It's funny looking back at my list of books and docs from last year--what a smattering of different topics.
I'm definitely not cut out to be a "specialist" I have too many diverse interests.
Many years ago I read Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein and it helped me see how much richer life is when you read and study widely, especially about topics that seem to have nothing to do with each other.
As I was thinking about putting together this annual post, my initial thought was, "Man, I didn't get through near as many books as I had hoped to"--studying deeply for the podcast and upcoming detox course ate up a lot of my beloved learning time.
Then I started listing what I did get through...it was more than I first imagined.
Thinking about my book list made me reflect on what happened in 2023 and why I choose to study what I did.
That led me to make...
A LIST OF WHAT HAPPENED IN 2023
Nina and I pulled of a "Planning Intensive" for clients, and an impromptu one for families in our homeschool community.
We finished creating a massive program The Sovereignty Project. It was our way of using our skills to participate in the rebel alliance against the "Great Reset" agenda.
Three years of coaching clients through "covid PTSD" really sharpened our understanding of big "T" and little "t" trauma and we curated those lessons into another angle on coaching the Whole Human--an impactful, six-week program called the Emotional Healing Intensive.
We pulled off our first-ever in-person beach retreat as a culmination of the above program.
We revamped our website/offerings to include a low-cost membership and some self-study courses for people who can't afford personal coaching but still want access to our expertise.
With the accepted trade off of neglecting my blog (sad face...I miss it), I pivoted my creative bandwidth to working on a detox course for the covid vax and that turned into so many conversations that I wanted to capture so I started a podcast.
I was also interviewed several times and made some cool new friends. Hi Shana.
Nina became director of our homeschool Classical Conversations campus.
Oh...and we had another baby--our sixth.
Sheesh...no wonder last year felt busy!
One thing that I think (finally) galvanized in my mind last year was how much I love having my thinking challenged. I've really come to appreciate talking with people who see the world differently than I do.
Like anyone, it feels nice to have my perspective affirmed, but I now welcome having it challenged. Note: It's rare to find people who can be a fair intellectual sparing partner who doesn't get defensive when challenged, but when you find such humans, man is it fun!
I hope to find more such people in 2024!
But, I know I can always find deep thinkers in books, so, without further ado here's a peek at some of what I learned in 2023. Hopefully something below will pique your interest too.
HEALTH-RELATED BOOKS
The Moth in the Iron Lung - Forrest Maready
If you've ever run into someone who says "But want about polio???" as their bullet-proof argument in favor of vaccines, this book will ruin that argument. Maready did a world-class job documenting the actual history of what we've called "polio," and of ending the "vaccine-as-savior" narrative. The short version is that the polio "outbreaks" are better explained as heavy-metal poisoning, and later, DDT poisoning. When the poisonous products were pulled, the "epidemics" went away. This book, along with Dissolving Illusions by Suzanne Humphries, and the worldwide awakening, thanks to the covid "vaccine" debacle, are reasons I think the vaccine industry has peaked and is (rightly) on its way to the waste bin of history.
Scattered Minds - The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder - by Gabor Mate
I read this book at the recommendation of a client (thanks Delia) as it seemed a relevant read as Nina and I built out the Emotional Healing Intensive. Mate has such an interesting backstory of being born into a Jewish family during WWII, and comparing his life to his brother who was born shortly after the war ended. He connected more dots for me about how much of our internalized identity and how we frame reality, stems from a time in our lives before we have the ability to use words.
In compelling fashion he teaches how Attention Deficit Disorder (it's more of a catch-all term for many different trauma responses) has its roots in how we were made to feel both during the nine months of gestation, and in the first nine months of life--what he calls the next nine months of gestation. The palpable sense of safety and belonging (or the absence of it during both gestations) has a lot to do with patterns we fall into as adults.
