Books that changed your life

backinblack

backinblack

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I'm always looking to top off my "to read" list. I don't read a lot of fiction these days, it's all about development, marketing, learning new skills and self-improvement. I'll read anything if it's useful, practical. I listen to audiobooks at the gym, in the car etc and I read before bed.

What books do you recommend and why?

What books changed your life or changed the game for you?

Any recommendations would be very much appreciated!
 
I'm pretty big on audiobooks too, lately.
Considering the forum we're on, I could have said, any of the Seth Godin books or Awaken the giant within read by tony robbins himself.

Instead, since you said "books that change the game", my main suggestion is :
The one straw revolution, by masanobu fukuoka.

Yes : it's a book about farming :wink:
I doubt you will be able to find the audiobook version though, but it's a very easy book to read
 
I have 2 answers.

1. If I were to put it into "what really changed my life", it would be Rich Dad, Poor Dad.​

However, the backstory is this book was one of the first non-fiction self help books I learned a lot about business from, so for all intent purposes it changed my life solely for that reason. If the book had been "Trust Me I'm Lying", I would have said the same thing. Lets forget the fact Robert went all out guru and has claims for for being a fraud against him, the fact this was MY first self help business book lands that mark for me.

2. If I were to answer about something semi-current that maybe you don't have in your bookshelf right now, I'd have to say Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco.

Thinking, Fast and Slow is also good

22 Immutable Laws Of Marketing, followed by Blue Ocean Strategy.

Choose Yourself made a dramatic shift for me. Stuff you should already know, but gives a good kick if you are sitting on the fence.

Not really a book, but if you can learn about personalty profiles in-depth.. it's a complete game changer for marketing. I have a podcast that touches on it, but the meat is towards the end - > https://www.serpwoo.com/blog/podcasts/personality-profiles-for-marketing-uses/ You'll have to forgive me though, Im not the best voice to listen to and I tend to ramble on. Just listen to the whole 30 minutes if you can.

3. Bonus:
Im currently reading both
Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want
&
Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts ( geared towards authors, but the points apply to anything you create actually )

.
​
 
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rigby said:
I'm pretty big on audiobooks too, lately.
Considering the forum we're on, I could have said, any of the Seth Godin books or Awaken the giant within read by tony robbins himself.

Instead, since you said "books that change the game", my main suggestion is :
The one straw revolution, by masanobu fukuoka.

Yes : it's a book about farming :wink:
I doubt you will be able to find the audiobook version though, but it's a very easy book to read
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Awaken the giant was one of my first self-development books, it was the one that hooked me. I read all Seth's stuff as well, devoured it. This book you recommended is very interesting, I am a gardener so I expect to enjoy on more than one level so thanks! :smile:

eliquid said:
I have 2 answers.

1. If I were to put it into "what really changed my life", it would be Rich Dad, Poor Dad.​

However, the backstory is this book was one of the first non-fiction self help books I learned a lot about business from, so for all intent purposes it changed my life solely for that reason. If the book had been "Trust Me I'm Lying", I would have said the same thing. Lets forget the fact Robert went all out guru and has claims for for being a fraud against him, the fact this was MY first self help business book lands that mark for me.

2. If I were to answer about something semi-current that maybe you don't have in your bookshelf right now, I'd have to say Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco.

Thinking, Fast and Slow is also good

22 Immutable Laws Of Marketing, followed by Blue Ocean Strategy.

Choose Yourself made a dramatic shift for me. Stuff you should already know, but gives a good kick if you are sitting on the fence.

Not really a book, but if you can learn about personalty profiles in-depth.. it's a complete game changer for marketing. I have a podcast that touches on it, but the meat is towards the end - > https://www.serpwoo.com/blog/podcasts/personality-profiles-for-marketing-uses/ You'll have to forgive me though, Im not the best voice to listen to and I tend to ramble on. Just listen to the whole 30 minutes if you can.

3. Bonus:
Im currently reading both
Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want
&
Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts ( geared towards authors, but the points apply to anything you create actually )

.
​
Click to expand...

Thank you for the list, it will keep me well read for a couple of months! Rich Dad Poor Dad was among my first as well. I think it is foundational, as much as RK went down a somewhat sketchy road later. It's what you get out of it I think.

I listened to the podcast as well, good stuff! I love the MBTI and hadn't thought of that application of it.

I'm an ENTP, fits me to a T. I used to test INTP but now consistently test ENTP for the last two years. I think I just got comfortable in my own skin and in my career. I was an extrovert with social anxiety lol.

