Transcript
Speaker: Hello beautiful soul and welcome back to another installment of the Growing with podcast where we explore the moments and stories that shape who we're becoming. I'm Marisol and this is where I love to have real conversations about growth, self-discovery, and learning to put yourself first.
Speaker: Whether we're diving into books that change our perspective or unpacking personal experiences that teach us something new, this podcast is for women who are done playing small and are ready to embrace their own journey.
Speaker: So if you've struggled with putting everybody else first or battled self-doubt, you're in the right place. This isn't about perfection. It's about the messy, beautiful process of growing into yourself.
Speaker: So come grow with me. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about books again, ok i was thinking about what what what what you even what to even talk about. And honestly, i i surprisingly, i wanted to talk about nonfiction. Can you believe that? I don't. I can't believe it, but here I am. Here I am talking about nonfiction books that I want to read.
Speaker: And like I mentioned in the last episode... i You know what? I did mention in the last episode that I am in a bit of a reading slump. However, I think I'm out of it. I am about almost 300 pages into Eternal Ruin by Tikus de Germa.
Speaker: Finally. Okay, I got the book when it came out back in November. And I'm finally reading the book now. Girl, I'm i didn't wanna go to sleep.
Speaker: was like, I don't wanna go to sleep. I wanna keep reading. need to know what happens. Stuff just went down with June. i'm in love with Susenios. Like, I need to know more. Like, I'm defending all his wrongs. Like, okay, I needed more. Then I was like, Marisol, you need to wake up in the morning so that you can record, the okay, you need to go to sleep because you need to wake up early to do work.
Speaker: And it was not it was not something I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be irresponsible and keep reading. So I think I'm out of the reading slump. But... let's Let's be organized now that we are in December. Not December. Wow. In September. We're in the burr months. We're in September.
Speaker: But I wanted to talk about nonfiction. Okay. And if you've been around for a little bit, then you know that i struggle with nonfiction. I appreciate it.
Speaker: i think nonfiction books are valuable. But I struggle to want to pick it back up once I put it down as much as I am learning from it and appreciating the information, you know so
Speaker: i do because of that, there are still things that I want i want to read, so books I want to read that are nonfiction. On top of that, you know, ah short of enrolling in university again, again, again, because I've done that enough, the only for me to keep learning that makes sense to to me in monoggin is to read nonfiction and to annotate and take notes and all the things that I would do as a student because that's how I learned how to learn. um So because of that, I i want to keep... There are things that I want to read because there are things that I want to learn.
Speaker: And in my case, really, not even so much read as it is listen because, like I've mentioned before, the most effective way for me to finish a nonfiction book is to listen to it.
Speaker: So... The books that I am looking forward to reading that are nonfiction are going to all be essentially audiobooks.
Speaker: So the first book that I've been wanting to read, um that I have now putting on my list of like what is going to happen, hopefully by the end of the year, is Friends That Invest by Simran Kaur.
Speaker: To give you a little bit of a synopsis, and I found this synopsis from Goodreads, this is the book for you. In this guide to investing in stocks, aka shares, Simran Kaur teaches the essential principles you can apply to any market anywhere in the world because money provides freedom.
Speaker: The freedom to say yes or no, the freedom to handle whatever life throws at you, and the freedom to grow and prosper. This book is your invitation to join the thriving community of women who are building a better financial future.
Speaker: investing is for every everyone my why as to why want read this book i think i just told you the why that's basically why i want to read the book um but to get a little bit deeper into it i do think that
Speaker: investing in general is something that is very um ah's What's the word? It's portrayed as a very masculine thing to do.
Speaker: like Money in general is definitely portrayed as like a male thing and not really something that you know you don't associate like making tons of money with like woman like women and womanhood.
Speaker: However, and I can tell you this from my graduate level studies, that when it comes to like, because I studied a lot of like development stuff. I studied developments. of I took like like tons of like like actual graduate level courses when it came to like development and geo work, nonprofit work, like in developing communities and like developing countries.
Speaker: And one of the things that we talked about in those classes is how often when you would give money to like men, like the fathers and families and what have you, like the money wouldn't really go back into the family. But if you were to give money and resources to moms, to women, money, that money, those resources would be reinvested into their families and into their community. So ergo, you know, money and women, we like this, bro. We make life better for ourselves and everybody. So we should have more of it is what i'm saying.
Speaker: With that being said, um in my personal experience, i the the bulk essentially of what I taught was taught when it came to money was get a job, get a good job that pays you well. Good luck finding that in this economy. um And have a budget and save.
Speaker: that's That's basically what I was taught about money, which isn't bad. You need to have a budget. You need to know what your budget is because whether or not you are aware of your budget, you have one.
Speaker: And saving money is good. Having an emergency fund is good. But there's so much more when it comes to... actually being financially stable and all that stuff.