If you have some habits of self sabotage or regularly experience the "knowing vs. doing problem," give this one a read. It's sure to give you some new insights into your own behavior. Note: Where I think the book falls a bit flat it in its ability to help the reader anchor to real hope and an unshakable confidence of being fully-known and fully-loved children of God. He's not there yet (at least in the book), but it's still a good read.
The Salt Fix - Why the Experts Got it All Wrong and How Eating More Might Save Your Life - by James DiNicolantonio
If your doctor has told you to back off on your salt intake, or if you tend to always feel like you want to add (more) salt to your food, this MAY be a book worth reading. I say "MAY" be worth reading because it dedicated a lot of time to the history of the salt debate and the "research" studies that purport to back up a low-salt diet.
For those who love science, this is a great read, but you don't need to read it to get the simple points: 1) Salt (like fat) was vilified to keep the focus off of sugar as the culprit for the ever-worsening health statistics, and 2) quality salt is a vitally important nutrient you can hardly get too much of. The short version is that salt has so many important functions and a teaspoon of salt PER DAY is about the minimum healthy amount for most people. If you want more salt on your food, add it. Your body is asking for it for good reasons.
Human Heart, Cosmic Heart - A Doctor's Quest to Understand, Treat, and Prevent Cardiovascular Disease - by Tom Cowan
I like reading or listening to Tom Cowan because he tends to test the limits of my mental scaffolding. I thought this book would be more of a read about the ways conventional medicine fails to properly "understand, treat and prevent cardiovascular disease." And while the book did discuss that, it ended up being more a philosophical (and at times ethereal) work than I expected. Cowan discussed fascinating concepts of how humans have used the word "heart"--for example, we never say "I love you with all my foot." Why? What's so special about the heart? He also discussed the work of Dr. Weston A. Price, Rudolph Steiner, Gerald Pollack and others as he attempts to take a much more holistic view of the heart. He challenged the concept that the heart is a pump. He describes it as a vortex, and he offers practical, outside-the-box ways to think about and treat heart conditions. His own personal story of heart problems is also a fascinating section of the book.
FAITH AND PERSONAL EDIFICATION
Living Fearless - Exchanging the Lies of the World for Liberating Truth of God - by James Winship
This book was recommended (and gifted) to me by a friend (thanks Matt). He said it was a book that changed his life in many ways. The author has a fascinating and unique background in law-enforcement and in the intelligence world--in other words, he has experience being in all sorts of scenarios that would make most people fearful. What I appreciated about the book was how much what he talked about overlapped with a lot of the work I've done the last few years helping clients recognize, reframe, and release false stories/identities that have held them captive well into adulthood. His work as a missionary also brought up several "wow" stories and helped him provide approachable ways to see and heal from the unhealthy/untrue identities we take on because of our past. If you're someone who lives with fear, or if you want some tools to deal with occasional episodes of anxiousness, this book is a great read.
Victorious Eschatology - A Partial Preterist View (Third Edition) - By Harold Eberle and Martin Trench
This was hands down my favorite book of 2023! It gave me so much hope and perspective for the future. As many of you know, before my days as a health coach, I earned a religion and theology degree and I went on to get a seminary degree afterward. Despite that background, I had never come across this "victorious" perspective of eschatology--the study of the "end times." This book not only made so much more sense of what the Bible teaches (especially Revelation), it shows how the Bible accurately predicted the Jewish holocaust at the hands of the Romans in the first century A.D. This book corroborated other things I was reading about the history of how a "defeatist" eschatology was woven into the American seminary landscape via the Scofield Reference Bible--a viewpoint that up until that time, never existed.
I think my study of what led up to the covid era (coming to understand diabolical monopolists, central banking, weaponized science, curated history, and the intentional destruction of the family and faith communities) prepped me to understand how seminaries were just one more thing that was infiltrated and leveraged to nudge society. Check it out for yourself, but I believe there was an intentional effort to install a "theology" of the inevitability of a one-world government--complete with a mark of the best, an antichrist, war, famine, and a central role of Israel, etc. Now I see those things as a distraction/perversion. News flash, God, and the Church, wins. Jesus doesn't come back to a limp Church on life support, he comes back to celebrate us finishing the work he gave us to do. Said differently, the Davos Dingbats, lose...and I am loving playing on the winning team. The next few years may be a bumpy ride, but...2 Corinthians 10:3-5.
