A Young Entrepreneur's Book Recommendations for a Happy, Healthy, Successful Life!
There’s always a lull moment between these two phases: between the separation from an old book and the welcoming of a new one. Finishing a book that you loved reading and that took you on an emotional rollercoaster or maybe opened your eyes to some personal or professional truths, feels like the end of a relationship. You have to take the time to mourn, to let thoughts settle and get ready to move on.
Or sometimes you may want an open relationship and to share the love between more than two books at a time and connect the ideas among the books you read. To each its own.
Stop judging.
Also, I want to point out that for every hour of knowledge acquired you have to spend 20 hours implementing it to really internalize it properly. A while ago, I did a video on that. Watch it here.
I personally read two or more books at a time, jumping from one chapter of one book and diving into another. My reading time is usually won by organizing, life seems too short among virtual temptations and business-like tasks. Based on my experience, these are the methods of how I decide what books to read next:
- I get personal recommendations. What are friends, family, or businesses acquaintances for? They can be an amazing source of information. That’s how you can experience reading diversely.
- I listen to podcasts. When I listen to a podcast, I always get one or two ideas of books to read on a specific subjects.
- My guest interviews. Part of what I do is having interviews with some amazing people that often creep some book titles in their answers.
- I look at reviews. Sometimes I conduct my own research, and I discover books through that process. Yes, one of the best things on the Internet is that you can see in a split second what people think of a book.
Sometimes, it’s about what I fancy reading at that moment or simply what I’m interested in.
Now it’s time to ask you that age-old question: What’s on your reading list?
Do you never know what you want to read? The beginning of a new year is a good time to reflect on all the great books you’ve read so far that have changed you in a way or another.
So I stood before my bookshelves, and before my reading stacks and I tried to make a list of my top 14 books.
Disclaimer: None of these books will matter if you read them and don’t apply what’s in them. From my perspective anyway.
1. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger by Charles T. Munger
I can’t recommend this book highly enough! This book will shift your perspective as it is ultimately, a book about how one of the most successful investors in history has structured his way of thinking. Poor Charlie’s Almanack provides a number of really valuable insights about people and business. After blasting through it, I also found that it can be of great help in terms of Marketing. Check Chapter 11 to understand human behavior better and why we make the choices that we make.
2. Principles: Life and Work By Ray Dalio
Ray Dalio is the founder and co-chairman of Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest and best performing hedge fund in the world. The book is about both life and business principles.
What’s great about this book is that you can read the parts independently. That’s why once I’ve read the whole book, I’ve started re-reading the chapters and apply the principles to my life.
3. Managing Oneself By Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker was an Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author also called the by many the father modern father of management. Managing yourself is probably the smartest thing you can do because you can really control yourself in this world. This book gives you advice to increase your output in terms of performance and your input in terms of happiness.
4. The UltraMind Solution: Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First — The Simple Way to Defeat Depression, Overcome Anxiety, and Sharpen Your Mind By Mark Hyman
At the start of my career, I understood (probably on a subconscious level) that there’s more to my mind and brain that I was conditioned to believe. This book made me change the way I eat. And by changing the way I ate, I was able to get the most performance, productivity and focus. It teaches you to push the limits of your mind and body further and stop letting laziness get ahead of you.
5. The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance By Josh Waitzkin
Josh Waitzkin was an eight-time National Chess Champion in his youth, had a movie made after him — Searching for Bobby Fischer and now he’s a martial arts champion. I was a professional dancer for almost 7 years and I used to experience ‘stage fright’ and I was overwhelmed by my emotions when it was time to perform. That’s the biggest takeaway from this book — understanding performance under pressure and emotion control in those kinds of environments. Outside of that, this book walks through learning methodologies that are incredible. Definitely worth more than a flip through!
6. The Selfish Gene By Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins was a zoology teacher at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. If you want to hear how special we are as a race and why we are the favorite child of this universe or at least this galaxy and our history on Earth, this is the book for you. We are all pushed forward by evolution. Our race has been on earth for millions of years and we’ve been evolving ever since. Understanding the basics of evolution and genetics is a must in my opinion. “Our brains are simulation machines that allow us to project future outcomes” — and that is something we all do and allows us to plan and evolve faster than any other species.
7. When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man By Jerry Weintraub
Talk about doing everything and knowing everyone… this is Jerry Weintraub, producer, businessman and impresario.This book was a page turner, a story worth reading about a man reaching for the stars…in Hollywood. Plus, he’s giving instructions for a successful career in promoting, agency life, managing and producing.
8. Bhagavad Gita By Vyasa
I have a soft spot for spiritual literature and Bhagavad has teachings you should not miss. If it is for you, as important as it is for me to free yourself from outcomes, to be more giving and to offer yourself to the world selflessly by doing altruistic service than this book will be a refreshing read for you.
9. The Creative Process in the Individual By Thomas Troward
This book was introduced to me by Bob Proctor and it was such a life-changer. It’s on the topic of the power of your mind and the practicality of spirituality in a way I just haven’t seen it described before. The author believes we have a divine right of creation and he explains the sequence of creative activity.
10. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future By Peter Thiel
PayPal co founder Peter Thiel is one of the early investors in Facebook, he also co founded the big data startup Palantir and he leads the Thiel Foundation. The book focuses on the mechanics of a startup, how one single idea can change the world and what he believes your approach to competition should be.
11. Deep Work By Cal Newport
Shallow is the new word to describe our present lifestyle as a species — social media and all these other distractions are giving people an outlet to become more addicted (which is not social media’s fault IMO). Being able to go into deep work or to focus on a task for a long sustained period of time is something that brings incredible amounts of value.
12. Man’s Search for Meaning By Viktor Frankl
The way human beings live is defined by a complete haze of contrast. And when all we do is live by comparing ourselves to others, we can hardly reach a hardly satisfying or happy life without turbulences. This book shows how you can live and survive and actually be fulfilled by experiences that are unbearable to even hear. Viktor Frankl was a man whose life had pulled him out of a brilliant career of psychiatrist in the interwar world of Vienna, and threw him into the darkest nightmare, the real black hole of the 20th century history, the Nazi concentration camps. The author writes about love, death, psychology, and makes up a true psychiatric treaty, but above all, he shares with us what kept him alive in Auschwitz and Dachau.
13. The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle By Steven Pressfield
This book is mostly for writers or artists, but it can be a great guide on how to beat procrastination for creators of any kind. A short read that can help you fight the naysayer within. Keep it on your desk to remind yourself that you can avoid creative blocks through consistent work no matter the circumstances or the excuses.
14. Power vs Force By David R. Hawkins
Sir David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. is a renowned psychiatrist, physician, researcher, spiritual teacher and lecturer. This book is evergreen and it explains the connection between the levels of consciousness and human behavior, how they affect decision making. It’s actually one of the first books that introduced to me to the idea of consciousness and even though during the first read it I did not get too much out of it, some things stuck with me and now at a second try, they things make a lot more sense.
15. Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength By Roy F. Baumeister
Oh man, this book truly helped me push my limits. If you are desperately looking to stop being lazy and are trying to get your life straight, this is the book for you. It explains what is willpower, how it works, and how you can use your willpower to control your life. My cold showers, my daily routines got me out of my comfort zone and I could only stick to them by resisting temptation and focusing on what really matters.
I love knowing the book I chose is one I really want to read and that will eventually help me on the long run. Maybe you can join the discussion and tell me what books helped you the most and why and what books made you step out of your comfort zone.
