well, wait a minute, Simon, like I don't even know what my why is. And so this book is like a prequel
34:27
book to start with why but it came out after the fact. So he's kind of trying to go backwards and
34:32
trying to help people figure out what their why is so that they can springboard into starting with
34:37
why. But oh, man, it was just such a mind numbing read. And so I don't normally do reviews like on
34:46
on Amazon or anything like that. I normally just let things go. But literally, as soon as I finish
34:50
reading this book, like I just felt compelled to go on and share my thoughts on it. So as opposed to
34:55
just giving that to you again, I'm just going to read it to you. So I'm going to read the one star
34:59
review I gave this book on Amazon. And so the title of my review is Keeping Pile of Self-Help
35:06
Trash. If that kind of gives you any idea of that where this is going to go. So here we go,
35:11
Keeping Pile of Self-Help Trash. I do not normally write reviews for books that I read,
35:16
but when I do it is usually because the book was especially incredible. This book was the exact
35:21
opposite. I tend to stay away from self-help books. And this latest writing bisonneck reminded me why
35:27
I do so. I understand that there is sometimes genius in simplicity. But the concepts in this
35:32
book are so elementary that it's painful to read. There is nothing new in these pages. I have not
35:39
read Start With Why. So perhaps this is just a terrible part too. I'm sure Sinek will make millions
35:44
off of this book. And it is only because of the sheep that that read it won't realize how
35:50
unoriginal the content is. It is in the least exaggerated way that I can say it. I cannot ever
35:56
suggest that anyone ever read this book. So again, this book was just so bad. I can't suggest
36:05
that anybody read it because there's nothing in here that's going to be moving to you. For the
36:11
guys that are listening to this type of podcast, I just don't see it appealing to you in any way.
36:15
One of the big things about this book was getting you to write a why statement. So basically figuring
36:21
out your why and putting it into a statement. This was really when the book kind of took a
36:25
turn for me where I was just like, is this guy for real? So this is Simon Sinek, like the the
36:29
brainiac genius guy. This is his why statement. To inspire people to do the things that inspire
36:36
them so that together we can change our world. That's it. That's legitimately it to inspire people
36:47
to do the things that inspire them so that together we can change our world. Like legitimately the
36:52
least specific thing that you could possibly say, like you could have said anything else and it may
36:58
have been more specific than that. Like, what do you mean by inspire people? How are you going to
37:03
inspire them? What do you mean by together? Do you mean you and all the people and your family,
37:07
you and all the people on the planet so we can change our world? What do you mean by change the
37:12
world? Change it negatively, positively, I'm assuming positively, but it was just from that point that
37:17
I saw his statement, which was literally like in the first third of the book, it was just a nose dive
37:22
from that point. So again, if someone gets this for you at work, which is how it happened with me,
37:27
my boss who I love, like that's my boy, he gave that to me. It was just kind of like a man and I was
37:33
honest with him afterwards. I told him I didn't enjoy it and why and he understood it just wasn't
37:37
really my cup of tea. So again, Lee's favorite book I read this this year was Find Your Why by Simon
37:43
Sinek. So we are going to put that in the past. And now we're going to move on to my final book that
37:48
I'm going to share with you today from my list of books that I read in 2017. So my favorite book I
37:52
read this year is called The Phenomenon, written by Rick Ankyl and Tim Brown. So if interview are
38:00
baseball people, you are definitely going to like this book, especially if you're a St. Louis Cardinals
38:05
fan. This is going to be right up your alley because you know the story so intimately of Rick
38:09
Ankyl, but really if you're if you're a sports person or a baseball person, this is a really,
38:14
really fantastic book. So if the name Rick Ankyl sounds familiar to you in the early late 90s
38:21
and early 2000s, like 1999, 2000, he was the next big thing picture. He was a left-handed
38:27
picture being compared to Sandy Kofax. He was a St. Louis Cardinal, you know, one of the six
38:31
classic legendary franchises in baseball. And he was it like he was young. He was competitive
38:39
super athletic. He could even hit a little bit, but he was the Mr. Everything picture. But really,
38:45
it all started to fall apart for him almost immediately after he got to the majors. So and
38:50
it really fell apart for him in the 2000 postseason in game one of the National League Division Series.
