23 Books That Will Help You Grow Past Your Limits of Your Previously Known Reality

The Richest Man In Babylon

George Samuel Clason

Read this before anything else. Beloved by millions, this timeless classic holds the key to all you desire and everything you wish to accomplish. This is the book that reveals the secret to personal wealth. The success secrets of the ancients, an assured road to happiness and prosperity countless readers have been helped by the famous babylonian parables, hailed as the greatest of all inspirational works on the subject of thrift, financial planning, and personal wealth.

In language as simple as that found in the Bible, these fascinating and informative stories set you on a sure path to prosperity and its accompanying joys. Acclaimed as a modern-day classic, this celebrated bestseller offers an understanding of, and a solution to your personal financial problems that will guide you through a lifetime. This is the book that holds the secrets to keeping your money, and making more.

The 4-Hour Workweek

Tim Ferriss

How to automate your life. Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan – there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, this book is the blueprint. More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled their income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point.

Rich Dad Poor Dad

Robert Kiyosaki

Shares the story of his two dad: his real father, whom he calls his poor dad, and the father of his best friend, the man who became his mentor and his rich dad. One man was well educated and an employee all his life, the other’s education was street smart over traditional classroom education and he took the path of entrepreneurship, a road that led him to become one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii.

Robert has challenged and changed the way tens of millions of people, around the world, think about money and investing and he has become a global advocate for financial education and the path to financial freedom. Rich Dad Poor Dad (and the Rich Dad series it spawned) has sold over 36 million copies in English and translated editions around the world.

Think And Grow Rich

Napoleon Hill

Think and Grow Rich is a motivational personal development and self-help book by Napoleon Hill. The book was heavily inspired by the work of Andrew Carnegie. While the title focuses on how to get rich, the author explains that the philosophy taught in the book can be used to help people succeed in all lines of work and to do or be almost anything they want. The book was written just after The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, much of its advice is still relevant today. There are a few dated areas, but they are small, minor, and far-between. This book is as good today as it was then.

How To Win Friends And Influence People

Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie’s rock-solid, time-tested advice has carried countless people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. One of the most groundbreaking and timeless bestsellers of all time, How to Win Friends & Influence People will teach you six ways to make people like you, twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking, nine ways to change people without arousing resentment and much more. People are only interested in themselves. Capitalize on this.

The Millionaire Fastlane

M. J. DeMarco

Go to school, get a good job, save 10% of your paycheck, buy a used car, cancel the movie channels, quit drinking expensive Starbucks mocha lattes, save and penny-pinch your life away, trust your life-savings to the stock market, and one day, when you are oh, say, 65 years old, you can retire rich. The mainstream financial gurus have sold you blindly down the river to a great financial gamble: You’ve been hoodwinked to believe that wealth can be created by recklessly trusting in the uncontrollable and unpredictable markets: the housing market, the stock market, and the job market. This impotent financial gamble dubiously promises wealth in a wheelchair – sacrifice your adult life for a financial plan that reaps dividends in the twilight of life.

Demand the Fastlane, an alternative road-to-wealth; one that actually ignites dreams and creates millionaires young, not old. Change lanes and find your explosive wealth accelerator. Hit the Fastlane, crack the code to wealth, and find out how to live rich for a lifetime.

Blue Ocean Strategy

Renee Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim

How to stick out from the competition and create new markets that didn’t previously exist. It challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success. Now updated with fresh content from the authors, Blue Ocean Strategy argues that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool.

Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating ‘blue oceans’ untapped new market spaces ripe for growth. Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any organization can use to create and capture their own blue oceans.

The Lean Startup

Eric Ries

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage as it is for a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate the fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are capital efficient and that effectively leverage human creativity.

The E-myth Revisited

Michael E. Gerber

An instant classic, this revised and updated edition of the phenomenal bestseller dispels the myths about starting your own business. Small business consultant and author Michael E. Gerber, with sharp insight gained from years of experience, points out how common assumptions, expectations, and even technical expertise can get in the way of running a successful business.

Gerber walks you through the steps in the life of a business-from entrepreneurial infancy through adolescent growing pains to the mature entrepreneurial perspective: the guiding light of all businesses that succeed-and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether or not it is a franchise. Most importantly, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business.

The Ultimate Sales Machine

Chet Holmes

Chet Holmes has been called “one of the top 20 change experts in the country”. He helps his clients blow away both the competition and their own expectations. And his advice starts with one simple concept: focus! Instead of trying to master four thousand strategies to improve your business, zero in on the few essential skill areas that make the big difference. The Ultimate Sales Machine shows you how to tune up and soup up virtually every part of your business by spending just an hour per week on each impact area you want to improve. Like a tennis player who hits nothing but backhands for a few hours a week to perfect his game, you can systematically improve each key area.

Doing the Impossible

Patrick Bet-David

This book is for those who have a desire to achieve greatness and are ready to take the steps to turn that desire into a reality. At one point or another in this book, you will experience several different reactions – excitement, curiosity, joy, laughter, or even tears – but the ultimate goal is to encourage and challenge you to make a decision to do the impossible. That may have a totally different meaning to you than it did to Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, or any of the other role models we will look at; but whatever Doing the Impossible means to you, the goal of this book is to help you realize that you have the capacity to do what the critics think is impossible.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Ben Horowitz

While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.

Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences.

12 Rules for Life

Jordan B. Peterson

In this book, Jordan Peterson provides twelve profound and practical principles for how to live a meaningful life, from setting your house in order before criticising others to comparing yourself to who you were yesterday, not someone else today. Happiness is a pointless goal, he shows us. Instead we must search for meaning, not for its own sake, but as a defence against the suffering that is intrinsic to our existence.

