In 2008, I quit my corporate job, sold off everything I owned and moved overseas with my husband Drew. Since then we've traveled around the world, started our careers over as creative types and nurtured our love of sleeping in late. Oh and we had a baby. Cole, our almost 2 year old has been traveling since he was four months old and probably knows more Thai than me (not that he brags).
Free Book Friday: The Tipping Point
“The Tipping Point is that magical moment when an idea , trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”
To me, it was the closest thing to answering a question I had been turning over for the past year… how does one person go from living a perfectly normal life, to deciding, seemingly out of the blue, to chuck it all and do something completely different. This book deals with that times a million. How does a fad begin? How does the massive collective eye of a society change it’s focus and decide seemingly overnight to try something unexpected?
As a writer, someone who spends most of her time thinking of ways to help people overcome their internal objectives in order to find a more meaningful life, I’m curious about how people think. Malcolm Gladwell is one of those people too. He’s incurably interested in the details of how things work, especially when it goes against the expected.
It’s soft science, a kind of weekend intellectualism that frames the entire narrative, but still deftly weaves real world examples and case studies to examine how little ideas become big changes. If you’re someone that believes strongly in the individual will, this book might shake some of that. Whether talking about Paul Revere’s midnight ride or the overnight spread of teen suicide in Micronesia or the boom in popularity of a certain shoe in the 1990′s, it might surprise you how these things begin (the power of a few) and how influenced we are by our environment and the people around us.
On the individual level it’s interesting to apply Gladwell’s concepts. In my life, I wasn’t thrust into travel by some major event. It was the smallest detail the changed me from workaholic corporate drone to status-dismissing free-living traveler. I didn’t get fired or become an alcoholic or get cancer or divorce my husband. I had a perfectly good job and a big project and about a three month period where my work slowed down from hyper-overload to almost nil. Instead of enjoying a little downtime, I plotted my escape. What was the difference in my situation? Context. My environment. The people around me. All influencing me in ways I wouldn’t have suspected. Until I tipped.
Want a Free Copy?
Leave a comment below and tell me what you’d like to bring over the tipping point. I’ll choose the winner on next week’s Free Book Friday.
Announcing Last Week’s Winner of The Essential Guide for Women Traveling Solo
Brandi who wrote, “I would love this book as I want to travel but have no single friends that I can travel with. Seeing as I live along and none of my married friends want me to tag along on their vacations (third wheel much?) I do all my traveling alone. However, I haven’t been able to travel along because of all the things I hear that happen to female travelers that are all by themselves. Obviously you can see how much this book truly appeals to me. Maybe then I could work up the courage to just leave all the happy couples behind and live and be happy being single!” Brandi, you got it– this book is perfect for you.