Best Self-Help Books
The Top 5 Self-Help Books That Changed My Life
Reading has been a central part of my life ever since I learnt to love doing it around 5 years ago. Since then I've read dozens of books, some better than others...
But today I'll only be sharing with you the BEST of what I read.
It's a small list,
Just a top 5 cause I don't want to overload you with too much and I know that books take time to read.
If I were you I'd make these 5 the most urgent to read as a young man on self-improvement as they'll give you the best bang for your buck.
No more time wasting
I give you the top 5 best self-help books for beginners.
#5 Can't Hurt Me - David Goggins
Out of all of the books on this list this is the first one I read and I was like damn, It really wakes you up and shows you just how hard human beings can push themselves.
First it tells us the background story of David from his childhood to his abusive father and how all this affected him later in his life. Then it shows us the turning point in his story, he was in the shower and came out still with the towel wrapped around him and something was playing on the television which caught his attention, it was the navy seals and the training they were doing, unexpectedly Goggins got interested and decided to contact them to join their program but he was rejected due to his weight and this led to him making a big transformation and losing over 100 pounds in 90 days.
My favourite concept in this book is 'The Cookie Jar Method'.
Imagine we have a cookie jar in our brain, filled with all of the good things and achievements we did throughout our life. Now to get a small boost of motivation David takes a dip in the cookie jar to help him push himself, so like if he's running a marathon and he's feeling a bit weak he'll remember moment when he did something harder and that will motivate him to complete what he's doing. It's like putting your hand in a cookie jar and taking out a cookie, a small boost.
I personally use this method regularly and I can assure you it works, the hardest I've pushed myself was partly as a result of using this method.
In this book Goggins really shows us just how far people can go if they just push themselves, from running on broken feet to going through 3 hell weeks to completing who knows how many ultramarathons.
This is the book you need to read if you've been lazy recently or if you want to push yourself harder.
#4 Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
You cannot have a 'best self-help books' list and not include this book, it's a classic, one of the first of it's kind,
And I'm gonna be honest, I haven't even finished reading this book but I already know it's one of the best.
Napoleon Hill made it his life mission to study what it actually is that makes people successful and published his findings in this book.
Now first I thought that this book is just a 'How to make money book' but I couldn't have been more wrong, this book goes through several qualities that makes the successful what they are, qualities like persistence, imagination, faith, desire for change and quite a few more.
This book literally delves into the way of thinking and even touches on the subconscious and teaches you how to use them to achieve your goals.
My favourite part of the book is the first chapter called 'The Power of Thought' because it teaches you how powerful thoughts really are.
Imagine it, we literally become our thoughts, we are a result of what we think about, whether good or bad it doesn't make a difference for our body, it will act on them just the same.
My favourite quote from this book comes from the same chapter, it goes; ''I want it, and I'll have it.'' It was a quote spoken by Henry Ford displaying his determination, he said this after coming up with an idea about an engine which his engineers told him was impossible and his response to that was his now famous quote.
Eventually he got his engine...
This is a must-read for you if you're looking to become more like the people you look up to, because they all have the qualities described in the book.
#3 Atomic Habits - James Clear
As I'm writing this I am re-reading this book and It's like I'm experiencing it for the first time again.
This is the mother of all 'Habit Changing' books,
It guides you through changing your habits, how to break bad habits and build good habits. It is written in very simple English and I think even if I give it to my 6-year-old nephew he would understand it.
What I like about this book is that it starts each chapter with a study or a story relevant to the chapter lesson.
I also like how easy James Clear makes the actions steps to be, like for example one of the steps to habit-formation is the cue (to do the habit), he says in the book that a simple way you could influence this is by changing your environment, something as easy as moving the sweets or candy to a hidden place in the cupboard or rather than keeping the fruit in the fridge where they are hidden move the fruit bowl to somewhere you can see it, small actions like these are enough to make progress and good progress at that to your habit goals, or as he likes to refer to them as 'small changes, big results'.
#2 The Way of The Superior Man - David Deida
This is a very interesting book to say the least.
It's a book about spirituality but probably not what you're thinking. You have to read it to get what I'm saying.
This is a book primarily written for men, although women would still find it useful.
It serves as like a guide to going about your life as man. One of it's main talking points is the masculine and feminine energy and how they work together, how they are opposites but a perfect pair.
What I like about the book is that it is made up of a bunch of small chapters (51 to be exact) made up of about 3 pages each, some even shorter, each chapter explains a concept.
My favourite chapter in the book is 'Lean Just Beyond Your Edge'. David Deida refers to the edge kind of like the comfort zone, he explains that a man must never get comfortable or complacent otherwise progress will come to a halt.
''A man's growth is optimized if he leans just beyond his edge, his capacity, his fear. He should not be too lazy, happily stagnating in the zone of security and comfort. Nor should he push far beyond his edge, stressing himself unnecessarily, unable to metabolize his experience.''
Understanding the book is a struggle somtimes but after some reflection on it things start to make sense. The first time I was reading the book I felt like I was dumb (in a good way) cause of how many new ideas I was being introduced to, I was like 'How did I not know this before?'
#1 The Magic of Thinking Big - David Schwartz
Now among all of the self-improvement books I've read, this is undoubtedly the best one. It guides you to building a positive Mindset, now I don't mean it in a wishy-washy way, I hate that, I mean as a mindset which actually helps you think better and in a more constructive way to get you to your goals.
Now this is an old self-help book, one with old but gold ideas. Things that are timeless and that will be useful even a 100 years from now.
My favourite concept of the book is that it teaches you to set high expectations and to meet them cause we think that setting big goals makes it less likely for us to achieve them but this is not entirely true.
David Schwartz wants us to set high goals cause these 'get us moving' and the mind doesn't know the difference between a big and a small goal it just works towards a goal. And in the off chance that you do miss your target;
''It's okay to aim high and miss, but we'll have a problem if you aim low and hit.
Even if you aim high and miss you'll still get higher than all of those who aimed low and hit.''
There's a story in which there were salesmen who needed to sell a set amount of an item, they worked and they hit the target.
The following year the company increased this amount so the salesman had to work harder to reach this target but once again they reached it.
The year after that the company reduced the amount the salesmen had to sell and they hit the target early and they spent the rest of the year 'wasting time'.
This story shows that when you have a big goal you'll do whatever it takes to achieve it, things you didn't know you could do. But if you have a small goal you might not be pushing yourself as hard as you think.
This book is undoubtedly the best self-help books I've ever read, it has had the most profound impact on my life and I think it will do the same for you.
Best Self-Help Books : Summary
- The best self-help books are not the ones YOU go through, they're the ones that go through you
- I could give you the worse or the best self-help books, reading is nothing without forming connections in your brain and using it to improve your life. I mean, that's why we're reading in the first place.
The List :
5. Can't Hurt Me - David Goggins
4. Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
3. Atomic Habits - James Clear
2. The Way of The Superior Man - David Deida
1. The Magic of Thinking Big - David Schwartz
