Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – Start with Why – Simon Sinek

Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – Start with Why – Simon Sinek

Post event update: Start with Why was a book with a very important message - if you start with WHY you are doing something, everything else falls into place and decisions become a lot easier. For example, if Company XYZ has a mission to make the best THING to help customers with their BLAH, any [...]

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We were at a party. I was feeling good. I was ready to dance with the party animal, talk to the shy person, have a giggle with the flirt. But people kept turning away from me. Crinkling their nose in disgust. Sighing. Tutting. I began to feel left out. My smile had turned into a [...]

Christmas Gifts

Christmas Gifts

It's officially the countdown to Christmas. The decorations have gone up, the lights are on and the shops are busy. If you are looking for gift inspiration for your friends and relatives, I am offering a limited supply of gift certificates. You can pay online, and I will email or post you the certificate to [...]

Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl

Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl

Post event update: This was one of our most harrowing reads; Victor E Frank's account of his life in a concentration camp, and how he and his fellow prisoners survived the torture, the cold and the starvation and lived to tell the tale. The clue is in the title; Frankl - a psychotherapist who studied [...]

Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – One Small Step Can Change Your Life – The Kaizen Way – Robert Maurer

Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – One Small Step Can Change Your Life – The Kaizen Way – Robert Maurer

Again, an enjoyable discussion which I have summarised here. What is Kaizen? Kaizen is a process of improving a habit using very small steps. Small steps can lead to big changes. Kaizen disarms the brain’s fear response making change come more naturally. By asking small, gentle questions, we keep the fight-or-flight response in the ‘off’ [...]

Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – The subtle art of not giving a f*ck – Mark Manson

Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – The subtle art of not giving a f*ck – Mark Manson

Post event update: We had a great discussion about the points made in this book, which we thought would be better titled 'the subtle art of carefully choosing what to give a f*ck about'. Points we discussed were: Mason's premise is that problems are inevitable, but that we can choose our problems by choosing what [...]

Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Post event update: Well, this book definitely seemed to receive a reception a bit like Marmite; people either loved it or hated it. The two camps fell into "I just want my personal development books to tell it to me straight" vs "I loved thinking about what all the metaphors meant and how they could [...]

Back to School Offer

Back to School Offer

  September marks the month people go back to school; a change only in the amount of traffic or shared space on trains and buses for some, whilst the start of a new year for many students, teachers and parents. August was, unusually, a busy month for me.  I was expecting a dearth of work, but it [...]

Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Milton Keynes Personal and Professional Development Book Club – The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Post event update: We thought this book was a really useful way to break down how people communicate differently, and how best to reach out to your partner (or friend, colleague, etc). Perhaps a bit simplistic in places, but it has saved marriages! We didn't think it was necessary to read the entire series of [...]