38:55
So at the time the Cardinals regular ace pitcher, Darryl Kyle, who who has since passed away, but
39:01
he was supposed to go in game one, but he was dealing with some ailments. So this kid, this young
39:05
kid was going to start game one of the National League Division Series against Greg Maddox and
39:09
the Braves. So and this was like Greg Maddox when he was in the middle of being like the the nutty
39:14
professor Greg Maddox, like insane, can't hit this guy throwing like 80 pitch, you know, complete games.
39:20
But the reason why most people remember who Rick Ankyl is is because of what happened in that game.
39:25
First couple innings went fine, but in the third inning of that game, he could not only
39:30
not find the strike zone. He couldn't find the catcher. I think in the third inning of that game,
39:35
he threw five pass balls. And these were not, you know, curved balls or hard sliders in the dirt.
39:40
That just kind of skipped away from the catcher. These were balls that sailed so far over the
39:44
catcher's head, like they just hit the backstop on a line. And really from that point forward,
39:50
things did not improve. He ended up over the next couple of years trying to figure out what was
39:55
going on, seeing psychologists, seeing different people to try to figure out what the ailment was.
39:59
Maybe it was a mechanical issue, but he never figured it out. Some people call it the yips.
40:04
So it's like you could do something, but you can't anymore. It's affected a lot of players,
40:08
especially in baseball over the years. But it really, it's a story of it's a biography of him
40:14
describing what was going on at the time. And then how he ended up coming back. If you know his story,
40:19
you know that he eventually came back years later as an outfielder. He spent several years at the end
40:23
of his career as an outfielder, which is incredibly amazing story. But here's the thing is it's another
40:29
sports biography, right? We've all seen those. We've all we've all heard them. But this is maybe
40:35
the most uniquely written bio that I've ever read, because biographies you normally assume
40:41
that they will go a certain way, you know, chapter one, you know, I was born in this town to these
40:46
parents. And this was a street I grew up on. And here's my brothers and sisters. And then you just
40:51
kind of go along. And then I discovered baseball. And then I went to high school. And then here I
40:56
got drafted. It's that kind of thing. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just, you know,
41:00
it's a very time honored tradition to write biographies that way. But this biography skipped
41:04
around a bunch. It skipped around. But it wasn't in a way that was confusing. It wasn't like a
41:09
Stephen King book, but it just skipped around in a way where you were understanding what was happening
41:14
to him in real time. But then understanding how it attached to things that happened early in his
41:18
life. It's kind of hard to describe, but really, really fantastic read. I just really enjoyed reading
41:24
through this book. And again, there's just the most unique take that I've seen on a biography
41:30
in a long time. So here's actually my favorite quote from this book, which will give you a little
41:35
bit of insight into how I'm saying it's written a little bit differently. Because you can tell
41:38
this is just kind of stream of consciousness. So this is, you know, modern day Rick Ankele just
41:42
kind of describing what was going on with them. So here's the quote, quote, clinically, I believe
41:48
what happened is this. I don't know. And neither does anyone else. They can tell you they do. They
41:55
don't. They can guess doesn't mean it's true. One moment I was a pitcher, the next I was a patient,
42:01
a project, a cautionary tale, a lab rat, a fairly miserable human being. I was quite suddenly my
42:09
father's son, a casualty of the game of a broken family of a heartless world of all the stuff that
42:15
may or may not have been swirling around in my head. I drew back my arm. And it was the last time
42:21
I wouldn't think about it. With a single throw, I joined the list. Steve Blass, Chuck Knoblock,
42:28
Mark Woolers, Steve Sacks, Mackie Sasser, on and on. Rick Ankele, ready? It's an anxiety disorder.
42:36
No, it's misplaced focus. Unless it's plain old performance and anxiety, which I suppose is
42:43
something very close to choking, except nobody likes that word, your brain quit on you. Unless,
42:49
and this was something to think about, your brain knew best, and it really was protecting you.
42:54
You don't want to throw this pitch. It's not going to end well. So I won't let you throw it.
42:59
It's a neurological disorder. Narrower? How about focal dystonia, in which one's muscles
43:05
contract voluntarily, broader? The old time golfers called it the yips. Older time than that?
43:13
Whiskey fingers. Yes, it's neurological. Unless, it's psychological, or physical,
43:20
or all of it, all balled up into one large sob. Damn man, just pick up the ball and throw it.