You made an excellent point too about the tendency for INT types to write copy for other INT types, we have all seen those sales pages. I think too that most of us, of any type, relate to others as if everyone was our own type. It makes all the difference to be self-aware and speak to one's audience instead.

Also... the idea of a separate work machine is pretty brilliant, I do something similar but rather opposite. I play video games, but I ration my time with them. I have a separate computer that I use for video games and only for video games so that I'm not tempted to fire up a game while muting myself on a boring HR meeting. :D Now I want a separate one for work too.
 
eliquid said:
2. If I were to answer about something semi-current that maybe you don't have in your bookshelf right now, I'd have to say Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco.
Click to expand...

I agree with this book, The Millionaire Fastlane. Anyone thinking about getting into business needs to read it before making a single move. It is the clearest picture of the mathematics and psychology of why consumers and producers do what they do, and which paths make any sense at all and which are doomed before they start.

I'm not entirely sure which life-changing books I'd choose from the business realm. I've not really read that many, versus other non-fiction. But one that does come to mind that's very applicable to business as well as every other part of our lives is Crucial Conversations. It's essentially about how to manage conversations that are already or have the potential to escalate into life-altering debates. It's first about realizing how we get to that point through the 'stories' we tell ourselves, and then how to deescalate our emotions and help others do the same, so everyone can be frank and honest instead of manipulative. It teaches you how to be the person who guides everyone to win/win scenarios.

Another good one that's a very fast read is Who Moved My Cheese. So many people don't know when to quit and move on to another target. It doesn't directly talk about the bait and switch done to us by society, but you can extrapolate to that too. The main lesson is that as soon as your goal is made unattainable or you realize you had a stupid goal, you need to aim somewhere else immediately. The longer you wait, the more emotionally invested you get until you ruin everything.
 
Though I wouldn't call it the best book out there, the one that had the biggest impact on my life at the time when I most needed it was Zig Ziglar's See You At The Top.

Coming out of high school I was pretty much a knucklehead, and I'd settled on joining the "slightly above minimum wage" career-style, when a former teacher gave me a copy of the book. It really opened my eyes to what was possible instead of just what was readily-available.
 
Zero To One

The first book that I couldn't put down until I completed it. Picked a fair few things up from it as well as a bunch of things I hope to move forward with in the future with startups.

The 33 Strategies of War

Not a business book but definitely my style if you take the examples and strategies and turn them into business. This is the second book I have not been able to put down once picking it up.

The E-Myth Revisited

Although I had a decent understanding of how to allocate duties to people depending on their job role this helped me better understand it as well as the importance of doing it.

ReWork

Another book I loved, just introduced me to a bunch of new concepts with a fair few I hope to use in the future.

Black Box Thinking

Coming from and engineering background I was already used to being ok with my failures provided I was learning from them but this book is based around how different industries treat failure and how it is important to accept it and grow from it.
 
Not something that changed my life, but I really want to recommend this book, it's www.bakadesuyo.com . The author also has a blog, but you definitely need to buy the book.
The book description sums it up pretty well:
"Much of the advice we’ve been told about achievement is logical, earnest…and downright wrong. In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric Barker reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success and most importantly, how anyone can achieve it".
Go ahead, you won't regret it.
 
I finished reading The Millionaire Fastlane this week and can definitely recommend it.

Picking up Unshakeable: Your Guide to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins this week after lots of recommendations.

One of my favourites would be Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography, Total Recall. It's amazing to follow his steps in various arenas (bodybuilding, investing, acting, politics) and be so successful.
 
The Greatest Salesman in the World.

Og Mandino wrote it so you read each scroll 3 times a day for 30 days. Then, you read the next scroll. Over the course of time, you rewire your thought and belief patterns.

I used to always get anxious about possibly missing out on something. This lead to me ignoring the bird in hand many times. By reading the book daily... my thoughts and beliefs have honed in on seizing the present moment.

It has also shifted my mindset into looking at how I can add value instead of wrangle it away. Before reading this book I was a much more pessimistic and nasty person.

I woke up more and more looking forwards to apply what I had been imprinting into my mind.

TLDR: Become a much more optimistic, acting taking, value-minded and persistent person gradually over time.

PS: I also credit MJ Demarco for giving me the big picture.
 
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+1 for millionaire fast lane.

I am also just getting into MJs new one called Unscripted which has given me some strong “fuck the man” moments - good so far
 
I'm going to have to go with Rich Dad Poor Dad too.

