biography – Marlo Yonocruz

Book notes: Master of Me by Keke Palmer

Master of Me by Keke Palmer book summary review and key ideas.

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Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative by Keke Palmer

Synopsis:

“Keke Palmer thought she knew who she was. What it means to be a good person and what it takes to be a success. It all seemed so simple, until she realized the challenges she would have to face to prove to herself who she wanted to be. From feeling alienated to having to restart her career after ten years in to becoming a single mother just months after her son was born—everything she worked for in life that she felt granted her what she wanted now also reminded her that “life is going to life” and throw curveballs regardless of what you deserve. She found herself asking, Where do I find my power? How do I master myself?

In her own raw and intimate voice, Keke talks about everything from her struggles with boundaries to unconditional love, forgiveness, and worthiness. “Don’t block your blessings and potential opportunities by allowing the voices of other people to influence your actions,” she says. “How you’re choosing to set yourself up for success is between you and the person looking back at you in the mirror.”

Throughout the book, Keke also poses listeners with the questions needed to get them through their own challenging times by sharing personal stories and lessons she’s learned along the way. She gets candid about the tools she’s developed to take the reins, harness her vulnerability, and recognize ownership in the narrative of her life—which allowed her to turn personal power into major power.

In this exhilarating, deeply poignant, and often laugh-out-loud book, Lauren Keyana Palmer gets real about life, work, love, and belief. This book will encourage listeners to empower themselves with the truth, leverage their currency, and find the keys to master themselves and the art of alchemy. Keke writes, “You are not on anyone else’s timeline, only your own.”

The result is a tour de force.

They said, “Jack of all Trades, Master of None.”

She said, “No, I am the Master. Of Me.”” -Audible

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Book notes: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller book summary review and key ideas.

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A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Author

Synopsis:

“Full of beautiful, heart-wrenching, and hilarious stories, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details one man’s opportunity to edit his life as if her were a character in a movie. Years after writing his best-selling memoir, Donald Miller went into a funk and spent months sleeping in and avoiding his publisher. One story had ended, and Don was unsure how to start another. But he gets rescued by two movie producers who want to make a movie based on his memoir. When they start fictionalizing Don’s life for film – changing a meandering memoir into a structured narrative – the real-life Don starts a journey to edit his actual life into a better story.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details that journey and challenges listeners to reconsider what they strive for in life. It shows how to get a second chance at life the first time around.” -Audible

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Book notes: The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama

The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama book summary review and key ideas.

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The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama

Synopsis:

“#1 NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER • ONE OF TIME’S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2022 • In an inspiring follow-up to her critically acclaimed, #1 bestselling memoir Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today’s highly uncertain world.

There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with listeners, considering the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much?

Michelle Obama offers listeners a series of fresh stories and insightful reflections on change, challenge, and power, including her belief that when we light up for others, we can illuminate the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deeper truths and new pathways for progress. Drawing from her experiences as a mother, daughter, spouse, friend, and First Lady, she shares the habits and principles she has developed to successfully adapt to change and overcome various obstacles—the earned wisdom that helps her continue to “become.” She details her most valuable practices, like “starting kind,” “going high,” and assembling a “kitchen table” of trusted friends and mentors. With trademark humor, candor, and compassion, she also explores issues connected to race, gender, and visibility, encouraging listeners to work through fear, find strength in community, and live with boldness.

“When we are able to recognize our own light, we become empowered to use it,” writes Michelle Obama. A rewarding blend of powerful stories and profound advice that will ignite conversation, The Light We Carry inspires listeners to examine their own lives, identify their sources of gladness, and connect meaningfully in a turbulent world.” -Audible

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Book notes: Endure by Cameron Hanes

Endure by Cameron Hanes book summary review and key ideas.

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Endure: How to Work Hard, Outlast, and Keep Hammering by Cameron Hanes

Synopsis:

“Cameron Hanes discovered his true passion for bowhunting when he was twenty. Inspired by the physical challenges of stalking elk in the Oregon wilderness—traversing mountainous terrain, braving erratic weather, and evading his quarry’s even more dangerous predators—he began an ever-evolving journey of self-improvement. To become the best bowhunter of wild elk, to the caliber he believed he could be, Cam realized he would need more than archery skills. He would need the stamina and strength that could only come from an athletic training regimen of long-distance running and heavy-weight lifting. And every day for more than thirty years, Cam has put in the work, building miles and muscles, pushing through pain with a single-minded focus on the only goal worth having—besting himself time and again.

Part memoir, part motivational manifesto, Endure reveals how Cam—a self-professed average guy—put himself through the paces to live the life of an expert bowhunter, respected writer, and family man. With discipline, sacrifice, resilience, a hard work ethic, and a belief in his own capabilities, Cam not only accomplished his dreams but continues to surpass them. There is no secret to his success except relentless determination and loyal dedication to his own self-worth.

