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I read every day. No days off.

Fiction, non-fiction, poetry…it doesn’t matter (I even have a Premium Virtual Mentor Club where I review books every month), but there are only a few books I turn to over and over again.

Many of you know that I do a Twitter Q&A every Thursday. But what you probably didn’t know is that before I jump online for an hour, I  re-read one book…

I turn to one character for inspiration…

Sugar.

Sugar is the fictional character in my go-to author, Cheryl Strayed’s book, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar.

Cheryl Strayed has had a rough life: sexual abuse, divorce, past drug abuse, and her mother’s death. All this pushed her to do something radical with her life.

She decided to take a hike. Not your everyday hike; she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Coast Trail from the Mojave Desert through California, Oregon, and Washington – and she did it alone.

The hike finally healed her, and she turned it into her NY Times bestselling memoir, Wild. The book was then turned into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon.

Oprah loved the book so much she restarted her book club just to highlight it.

Cheryl’s new book Brave Enough was just released in October.

The book is a collection of quotes. I asked her why.

As Cheryl says in the introduction of her book…

“I’ve always been a quote collector… From the comic to the profound, the simple to the complex, the sorrowful to the ecstatic, the inspiring to the stern, whenever I need consolation or encouragement, a clear-eyed perspective or a swift kick in the pants – which is often – quotes are what I turn to. They’ve been tacked to the walls of every home I’ve made. I’ve written them down in my journals and kept them on files in my computer. I’ve scribbled them on the back of ripped-open envelopes and drawn them across stretches of sand.”

I am glad we met. Glad I got to interview her.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to steal from her so easily going forward.

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