It changed my entire mindset on money, probably because I could really relate to his anecdotes about his fictional poor but educated dad and how to break that thinking.

Some of the early NLP books, I forgot their names. NLP might only be self-hypnosis, but it was mindblowing for me at the time in my early 20s, how you could take control of your emotions and thoughts and turn them productive. Controlled delusion is probably what I would call their method. It really made me able to do stuff, since I came from an upbringing that wasn't healthy in terms of learning natural self confidence.

I liked ReWork but at that point I was already self emplyed. I do think it is a really good book.

And for something completely different. Tolkien The Lord of The Rings was the first book I read as a teenager that really blew my mind. It had a profound impact, resonating on some deep subconscious level. It made me seek out stuff like Jung and archetypes all kind of stuff. It was only waaay later, after I turned 30, when I started to piece it all together and gain a proper understanding of why it resonated and which of my deep personal values I found reflected in that book.
 
ragnar said:
after I turned 30, when I started to piece it all together and gain a proper understanding of why it resonated and which of my deep personal values I found reflected in that book.
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You'd get a lot out of Joseph Campbell's work on comparative mythology. The best place to start, and the best book in general, is The Hero of a Thousand Faces. He figured out that pretty much every story we've told since we've been human contains what he called The Hero's Journey. It may not be the whole journey, but it'll have significant arc of the journey in it. Ultimately he invented (discovered, perhaps, if you're more Jungian) the Monomyth. If you get a quick overview of that, you'll see how it plays out in all the stories and even more crazily, in our lives. And soon you start to recognize characters from the story in your life as it happens. It gets a little mystical and metaphysical, but hey, reality is weird.
 
Ryuzaki said:
You'd get a lot out of Joseph Campbell's work on comparative mythology. The best place to start, and the best book in general, is The Hero of a Thousand Faces. He figured out that pretty much every story we've told since we've been human contains what he called The Hero's Journey. It may not be the whole journey, but it'll have significant arc of the journey in it. Ultimately he invented (discovered, perhaps, if you're more Jungian) the Monomyth. If you get a quick overview of that, you'll see how it plays out in all the stories and even more crazily, in our lives. And soon you start to recognize characters from the story in your life as it happens. It gets a little mystical and metaphysical, but hey, reality is weird.
Click to expand...

I have had that book recommended recently in regards to the Star Wars debacle and that George Lucas was inspired by it.

And that the recent Star Wars films fail because they don't tell any myths people relate to.
 
I thought id post this and see what you guys been reading, the most influential books that have helped me out the most with business and life have been:

The Art of War
How to win friends and Influence People
Rich Dad/Poor Dad Series
The Secret

There are more, ill add them to this list as i remember them.

What you guys got?
 
Rich Dad Poor Dad - Along with the android game for this really hit home something that I already knew but for whatever reason didn't practice and thats the accrual of real money making assets.

The Power of Broke - When I quit my 9-5 and started my marketing journey this book gave me a kick in the ass and showed me starting from nothing and the fear of broke was more of a positive than a negative.

Art Of War - Reminded me to think more strategically in everything

Think and Grow Rich - The workbook really showed me how to put my goals together and work towards them, try to reread this once a year after new years to put things in perspective and relist my goals.

33 Strategies of War - "In 1519, Captain Hernán Cortés landed in Veracruz to begin his great conquest. Upon arriving, he gave the order to his men to burn the ships. As I imagine it, someone then laughed and Cortés promptly thrust his sword into the man's chest. " Never forgot this quote, sometimes you just have to go all in with no way back to stay motivated.

Influence - Essential reading for anyone in sales. I have a section with notes from it I still go back to when I need to remember some things about buyer psychology.

Non Business -

Don't sweat the small stuff - I was a depressed kid growing up with a single mother who married a 6'5 abusive stepfather who later sent me off to military boarding school for 3 years. I was very angry and always upset at how nothing every worked out the way I wanted it to. My grandmother bought me this book out of nowhere, its insane how much it changed my life. The tips in this book took away alot of my anxiety and anger and helped me completely reframe my mind. If you have alot of anger or anxiety inside you I highly recommend this small book.

Bigger Leaner Stronger - Learned how to work out correctly and build muscle/stay healthy.

The Game by Neil Strauss - A bit corny I know but just being honest, lots of things I learned from this one I use to this day and have been responsible for me getting alot of things I didn't deserve :tongue:.

The China Study - Compelling evidence from the largest food related study in history that animal protein causes cancer, didn't turn me into a vegetarian but definitely lowered my meat intake significantly, have never felt better.
 
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