Must Read Books for Successful Kids in their 20s and 30s

Selfish Altruist
Jul 23, 2017 · 6 min read

I had read somewhere that we are very unlikely to face a life situation that is unique to us. It is very likely that someone somewhere at some point in time had faced a similar situation. Learning from their experiences can help us better deal with our own.

This is why I love books. Books share the thoughts and experiences of others in a condensed form, accelerating our life learnings. You know you have read a good book if you can still remember even one or two lessons from it a decade since you have read it.

In this post, I share my recommendation of five must read psychology books that do a great job of putting our yuppie lives in the right perspective and force us to think deeply about our choices, our anxieties, our career and our life overall.

#1. Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking (amazon)

A typical capitalistic workplace today requires you to speak up. It requires self-promotion. It requires working in groups. A large majority of the individuals I work with are strong introverts and it is easy for them to consider themselves to be at a disadvantage in such a setting. I know. I really know because I am one of them.

This is a breezy and witty book. The author uses her own life story and real stories of other introverts to show how introverts can turn their seeming disadvantage to their advantage. Most important, this book shows how extroverted traits can be learnt and applied through practice. I know. I really know because do this all the time.

This book tops my reading list. It will change how introverts see themselves

#2. Mindset: The new psychology of success (amazon)

I work with some of the brightest minds at Google. Almost everyone I work with used to be a topper in their respective schools. Unfortunately, early success is a doubled edged sword, especially if it is accompanied with incorrect reinforcement. If you have been a topper through your childhood, you might be used to getting showered with praises like You are a natural or You are so talented.

What is so wrong with this? The problem is that one of the most important skills required for long term success is the ability to fail and move on. Toppers at school most likely never got the opportunity to learn to fail. What is worse — they quite likely got the reinforcement that their success is a result of their talent rather than their efforts.

This book teaches the importance of having a growth mindset rather than fixed mindset. Fixed mindset is where we think that our success is a result of our talent. This prevents us from taking risks because when we are not good at something, we believe we can never be good at it. We are too worried about being judged for our failures. Growth mindset is where we believe that success comes through efforts and hard work and failure is a part of the journey.

This book is a must read for all my topper friends out there who are closet worried of failure. This book is a must read for all new parents to ensure that their kids grow up with the right mindset. The only negative thing I have to say about this book is that it is not a breezy read. If you want to read something more fun, which conveys a very similar message, you could read Outliers: The story of success (amazon)

#3. Stumbling on happiness (amazon)

Popular belief is that having a control over our own destiny is better than leaving it to chance or someone else. However, I can tell from personal experience that having comparable options isn’t always a good thing. Fortunately or unfortunately, yuppies have to make a lot more choices from seemingly comparable options than our parents did — Where to work? Where to live? When to marry? How many kids to have? When and where to retire? Where to go on the next vacation?

This book is not a guide to happiness. No book can be. Instead, this book relies on the latest and greatest from psychology and neuroscience to tell us what makes us happy and what makes us anxious. One of the key learnings from the book is that options can make us anxious. Options force us to think and plan for the future and when this planning goes overboard, we become anxious. The biggest problem with choices is that our present self makes the choice that will affect our future self. It is hard for us to imagine our future self to be any different from our present self. However, the reality is that time changes us — significantly. How we feel about things today will be very different from how we feel about things five years from now.

This is yet another breezy read filled with real stories and anecdotes. A must read for all yuppies.

#4. Man’s search for meaning (amazon)

This is a very short book — you will probably finish it in a couple of hours. The author is a psychiatrist who narrates his life at the Auschwitz concentration camp. You should read this book and then reread it again and again when you think life is being unfair to you. Nuff said.

Don’t worry if you are faint hearted — this book does not portrait the gruesomeness of the brutalities faced by people in the world war 2 camps. It simply narrates the human behavior, feelings and reactions to those brutalities. As you read it, you will imagine yourself to be a part of that journey. Yet, you will find yourself full of hope and positivity. I truly believe that the only real purpose of life is to extend itself as much as possible, no matter how dire the circumstanes. Circumstances don’t get much worse than this.

#5. How to stop worrying and start living (amazon)

This book is the poster child of pop-psychology. It has been around for almost a century, and yet, the lessons don’t get old. I had read this book when I had hit the rock bottom in my career. We often struggle with unfavorable situations, less because of the real consequences, but more because we are unable to accept whatever is happening to us. The most important lesson that I drew from this simple book was that the best way to move on from a tough life situation is to accept it. In fact, accept the worst of the possible outcomes. Once you have done that, you move on and figure out what you need to do next. This approach takes you out of the sulking mode and back into the action mode.

Please feel free to leave your own book recommendations as comments below.

Selfish Altruist

Written by

I work @Google leading teams on hard data problems. In personal life, I am an armchair philosopher. This blog shares my thoughts and experiences — Ashish Gupta

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