Speaker: And that's what I want to learn. And that, the more and more I'm realizing, has to do with investing. So I want to learn more about investing. And that's why I want to read this book and specifically get the audiobook.
Speaker: Um, with that being said, the next book is definitely around that same vibe lens and the next nonfiction book that I really want to get to that I've been dying to read and wanting to read, but haven't gotten around to it.
Speaker: One, because of that reading some those telling you about, but two,
Speaker: I don't know, man. there's There's just so much that I have to do in life that it's like, do i do i be irresponsible right now and like read for a little bit?
Speaker: Or do I do the responsible thing and keep working until I die? Which is what I don't want to do but Anyway, the next book that I want to read is How to Be a Rich Old Lady, Your Guide to Easy Investing, Building Wealth, and Creating the Wild, Beautiful Life You Want by Amanda Holden.
Speaker: Again, I feel like the title is self-explanatory, but synopsis that I found via Storygraph. Imagine a future that is wild, weird, and uniquely you, that is your rich old lady.
Speaker: In these pages, Amanda will show you how to build financial security in a world and not designed for you, demystify retirement accounts and tax rules, explain investing theory in a way that is truly unforgettable, reveal who to trust in the finance world and who to avoid, walk you through researching, buying, and tracking the right investments for you, help you build an automated strategy so you can move on with your life, provide lessons on living a beautiful life beyond Roth IRAs and index funds.
Speaker: My why? Girl, I'm old. but but but I'm not. Okay, look, i i I say that I'm old. I jokingly say that I'm old. In reality, i know I'm not old.
Speaker: However, I'm not in my 20s anymore. I am thinking about my future. Also, my mom recently retired. And the thing about boomers is that they had pensions.
Speaker: they had they They have pensions. They have pensions. A lot of them have pensions. um My mama has one of those. So she is good. Okay?
Speaker: She's good. she's she's She's doing well in retirement. now Not to say... that you know more money wouldn't be better because you know we live in a capitalist society and more money is always better in the capitalist society. um But you know, boomers had pensions.
Speaker: I'm millennial. I'm probably not even gonna have social security. So seeing how my mom has set up her retirement has made me really like more deeply start thinking about my retirement and like my life and what that's going to look like as someone who is single with no kids. It's like, hmm, when I'm a little old lady,
Speaker: How am i going to be? How is my life going to be? um Especially when you think about aging and health as you age.
Speaker: And then especially within the context of the United States, like if you live long enough, you're going to get to a point where like you just can't take care of yourself anymore. You know? So I think about these things and the answer in a capitalist society is money.
Speaker: So I think about my retirement. I think about having more money in retirement, for retirement, and all of those wonderful, beautiful things that I don't know. And that is, again, investing. I also, when I am in the context of investing, I'm looking at my Roth IRA and all that.
Speaker: I tend to find myself asking a lot of questions and i'm I'm asking myself these questions. I'm asking the computer these questions. Okay, I'm staring at my Roth IRA being like, what does that mean? And then it has a little like, you know, the little question mark next to like the word to like answer like what that means. And I'm like, what does the definition mean? Like I read the definition. I understand the words individually, but what does this mean?
Speaker: Um, so with that being said, it's just a sign that I need to learn more about investing and given the synopsis of how to be a ritual lady by Amanda Holden, it goes into, it sounds like those nitty gritty things where I feel like I have a lot of like, quote unquote, stupid questions to answer or to be answered. And it sounds like she gets into all that, which is why i want to read this book.
Speaker: Turning, switching a little bit um from finances, though not necessarily leaving economics, the next book that I want to read that I think I found via Instagram. I have been getting so many posts on my Instagram that are like books to read for X, Y, and z or like your Victorian era like literature, or like your...
Speaker: um English lit major curriculum, which is like, girl, been there, done that. But like, maybe i need to reread. Like, I literally saw somebody be like, read Beowulf. And i was like, I've been, I've actually been thinking about rereading Beowulf. But that has nothing to do with what I'm about to talk about. um In those types of posts, there was a lot of like nonfiction book recommendations in some of those posts. That's where I found this one because it was talking about I think it might have been a post talking about feminism or society or something like that.
Speaker: But the next one that I want to read is Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism and Other Arguments for Economic Independence by Kristen R. Godsey.
Speaker: My apologies if I mispronounce your last name. To give you a synopsis, also found via Storygraph, a spirited, deeply researched exploration of why capitalism is bad for women and how, when done right, socialism leads to economic independence, better labor conditions, better work-life balance, and yes, even better sex.
Speaker: Why do I want to read this? I feel like it's a little self-explanatory, but I'm interested in how she is going to connect all of these different things.
