Book Review: The Power of your mind (Part 1)

Hey Friends,

I hope you enjoyed your weekend. I have decided to start a book review for the next four weeks. It’s interesting how I started cultivating the habit of reading books. Back in SS1 (Senior Secondary Class 1), I started borrowing books from literature students at my school (Those who offered Literature in my school were Arts students). I went to them and got books like “Our husband has gone mad again”, “Ogbanje” Ha! How many people still remember those books? I tried reading “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare but could not just understand the big grammar, so I jejely left it for them and went to focus on my Physics and Chemistry. I also remember some Yoruba literature we read like “Ọjọ́burúkú, èṣu gbomi mu” and that poetry book “Akewi nke” Good old days!! So, I took books from friends in the arts and started to read. In SS3, I got some novels and started reading them though I didn’t read much of them like some people (I remember a schoolmate who was always very dramatic and intrigued whenever she was reading that she would just keep on smiling and laughing alone. Hilarious!)

As I entered the university, I joined a school fellowship. Normally, you choose the unit/subgroup you would love to join, then it is reviewed by the leaders and they put you where you fit. Long story short, I was put in the library unit! It was strange and funny to me but I accepted and decided to enjoy it. What the library unit in the fellowship does is- selling Christian and Career books to members, registering and borrowing out books to members within a timeframe of two weeks. We had to recommend books to people and how can you recommend when you have not read the books? So, I started reading books there and sometimes, we would do book reviews on Sundays during service to encourage people to buy or borrow books. With this, I started building my personal library and have quite a number of books!

Okay. Enough of my reading history. I am currently reading a book which I’ve had for a while but haven’t read. But then my lovely cousin who writes here started a 30-day reading challenge and I signed up for it to motivate myself. Therefore, over the next four weeks, I will be sharing what I have learnt from the book so far. The aim of this review is to:

1.       Inspire YOU to pick up that book and read!

2.       Improve your mind by cultivating a reading habit.

3.       Kill boredom by doing something productive.

Book Title – The power of your mind

Author- Chris Oyakhilome

Pages- 176

Below are quotes from chapters 1-3. Please note that some of them are paraphrased and may not be the exact way it was written in the book.

• Managing your mind not only determines the character of your personality but also the results you get and the quality of your life.
• The way to transform, improve, and upgrade your life is to renew your mind.
• You can work on your mind, change its concepts and that change will show up in your character and the results you have in life.
• The mind is an intangible, spiritual entity and only God’s word can shed the best light on it.
• The mind is the faculty of man’s reasoning and thoughts. It holds the power of the imagination, recognition, and appreciation that is responsible for processing feelings and emotions resulting in attitudes and actions.
• When your eyes focus on an image, it is your mind that interprets that image.
• Man has primarily a twofold nature: the outward man and the inward man 2cor4.16.
• The outward man is the physical body and its five senses, and the inward man is the human spirit and the soul (the seat of the mind, will, emotions, reasoning, and intellect).
• What the nervous system is to the body, the soul is to the spirit.
• The best education in the world is an attempt to inform, refine, and develop the mind through the senses of the outward man…It is the education of the inward man, the human spirit which leads to the education of the mind.
• When you leave your mind open, any worthless seed can be thrown into it and it will grow.
• Guard above all things, guard your inner self so you can live and prosper. Bar out all thoughts of evil and banish wayward words. (Pro.4:23-24 James Moffatt Bible)
• If someone says something to you that challenges God’s word, bar it from your mind!
• God also shows us exactly how to place a guard over our minds by choosing thoughts we allow passage. Phil 4.8
• Refuse to dwell on thoughts and conditions that don’t fall in line with God’s truth. Reject it in Jesus’ name. Don’t think on it and don’t voice it.
• Choose life. Choose to use your mind right.

Which book are you currently reading? How can I encourage you to read more?

See you next week for part 2 of this book review!
Photo Credit: Pexels

Love,
Ayobambo