Extend Your Reach! A Newsletter for Acceleration, Issue No. 12

Welcome to Extend Your Reach! A newsletter designed to bring you the best tips, tricks, and resources to help you grow and succeed in both your personal and professional life. In this newsletter, we will be highlighting five different areas of focus to help you extend your reach and accelerate your growth.?

A Book You Should Read - I’m going to move towards a more daunting book this week with The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. There have been 5 great extinction events or global cataclysms in the history of the earth and we are currently living in the sixth. While many of the others were caused by things such as asteroid impacts, the current is being caused by humans. This is a great book for wrapping your head around different environmental issues and how they impact the sustainability of the world. Super interesting and compelling book.?

A Small Business You Should Support - The small business of the week is Saddleback Leather. This company has an amazing backstory and they offer leather goods such as briefcases, belts, and other designs. They have a 100 year warranty so buy once, cry once. My personal favorite is the Flight Bag and I carry it everyday for work. I can fit a MacBook, iPad, planner, misc. chargers, and other accessories with ease. I get tons of compliments when I carry this bag and people often stop me in the airport to ask where I got it. 100 year warranty. “They’ll fight over it when you’re dead.”?

A Person You Should Follow on LinkedIn - If you’re not following Stephanie Britton then you’re missing out some great leadership and HR insight. She is incredibly intelligent and has a no nonsense approach to metrics and numbers. I worked with her before and she has a unique way of getting things done and staying ahead of the curve. She’s been in leadership for quite awhile, her family has a long line of service in the realm of law enforcement, and if you wanna talk baseball then she’s got you covered.?

A Podcast You Should Listen To - The podcast of the week is Episode 368 of the Lex Fridman Podcast. With all of the hype around AI I figured this one should be a go. It just came out yesterday and what an insightful listen. They dive into super intelligent AI with researcher, writer, and philosopher, Eliezer Yudkowsky. I was super intrigued by the “How AGI may kill us” and “AGI timeline” portions. Check it out.?

A Verse From the Bible -??Finally, let’s get to the best part of this newsletter and the Lord’s word.

“If possible, on your part, live at peace with everyone.” - Romans 12:18

What a tough verse in my opinion. How are we supposed to follow this when we are constantly at war, promoting strife, or even having disdain for your next door neighbor potentially? We are instructed as followers of Jesus to be peacemakers, or at least try. I must confess that I love a good debate or argument so I significantly fall short on this one. BUT, take it as this…We are here to make disciples for Jesus, the most counter-cultural religious figure of history, the one who rocked the boat because it needed to be rocked, the one who spoke the truth whether it offended or not. Peacemakers are here, not to worry about rocking the boat because we don't want to offend or drive people away but, to intervene in the situations that are separating people from God, and to make disciples in order to ultimately make peace.

All in all, I hope by looking into one or all of these five areas of your life, you can extend your reach and accelerate your personal and professional growth. I hope this newsletter has been helpful and I look forward to sharing more with you next week!