Obstacles Welcome

In Obstacles Welcome, Ralph de la Vega motivates you to not only take control of your professional life, but your personal life as well. De la Vega, President and CEO of AT&T Mobility, starts by telling the story of how he came alone to the U.S. from Cuba as a ten year old boy without his parents and how he worked from the bottom to the very top. This is not done with a “poor me” or “look at how great I am” manner. It is done with a simple mindset that whatever it is that you want, you can get it with hard work and a learning attitude. Throughout the book he uses real life examples from his company to show how straightforward strategies can point you in the direction of you goal. While de la Vega mentions things to do, he also lists things not to do. He inspires and motivates in an easy fashion, as if he were sitting across a table at Starbucks mentoring you through your thought process of how to get where you want to go. The thing I like best about his big idea is that to succeed in the work place, you must succeed personally. Leadership must be a part of who you are in every aspect in order to be a truly good leader. I was inspired by his life story and his determination to push past the very things that would normally be setbacks. I think that every person with a specific goal, whether in an office environment or at home, needs to read this book to work through and obtain a clear and concise road map to success.

In The Sweet By and By

In The Sweet By and By, Sara Evans, along with the help of Rachel Hauck, brings us a wonderful story of how a future can be made bright by the choices we make in the present regarding the past. In this account, a young bride to be, Jade, comes to terms with some events that happened in the past that she would rather no one in her new life would ever find out about. While her plans were to keep them hidden, God had another idea. He uses the people from her past and present to bring her to a new relationship with Him and mend some broken ties with those who have known her the longest. This is a heartwarming tale of the power of forgiveness. No matter how far you run, your choices will catch up with you someday, good and bad, and when they do, God is there with open arms waiting to grieve and celebrate. The Sweet By and By is well written in a fun format of bouncing between different times in multiple people’s lives. It keeps you wondering what exactly is Jade running from and will she ever come to terms with it and with her God.