The Universe Next Door - A Basic Worldview Catalog (Sixth Edition) - by James Sire
This is a book I read an earlier edition of about two decades ago. Deciding to start a podcast last year, and knowing there is a lot of "woo woo" in the natural health world, I wanted to sharpen the ax of my discernment regarding the worldviews behind many of the things the alternative health world peddles. I figured it could help me ask better questions of those I interview.
Be warned, The Universe Next Door is a highly-cerebral dive into the fundamental questions that each worldview has to answer about the existence and meaning of life. If you want a deeply rich discussion with logical threads you can actually follow, and fair/humorous ways to identify "fluffy" ethereal nonsense, this book is a great read. Because it's so rich in philosophy, it's not a fast read, but if you want to see the fatal flaws in various worldviews, this (in my opinion) will get you on solid ground. Here are the different worldviews the book brilliantly covers--theism, deism, naturalism, Marxism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern monism, New Age philosophy, postmodernism, Islam.
The Unfair Advantage - 7 Keys from the Life of Joseph for Transforming any Obstacle into an Opportunity - by Aaron Burke
This book was gifted to me by my beloved uncle Greg. Life feels like a full-contact sport at times. None of us gets a free pass from ever having struggles and this book gives practical lessons about framing our current challenges through a redemptive light. The Unfair Advantage helps us see the character we are forging that in the future can be used for greater and greater things. In fact, I think it's fair to say we're often not ready for greater things until we've been through struggle. The world could certainly use more and more people of character who have a "limp," but who don't also have a hard heart. This is the kind of book I want my kids to read earlier in life rather than later. Caleb, you're next.
MISCELLANEOUS
Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion - by Robert Cialdini
There's a reason this (20-hour tome of an audiobook) has sold over 5 million copies. There may not be a more definitive work on how we humans are influenced both for good and bad. As a business owner who has to continually sharpen our marketing, a coach who seeks to understand what is influencing my clients' behavior, and a family man who wants to have discernment about the messages my kids are receiving, let alone find some of my own blind spots, I found this to be a super practical and insightful look into what motivates humans, and where we are easy to manipulate. If you are in business, have kids, or want to be less susceptible to propaganda or marketing gimmicks, this is well worth the read!
Confessions of an Advertising Man - David Ogilvy
Similar to my interest in the above book, I find that marketers are often the most dialed in on the human condition, and help me understand it from different angles. This books spent more time on the ins and outs of running a successful marketing agency that I was interested in, but it also did a great job of capturing more about how us humans are influenced and how to make sure we are using our skills as marketers to benefit the lives of people, not just dupe them into something they don't need or that won't help them. It's a great, honest read about the successes and failures of what it takes to be a successful marketer.
Tragedy and Hope 101 - The Illusion of Justice, Freedom and Democracy - by Joseph Plummer
This is one my friend Dr. Robert Yoho turned me on to and it is excellent. Joseph Plummer did the world a big favor of digesting an onerous book Tragedy and Hope and distilling it down to a 101 version. This book is an abbreviated, but punchy look at the covert global governance system (what Plummer calls "The Network") that operates above the level of the governments we think we live under. It's a great introduction to how the secret societies formed their network, how to spot their activity, how central banking plays a definitive role in their operation, and how we can stop these psychopathic monsters. If someone you know needs a red pill about what's really going on these days. This is a great place to start, especially if you/they have been intimidated by The Creature from Jekyll Island - A Second Look at the Federal Reserve (a 24-hour long tome)--which is also excellent.
