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Boost Your 2022 With Life Lessons From 22 Great Lives

A great biography can be a blueprint for greatness and a map to avoid failure. This year, learn unforgettable lessons from 22 of the greatest biographies in the Blinkist app.
by Rob Gillham | Jan 7 2022

The lives of extraordinary people are filled with unlikely stories and unbelievable life lessons. For instance, did you know that Barack Obama used to have a job scooping ice cream? The former president wrote that “scooping ice cream is tougher than it looks. Rows and rows of rock-hard ice cream can be brutal on the wrists.” A good thing to keep in mind the next time you ask for an extra scoop.

A good biography is filled with life lessons and valuable learnings that can provide a blueprint for success or a pathway to avoid failure. However, not everyone has the time to read a life-changing biography — or do you?

That’s where Blinkist comes in. This innovative app takes the core ideas from a nonfiction book and packages them into bite-sized explainers which you can enjoy in as little as 15 minutes.

“With Blinkist, you can boost your knowledge and gain new perspectives so that you can be a better professional, a better partner, or a better you.”
– The United Nations

This smart learning app took the world by storm as it appeals to knowledge-hungry individuals who yearn to learn but don’t have the time.

Let’s take a look at 7 of the important life lessons you can learn from 22 of Blinkist’s most popular biographies.

Life lesson 1: When a problem has no clear solution, choose the best option you have

There is no doubt that throughout his role a president, Obama faced many impossible situations. Although Obama has frequently praised his staff for helping him solve specific issues, in A Promised Land he notes that “no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100% solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already.”

Obama dealt with the decisions by considering the probability and likelihood that a particular solution would work. In short, choose the best option you have at the moment.

Life lesson 2: Don’t be afraid to pursue a career that is meaningful to you

Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley is a memoir of working at the heart of Silicon Valley at the height of the tech boom. The author moved to California from New York in her mid-twenties looking for work, stability, and a taste of the idyllic life that so many startups promised. Instead, she quickly discovered a very different world underneath a shiny facade.

The world she discovered was filled with disillusioned tech employees who were indifferent to the ramifications of spying on their user’s personal data, and bosses who turned a blind eye to rampant misogyny. Not only a personal memoir but a biography of Silicon Valley during a time of seemingly unlimited growth, this book is an essential read to understand the world we now live in.

Life lesson 3: We can endure almost anything

The human mind and body are stronger than we might think. In his book, Frankl talks about his terrifying experience in the concentration camp system. He and his fellow prisoners were stripped naked, shaved, and had all of their documents taken away and burned. They had no names except the number tattooed on their skin. Despite these unimaginable struggles, Frankl managed to find a way to adapt and eventually found a way to overcome his hardships.

Life lesson 4: Know your worth

Hidden Figures reveals the untold story of NASA mathematicians; Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, and Mary Jackson, three black women who helped send John Glenn on his first orbit around the Earth, and Neil Armstrong to the moon. These courageous, trailblazing women refused to be excluded from the system that judged them solely by the color of their skin. Instead, they answered the call of duty by leaving their teaching jobs in segregated Southern schools behind and helping to shape the modern space program.

Life lesson 5: Live fearlessly and be yourself

Marie Antoinette rebelled against the rules of the day and radically used fashion and her appearance to assert her power in a time and place where women – even queens – were often powerless. She used her looks to give herself a voice and break free from the restrictive bonds of tradition, even though her message wasn’t always received in the way she had hoped.

Life lesson 6: Never give up

Find out more about the fascinating life of the Underground Railroad’s most notable hero. She herself escaped the bonds of slavery before helping hundreds of others do the same during the American Civil War.

Life lesson 7: Have faith in the power of your convictions

Have you ever believed something to be true with every fiber of your being? That’s what civil rights leader John Lewis called faith. Faith in your convictions is one of the essential qualities an activist can possess. Having faith is to be as confident in your dreams as you are that the sky is blue and the water is wet. Nothing could make you doubt that your convictions are true.

Lewis saw his fair share of being cracked on the head with billy clubs, trampled by horses, menaced by dogs, sprayed with fire hoses, clapped in handcuffs, and thrown in prison. But his faith enabled him to stick to his convictions. He never wavered in his belief in nonviolence or in his faith that we are one human family, regardless of race.

Stay Informed In A World Of Misinformation

In an interview with TIME magazine, Bill Gates offered this piece of career advice for young entrepreneurs: “you have to be open-minded. Somebody could do it differently and still do it well.” However, maintaining an open mind by reading books from different viewpoints can be challenging and takes time many of us don’t have.

That’s why millions are turning to Blinkist with its library of balanced content to get hard facts fast and expand their worldview outside their feeds.

“When building our library, we strive to include all significant viewpoints on topics that matter. […] We empower our users by providing them with the full scope of information available, so that they can make informed decisions on topics that concern them.”
– Robyn Kerkhof, Head of Curation at Blinkist

The 40 new titles added monthly to the Blinkist library are carefully selected from different bestseller lists worldwide, including The New York Times, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. You can be sure that each title is chosen from sources that cover a range of viewpoints.

For instance, if you want to see beyond red and blue and get a balanced view of politics, there’s a bipartisan selection of books to choose from. In addition, you can learn about voting issues in The Fight to Vote by Michael Waldman and get an inside look at the problems facing democracy with The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan.

Dabble in New Topics From a Huge Library

With over 5000 titles in 27 categories to discover, there’s no limit to what you can learn with Blinkist. For example, in just 15 minutes, you can learn how to boost your body’s natural defenses with the explainer pack for Super Immunity by Joel Fuhrmann, M.D. Or, if you’ve always wanted to learn more about the universe, you can explore the science & nature category.

Learn More Life Lessons

Since it was founded, the Blinkist app has been downloaded by over 20 million people from over 150 countries, one of whom is Apple CEO, Tim Cook.

“Impressed with the growing and talented team at @Blinkist. Helping everyone understand and experience some of the best non-fiction books is a great example of how a single idea from college can evolve into a solution for a problem we all share — too little time!”
– Tim Cook, Apple CEO

There we have just a selection of the life lessons that you can learn with Blinkist. Why not explore the remainder of Blinkist’s top 22 biographies and learn more life lessons. Who knows, perhaps one day your biography will end up on a list just like this one?

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