If Cam can do it, we all can. Everyone has what it takes to endure adversity so we can rise above average, be the best we can be, and enjoy living life to the fullest.” -Audible

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Book notes: The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris

The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris book summary review and key ideas.

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The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris

Synopsis:

“From Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, one of America’s most inspiring political leaders, a book about the core truths that unite us, and the long struggle to discern what those truths are and how best to act upon them, in her own life and across the life of our country.

Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris’ commitment to speaking truth is informed by her upbringing. The daughter of immigrants, she was raised in an Oakland, California, community that cared deeply about social justice; her parents – an esteemed economist from Jamaica and an admired cancer researcher from India – met as activists in the civil rights movement when they were graduate students at Berkeley. Growing up, Harris herself never hid her passion for justice, and when she became a prosecutor out of law school, a deputy district attorney, she quickly established herself as one of the most innovative change agents in American law enforcement. She progressed rapidly to become the elected District Attorney for San Francisco, and then the chief law enforcement officer of the state of California as a whole. Known for bringing a voice to the voiceless, she took on the big banks during the foreclosure crisis, winning a historic settlement for California’s working families.

By reckoning with the big challenges we face together, drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her, Kamala Harris offers in The Truths We Hold a master class in problem solving, in crisis management, and leadership in challenging times. Through the arc of her own life, on into the great work of our day, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values. In a book rich in many home truths, not least is that a relatively small number of people work very hard to convince a great many of us that we have less in common than we actually do, but it falls to us to look past them and get on with the good work of living our common truth. When we do, our shared effort will continue to sustain us and this great nation, now and in the years to come.” -Audible

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Book notes: Act Like You Got Some Sense by Jamie Foxx

Act Like You Got Some Sense by Jamie Foxx book summary review and key ideas.

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Act Like You Got Some Sense: And Other Things My Daughters Taught Me by Jamie Foxx

Synopsis:

“In this hilarious and heartfelt memoir, award-winning, multi-talented entertainer Jamie Foxx shares the story of being raised by his no-nonsense grandmother, the glamour and pitfalls of life in Hollywood, and the lessons he took from both worlds to raise his two daughters.

Jamie Foxx has won an Academy Award and a Grammy Award, laughed with sitting presidents, and partied with the biggest names in hip-hop. But he is most proud of his role as father to two very independent young women, Corinne and Anelise. Jamie might not always know what he’s doing when it comes to raising girls – especially when they talk to him about TikTok (PlikPlok?) and don’t share his enthusiasm for flashy Rolls Royces – but he does his best to show up for them every single day.

Luckily, he has a strong example to follow: his beloved late grandmother, Estelle Marie Talley. Jamie learned everything he knows about parenting from the fierce woman who raised him: As he puts it, she’s “Madea before Tyler Perry put on the pumps and the gray wig”.

In Act Like You Got Some Sense – a title inspired by Estelle – Jamie shares up close and personal stories about the tough love and old-school values he learned growing up in the small town of Terrell, Texas; his early days trying to make it in Hollywood; the joys and challenges of achieving stardom; and how each phase of his life shaped his parenting journey. Hilarious, poignant, and always brutally honest, this is Jamie Foxx like we’ve never seen him before.” -Audible

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Book notes: The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey

The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey book summary review and key ideas.

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The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey

Synopsis:

“It took me a lifetime to have the courage and the clarity to write my memoir. I want to tell the story of the moments – the ups and downs, the triumphs and traumas, the debacles and the dreams—that contributed to the person I am today. Though there have been countless stories about me throughout my career and very public personal life, it’s been impossible to communicate the complexities and depths of my experience in any single magazine article or a 10-minute television interview. And even then, my words were filtered through someone else’s lens, largely satisfying someone else’s assignment to define me.

This book is composed of my memories, my mishaps, my struggles, my survival, and my songs. Unfiltered. I went deep into my childhood and gave the scared little girl inside of me a big voice. I let the abandoned and ambitious adolescent have her say, and the betrayed and triumphant woman I became tell her side.

Writing this memoir was incredibly hard, humbling and healing. My sincere hope is that you are moved to a new understanding, not only about me, but also about the resilience of the human spirit.

Love,
Mariah” – Audible

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Book notes: Get to Be Happy by Ted Larkins

Get to Be Happy by Ted Larkins book summary review and key ideas.

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Get to Be Happy: Stories and Secrets to Loving the Sh*t Out Of Life by Ted Larkins

Synopsis:

“The secret to my happiness started during my high school days (yes, drugs were involved) and continued through hitchhiking across the country, through the suicide of my girlfriend, through bartending in many cities around the country, and then a move to Japan. I lived there for nine years, helping start a $500 million business, including a LARKINS (my last name) line of product, finding enlightenment and meditating in Zen temples in the mountains of Hiroshima, meeting Mother Teresa in Calcutta, partying with Bon Jovi, experiencing the death of my business partner and then the loss of my daughter, and all the life lessons that come with the following statement: I get to do this!” -Audible

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