Book Club

In the first part of this book, Goleman and his co-authors help us assess who we are as leaders, what styles we use, and how people perceive us. They identify four behavioral domains important for leadership:

•Self Awareness. This includes the ability to read our own emotions and recognize their impact on others, know our own limits and strengths, and have a good sense of our capabilities.
•Self Management. This domain encompasses having emotional self control, being honest, adaptable, and driven to improve performance and meet standards of excellence, and possessing initiative and optimism.
•Social Awareness. Leadership requires empathy and sensitivity to others’ emotions, taking interest in others, organizational and political awareness, and a willingness to serve the needs of both customers and employees.
•Relationship Management. Success in this domain rests on our ability to guide and motivate others, to influence people and help them develop, and to serve as a catalyst for change, manage conflict, and forge the bonds required for effective teamwork and collaboration.

” It has been my observation that the lust for forbidden fruit is often incidental to the real cause of marital decay. Long before any decision is madeto “fool around” or walk out on a partner, something basic has began to change in the realtionship. Many books on this subect lay the blame on failure to communicate, but I disagree. The inability to talk to one another is a symptom of a deeper problem, but it is not the cause itself.  The critical element is the way one spouse begins to percieve the other and their lives together. It is a subtle thing at first, often occuring without either partner being aware of the slippage. But as time passes, one individual begins to feel trapped. That’s the keyword, trapped. “

Number 43 Trelawney Park, a modest house in a suburb of Manzini, Swaziland, was many years a vital base of operations for the ANC. The house was known as KwaMagogo (place of the grandmother), after Rebecca Makgomo Masilela- the author’s other - who provided sustenance and support to the cadres who operated from Swaziland during the liberation struggle.

The story tells a story of th ANC and the PAC cadres who passed through Number 43, revealing their hopes and fears, and highlighting the price that was paid for liberation.

One women’s search for everything

Elizabeth is a thirty something married successful writer. She seemingly has everything a woman should want in her thirties; a husband who loves her, a beautiful big house and a successful career as a writer. The next logical step was to obviously start a family but she does not want this. Elizabeth realizes that she actually was not happy. However, in the eyes of society and the world, she should be, how could she not be happy! This is the beginning of Elizabeth’s journey of self discovery. After a bitter divorce she begins her quest in Rome, where she indulges herself, then in India, rediscovers her spirituality and in Bali, she begins to open herself to love again.

This book is so appropriate and relevant to us young ladies as it illustrates the need to make your own journey in life and to stop comparing yourself to other people’s success. It also reiterates the need to take charge of your emotional and spiritual growth. In this character you realise that it is perfectly okay not to want the things that society expects you to want. It’s your life, your journey; you define your own successes and fulfillments.

I highly recommend this book; take it with you on your vacation this December. It is so well written, you won’t want to put it down.

You can purchase Eat Pray Love By Elizabeth Gilbert here.

Nelson Mandela is one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has opened his personal archive, which offers an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life.
From letters written in the darkest hours of his twenty-seven years of imprisonment to the draft of an unfinished sequel to Long Walk to Freedom, Conversations With Myself gives readers access to the private man behind the public figure.

Here he is making notes and even doodling during meetings, or recording troubled dreams on the desk calendar of his cell on Robben Island; writing journals while on the run during the anti-apartheid struggles of the early 1960s, or conversing with friends in almost seventy hours of recorded conversations. Here he is neither an icon nor a saint; here he is like you and me.

An intimate journey from the first stirrings of his political conscience to his galvanizing role on the world stage, Conversations With Myself is a rare chance to spend time with Nelson Mandela the man, in his own voice: direct, clear, private.

You can purchase Conversations with myself by Nelson Mandela here.