43:26
Johnny Miller, the golfer, once told golf digest in a moment of vulnerability,
43:31
I have a wire corroded in my head. It's an organic disease of the brain,
43:35
except it's never shown up in an autopsy. It's learned, unlearned, and learned again.
43:42
It's visible in life, invisible in death, and I don't know after that. It's ball players,
43:47
archers, piano players, darts players, free throw shooters, cricket bowlers, putters,
43:52
quarterbacks, and even writers. It's not physical, it's mental. It's a small seizure. It's a medium
43:58
seizure. That sound physical. It's not a seizure at all. It's a spark of fear of humiliation ever
44:04
grit before the fact. That sounds mental. It's genetic. They think it could be genetic. You know,
44:10
what it's not genetic, I'm guessing. End quote. Again, that's kind of a frantic sentence there,
44:17
but that really goes into what was going on in this guy's brain. And so it goes into how he was
44:22
trying to self-medicate and you would drink a lot. And just the things that were going on in his
44:26
life, how it attached to the things that were going on early in his childhood with his father,
44:30
just a lot of really, really crazy stuff. So one of the best biographies that I've ever read by far,
44:36
great baseball book. Again, my favorite book that I read this year, The Phenomenon. So those are
44:41
the 10 books that I read this year that I really enjoyed. Obviously read more than that, but those
44:45
are the ones that I thought all of you would enjoy hearing about. So give me your feedback on those.
44:49
Let me know if you've read some of those, what you thought of them. And then also share with me
44:54
books that you read this year that were not on that list that you think would be good for me to
44:59
read. Obviously, I mentioned the book list earlier. That's something that we are going to be updating
45:04
from time to time. So the book is not or that list rather is not just a list that's just going to stay
45:09
there like that. We're going to be putting books on and taking books off. So please let me know what
45:13
books that you read this year. But before I let you go, I am going to describe to you the top 10 books
45:18
that I'm most looking forward to reading in 2018. So I'll go through this actually rather quickly.
45:22
I'm not going to really go too far into each one of these books, but these are 10 books that are on
45:26
my reading list that I'm ready to get after and read next year. So I want to see if any of you have
45:30
read those, be sure to let me know if you have, but I'm just going to go through these real quick. So
45:33
here's the 10 books that I'm looking forward to reading in 2018. And sorry, most of these have not
45:39
been some of these books are obviously older. Some have not been released yet. So just wanted to make
45:44
that one quick point. So the first is when violence is the answer by Tim Larkin. So that's kind of
45:50
self explanatory when violence is the answer. The second is the 12 rules for life by Jordan B.
45:56
Peterson. Jordan Peterson is obviously, he was that professor up at the University of Toronto that
46:01
was refusing to say all these, you know, crazy, different pronouns to describe different genders.
46:07
And since then has gone on to do quite a bit of different things. He's been on Joe Rogan's podcast,
46:11
been on Jaco Willing's podcast, just really, really interesting guy, psychologist, clinical
46:15
psychologist. So that's his book that he's going to be releasing in January of 2018.
46:19
The other book or another book that I want to read next year is The Gulag Archipelago
46:24
by Alexander Sol's Nitson. So this is actually a book that Jordan Peterson has suggested that
46:30
every American should read. And so Amazon actually describes a book like this. So drawing on his own
46:36
experiences before, during and after his 11 years of incarceration and exile, on evidence provided
46:41
by more than 200 fellow prisoners, and on Soviet archives, Sol's Nitson reveals with torrential
46:47
narrative and dramatic power, the entire apparatus of Soviet repression, the state within the state
46:53
that once ruled all powerfully with its creation by Lenin in 1918. So that sounds like a nice easy
46:59
read, doesn't it? All right, that's another one I'm going to read. So another one after that is
47:03
Understanding Gender Dysphoria by Mark A. your house. So again, as as Christians, we can't really
47:09
put our heads in the sand when there are really important cultural issues, we can't just be downstream
47:14
of culture, we can't just go with culture. It's important for us as Christians to understand
47:18
certain issues. Obviously, one of the most hot button issues right now is on transgenderism. And
47:24
so we really need to have an understanding clinically of what gender dysphoria is and how it's manifesting
47:28
itself in modern culture. Another book I'm going to read is The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund
47:33
Morris. Again, there's a ton of different biographies out there about Theodore Roosevelt. This one is
47:38
seen by many as one of the best. It's the first in a three part series. So I want to take that down
47:42
this year. The next is ego is the enemy by Ryan holiday. Obviously me doing jujitsu now. You've
47:48
heard a lot of people say in jujitsu that ego is one of the biggest enemies of people in jujitsu.