Drawing on vivid examples from the author’s clinical practice and personal life, cutting edge psychology and philosophy, and lessons from humanity’s oldest myths and stories, 12 Rules for Life offers a deeply rewarding antidote to the chaos in our lives: eternal truths applied to our modern problems.

The 48 Laws Of Power

Robert Greene

Three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (‘Law 1: Never Outshine the Master’), others teach the value of confidence (‘Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness’), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (‘Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally’). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Profit First

Mike Michalowicz

Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula: Sales – Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren’t always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales – Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows. Using Michalowicz’s Profit First system, readers will learn that:

• Following 4 simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business by looking at bank account balances.
• A small, profitable business can be worth much more than a large business surviving on its top line.
• Businesses that attain early and sustained profitability have a better shot at achieving long-term growth.

With dozens of case studies, practical, step-by-step advice, and his signature sense of humor, Michalowicz has the game-changing roadmap for any entrepreneur to make money they always dreamed of.

ReWork

David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried

From the founders of the trailblazing software company 37signals, here is a different kind of business book – one that explores a new reality. Today, anyone can be in business. Tools that used to be out of reach are now easily accessible. Technology that cost thousands is now just a few pounds or even free. Stuff that was impossible just a few years ago is now simple. That means anyone can start a business. And you can do it without working miserable 80-hour weeks or depleting your life savings. You can start it on the side while your day job provides all the cash flow you need. Forget about business plans, meetings, office space – you don’t need them.

The Book

Alan Watts

Alan Watts asks what causes the illusion of the self as a separate ego which confronts a universe of physical objects that are alien to it. Rather, a person’s identity binds them to the physical universe, creating a relationship with their environment and other people. The separation of the self and the physical world leads to the misuse of technology and the attempt to violently subjugate man’s natural environment, leading to its destruction.

Watts urges against the idea that we are separate from the world. Nowhere is this idea more apparent than in the concept of cultural taboos. The biggest taboo of all is knowing who we really are behind the mask of our self as presented to the world. Through our focus on ourselves and the world as it affects us, we have developed narrowed perception. Alan Watts tells us how to open our eyes and see ourselves not as coming into the world but from it. In understanding the individual’s real place in the universe, Watts presents a critique of Western culture and a healing alternative.

The Time Trap

R. Alec MacKenzie

You have all the time there is. You have the same twenty-four hours (1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds) that everyone has. What can be different is how you use them. Whether you work for a huge multi-national corporation, a small start-up, or are self-employed; whether you’re a farmer, school principal, lawyer, store owner, or research scientist, chances are you fall into the same time traps we all do.

Now, world-renowned time management expert, Dr. Alec Mackenzie, will show you how to climb out. He presents dozens of real-life scenarios, demonstrating exactly what to say and do in these delicate, difficult situations. You’ll learn how to deal with drop-in visitors, maximize meetings, delegate responsibility, improve your communication, and much more. So read this book and reap the rewards of effective, successful time management: more productivity, less stress, faster progress toward your goals, and a better balance between work and the rest of your life.

Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

Dr. Richard Carlson

A book that shows you how to prevent the little things in life driving you crazy. In thoughtful and insightful language, author Richard Carlson reveals ways to calm down in the midst of your hurried, stress-filled life. Learn how to put things in perspective by making the small daily changes he suggests, including advice such as ‘Think of your problems as potential teachers’; and remember that when you die, your in box won’t be empty.

You should also try to live in the present moment, let others have the glory at times, and lower your tolerance to stress. You can write down your most stubborn positions and see if you can soften them, learn to trust your intuitions, and live each day as if it might be your last.

Work Less, Make More

Jennifer While

A proven 10-step program for unlocking your potential to live and work on your own terms. Tired of holding your breath, waiting for exactly the right moment to arrive before you can start living the life you really want? When will it be safe for you to stop working so hard and feeling stressed out, burnt out, and generally dissatisfied with life? When you get married? Promoted? When your kids finish school? When you pay off your mortgage? When you retire? It’s time to stop waiting and start living. As renowned success coach, Jennifer White proves in this amazing book: You can have it all – more time, more money, and more fun on your own terms starting today!

The Artist’s Way

Julia Cameron

Since its first publication, The Artist’s Way has inspired the genius of Elizabeth Gilbert, Tim Ferriss, Reese Witherspoon and millions of readers to embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to process and purpose. Julia Cameron guides readers in uncovering problems and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to open up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. A revolutionary programme for personal renewal, The Artist’s Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.

Attracting Perfect Customers

Jan Brogniez and Stacey Hall

Most businesses spend far too much of their time and energy struggling to get new customers or hang on to existing ones-even customers who are ultimately more trouble than they’re worth. Attracting Perfect Customers invites readers to move beyond the notions that “business is war” and winning market share means “beating” the other guy. The authors outline a simple strategic process for making businesses so highly attractive that perfect customers and clients are naturally drawn right to them.

Sound too good to be true? Hall and Brogniez have successfully shown clients how to do it for years, and now they share their secrets. They prove that it is no longer productive or profitable to conduct business using the war-like marketing techniques of targeting customers and outmaneuvering the competition. In fact, these techniques seem antiquated and labor-intensive when compared to the Strategic Attraction Planning process, which requires just five minutes each day and enables any business to easily attract customers that are a perfect fit for their organization-the kind of customers it is a pleasure to serve.

Presentation Zen

Garr Reynolds

Garr Reynolds shares his experience in a provocative mix of illumination, inspiration, education, and guidance that will change the way you think about making presentations with PowerPoint or Keynote. Presentation Zen challenges the conventional wisdom of making “slide presentations” in today’s world and encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations. Garr shares lessons and perspectives that draw upon practical advice from the fields of communication and business. Combining solid principles of design with the tenets of Zen simplicity, this book will help you along the path to simpler, more effective presentations.