Speaker: I have, like, I've learned a little bit about, well, not a little, I mean, I've learned a good amount about, like,
Speaker: society, politics, economics, like, you know, I pay attention. Okay. I pay attention to current events. I pay attention to politics. i pay i've i've I've been paying attention to politics, like as an adult throughout my life, I've seen things progress just in my own lifetime, let alone what I've learned, you know, in history and learning about history. um I've looked at society, looked at um sociology, like a sociological lens through things, anthropological lens through things. I was a cultural anthropology minor as well. um
Speaker: So I tend to see things through that lens just by habit, I suppose, habit and training. um But I've never seen anybody talk about attraction and you know physical connection and like partnership necessarily through this lens, like necessarily through like socialism versus capitalism. So I'm very curious as to how these connections look and how she's going to be describing them. Because and I didn't put the entire synopsis in here, obviously, because it was rather lengthy. But in the synopsis that I found online um on Storygraph, it does talk about how she is and like an ethnographer.
Speaker: And I was like, ooh. And as an anthropology minor drawing from undergrad, I was like, ooh. You know, I read a lot of ethnographies when I was in college. So I'm even more curious um academically, nerdily, um to read this as well.
Speaker: And lastly, the fourth nonfiction book that I am looking forward to reading, which like i want to read it, but it's going to be like... Is it just going to make me sad? Is it going to stress me out? But, but sometimes, sometimes we need to read things that make us a little sad and stress us out.
Speaker: So the fourth and final nonfiction book that I want to read is The Nerd Reich, Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy by Gil Duran.
Speaker: Synopsis that I found via Storygraph, a fearless and urgent chronicle of the tech authoritarian movement from its early days in San Francisco politics to its current moment on the international stage, exploring the wild and dystopian ambition of the technocrats at its center and offering a roadmap to resistance.
Speaker: Why do I want to read this? Because it's happening right now. It's literally current events. And if there's one thing i am going to do, if I can, is dissect something academically. I want to study it. I want to like read all the words, dig into all the information and If there is a book about something like, like if this would have been a class in college, I would have taken it.
Speaker: Okay. at least I would have wanted to have taken it if it would have fit my, you know, my graduation timeline. But This is, i think, something that is very much of the times.
Speaker: And also as somebody who is Californian, somebody I'm somebody who I lived, technically I didn't live in the Bay, but I commuted to the Bay two for work essentially for, did that for a year, but I lived in NorCal, you know near the Bay Area for yeah a long time.
Speaker: Um, so being in that environment in like the 20 teens, like Silicon Valley, tech bro culture, like that was everywhere. And I was never in tech. Like I'm, and like I mentioned before, NGO nonprofit education, like is my background, but even just working at a nonprofit in the Bay Area, it was like, we're trying to be like all the tech companies and
Speaker: We have no actual cubicles or offices, open floor plan, just like tech companies. And it's just like, why are we doing this? I don't want to see your face all day as an introvert, which I did a whole thing on introversion last month.
Speaker: um But that was very much like in the air. So I was around it to an extent. We even in grad school, we even visited Google campus in Palo Alto.
Speaker: um So it was a huge part of like everything for a little bit of my life. So it was like, I was there, but I wasn't there. Like I was there, but i was an outsider, basically.
Speaker: um So seeing this book and the given current climate politically, I'm just like, ooh, let's put the two together and like study everything. So that is why I want to read this. I will say, again...
Speaker: that when it comes to all of these books, one, they were in no particular order. um Also, I did verify and double check that every single one of these books does have an audiobook version, which is what I will be getting in order to read these books.
Speaker: The financial ones, I might later on go back and get either a physical copy or an e-book so that I can like highlight and annotate and take notes on as I do like really want to like study that and learn it, embody it and be that ritual lady with a crazy weird life. But yeah.
Speaker: but First and foremost, I will be getting the audiobooks. Also, I do want to say that i am not alone in wanting to read these books because i have gone to my Libby and have put a hold on every single one of these books on my Libby and...
Speaker: Every single one of them is like months out until they're finally going to be available. So if I want to read these sooner rather than later, I might have to actually buy the audiobook. But Libby is there. i want to i want I want to use Libby, okay? I really want to, but everybody else has the same idea as me apparently. Um, but ultimately these are the four nonfiction books that I'm looking forward to reading and learning from, um, are, have you like everybody else apparently in Los Angeles County, um, want, have you want to read these books? Have you read these books? What are your thoughts on them? Let me know in the comments. If there are any other really good nonfiction audio books that you are aware of, have enjoyed, let me know in the comments as well. Um,
Speaker: But yeah, if you will be grabbing these books, let me know. And as always, if you stay this long, I appreciate you Thank you for tuning in to the Growing ith Soul podcast. And if this episode resonated with you, don't forget to subscribe, leave a little review.
Speaker: um If you're watching this on YouTube, hi thank you for being here. And of course, if you want to hear more from me, you can follow me on Instagram and on TikTok at yourcoachmadi. And of course, I am a certified life coach. And if you would like some guidance, some support, some assistance in your healing, growing and, you know, growing into your yourself journey, feel free to schedule for your own discovery call with me through the link in the show notes.
Speaker: Until next time, keep growing.