47:52
So I'm very interested to take down this book. The next is five proofs of the existence of God
47:58
by Edward. I think it's Fesser. So five proofs of the existence of God. This book was actually
48:03
recommended on a different podcast I listened to Ben Shapiro. He's a political commentator. So
48:09
he's a tradition. He's Jewish. And one of the things that he does from time to time is he will go to
48:16
universities and debate, mainly political debates, but he does debates with theists as well. And so
48:21
this is going to be apparently an interesting book on different proofs that kind of look at why
48:26
believing in God is a logical thing to do. The next book is endurance. Shackleton's incredible
48:32
voyage by Alfred Lansing. So this is obviously a really old book that I'm sure a lot of you have
48:36
read up to this point, but it just talks about the guy who went to Antarctica and went on this
48:40
exploratory mission and kind of what it took for him and his crew to survive. The next book is
48:45
Professor in the cage. Why men fight and why we like to watch by Jonathan Goschall. And so
48:50
I'm really excited to read that one because obviously getting into jujitsu and having been a fan of
48:54
MMA for most of my life, that's going to be a really interesting thing because it's going to
48:58
break down the psychological reasons for that. And the final book that I'm going to read next
49:02
year, and I'm basically saying this more so so they all can keep me accountable. But I'm going to
49:06
be reading The Odyssey by Homer. So I know a lot of you have read that before, but I have not taken
49:11
down that book. I'm not a great reader when it comes to my speed and my comprehension. So
49:16
taking down like a thousand pages of ancient poetry is not necessarily something that I would
49:22
want to do all the time. But it's obviously a classic book. It's something that I think most
49:26
men should read. It's on the 100, the list of the 100 books I think every man should read. So
49:31
those are the 10 books that I'm most excited to read next year. And just so all of you know,
49:36
all the books that I talked about earlier, the books that I said were the best of 2017 and the
49:41
books I'm going to read next year, all of those are linked in the show notes. So you can obviously
49:45
find those on whatever, you know, Kindle or iPad or whatever story you want to use for that for
49:50
an e-reader. And then I left all of the Amazon links on there for you. And obviously we would
49:56
suggest that you go to a local bookstore if that's what you're into to get those books as well.
50:00
So one thing that we're going to be doing at the end of every podcast is we're going to do
50:05
a quick resilience boost because as most of you remember, we are a men's ministry and our mission
50:09
is to cultivate manly resilience. And specifically that means providing content that forges spiritual,
50:16
mental and physical toughness. So today I want to just keep in this theme of mental resilience.
50:20
And I want to suggest a book for you to read. It is my favorite book that I've ever read and it is
50:24
Fearless by Eric Blem. So I don't want to say a whole lot about this because I know I've described
50:29
a lot of different books to you today. But this is a biography of Adam Brown, who's a Navy Seal that
50:35
passed away on mission overseas. And it's just one of the most incredible books about a man's life
50:41
because it's not just, you know, he was born, he always wanted to be a commando, he went to Buds,
50:46
it was tough, but he made it. And it's just not that same type of book. It just goes into how this
50:50
guy should have never even been in the Navy, much less been a Navy Seal, much less been a guy that
50:55
made it all the way to Seal Team six. And so just just an incredible book that really talks about
51:01
the resilience of the human spirit. And also when that spirit depends on God. So thank you all so
51:06
much for listening today. I know we went over a lot of different materials. Hopefully this was
51:10
good for you. And that this is something that you can interact with us all and let us know what
51:14
books that you've that you've read that you would like us to read, things that you want us to add
51:18
to the list, whatever. So please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud or Google Play and refer your friends
51:24
to listen to this podcast and share on social media. If we deserve a five star review, please leave
51:28
one for us. Our website is www dot undaunted dot life. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at
51:34
undaunted life and on Facebook dot com, backslash undaunted life. And as always, we want to thank
51:39
August Burns read for allowing us to use their music library for our content. The intro outro music
51:44
on this podcast today is their song King of Sorrow, which is off their latest release from
51:48
this year Phantom Anthem. So links for that are in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
51:53
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience. Keep forging spiritual mental and physical toughness.
51:59
Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.