MOVIES AND DOCUMENTARIES
Margin Call
Set in the time before the 2008 financial crash, this is one of those movies that shows how people with unfathomable wealth and power do ugly mental gymnastics to justify playing roulette with the hard-earned savings of millions of people. It shows how ultimately they protect themselves, whitewash their corruption, and leave it to us to pick up the pieces of their poor choices. If you want to understand how people can act that way, this movie will give you some insights into how such people think.
The Lost Century and How to Reclaim It
I can't remember where I first came across this documentary, but it sure was interesting. This film is about the (why am I not surprised anymore?) efforts to suppress better and better sources of clean energy. No, not the "clean energy" that the WEF stooges at Davos blather about endlessly. The clean energy this film talks about are things such as free energy that supposedly can be harvested from the ether, or water (there's a Vespa in the film they claim runs on water), or other advances that significantly magnify the energy sources we already have. A recurring theme of the film is that anyone who comes up with such advancements ends up dead, or their inventions are confiscated. A few years ago I would have probably dismissed this film. Now, not so much. The part about aliens is still a stretch for me, but there is a lot in the film you can look up and verify.
Studying (endlessly it seems) to create an detox course for the covid injections led me to watch this film. Since Pharma isn't exactly forthcoming with what's in their proprietary shots, like a lot of people I've been trying to figure out anything I can about where these disturbing, never-before-seen fibrous clots, that embalmers are pulling from cadavers, might be coming from. This film did a good job of ruining the idea that somehow what we are living through is normal. Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS) is NOT normal. May we never be duped into believing it is. This film can be hard to watch at times, but these are the kinds of things we have to face if we have any hope of addressing what was done to us. If you agree with the above you can skip the film, if not, you may want to pluck up the courage to face an uncomfortable reality.
You have to hand it to Peymon Mottahedeh. That guy has not paid federal income tax in over 30 years, and now he's featured in a film about that fact. I don't think there is anyone with a bigger IRS target on their back, and yet he continues to defy them. He doesn't just defy them, he runs a company called Freedom Law School that teaches others about his perspective on taxes. This film is a story about much more then him. It's a story about the legitimacy (or illegitimacy) of the IRS itself. The film raises some fascinating questions we as a society have to wrestle with about the debt-based, fiat-money system we live under, who built that system and why, and what the Constitution really says about the government's ability to tax us. If you want to have your thinking stretched, check it out.
The Tuttle Twins (again)
I included the book series last year, and so this year I thought I'd feature the cartoon. I love this silly show because of what it's teaching my kids--they are light years ahead of where I was at their age. They understand so many concepts about monetary theory, central banking, inflation, Marxism, propaganda, and more that I've just recently come to understand. If you're looking for something to simply explain large concepts like the above, and it excites you to help raise a generation of kids who can help us establish flourishing societies, give this witty cartoon series a look. It's free on Angel Studios.
THERE YOU HAVE MY LIST FROM 2023
So what on your list? What should I add to mine? Hit me up in the comments.
I'l always on the lookout for magnum opus types of works, or the best book on topic X.
Lord willing, I'll get back to blogging sometime in 2024, but for now you can find my audio version of blogging at my podcast.
WHAT TO WATCH OUT FOR IN 2024
This year stay tuned for
A FREE course I've been developing (in conjunction with other doctors and coaches) to help people detox and heal from the covid vax. Psst, this may be my best work yet.
A new supplement to help people deal with problematic proteins related to the covid vax.
A new, highly-interactive app where we'll be rolling out new ways to engage with us and our content.
A lot more fascinating conversations happening on the podcast.
If you want to stay abreast on the above, simply subscribe to our mailing list--see the footer below for a place to sign up.
None of us know what 2024 holds during what promises to be an election year to remember.
Wherever this blog post finds you, keep you chin up, stay frosty, and keep going.
Aslan is on the move!
Until next time,
Christian
PS. If you're curious about the work I do, you can check out my website. I also have a free tool to help you see how your personality and tendencies influence your efforts to level up your health? We call it our Health-Transformation-Type Quiz. It's free...and only takes about two minutes.
