Wednesday, 29 April 2015

10 Books That Will Change Your Life

Are you looking for books that will change your life?    Are you wanting to get leverage on yourself, and make real changes, but you’d love a guide to assist you?
These 10 books absolutely fit that criteria.  Read them, but more importantly, do what they tell you.  It is your acting not just your reading that will get you the best results.  These books however will give you the framework that you need to take action:

1. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

war of art
The most important book I’ve ever read, and the book that has helped me most to build successful businesses, write a book and create an authentic and fulfilling career.  It has allowed me to break through my inner resistance and create my authentic life, and live my authentic self.  Critical if you are an entrepreneur, writer, artist, or any form of “creator”.

2. Turning Pro – by Steven Pressfield

Turning Pro
The follow up to the War of Art.  In the War of Art Pressfield identifies the enemy to living an authentic life – resistance.  In Turning Pro, Pressfield teaches you how to defeat it.

3. Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience – by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow
What are the optimal experiences in our life?  The vacations?  Laying on the beach?  No.  World renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his landmark book proves that optimal experience is actually the moments in our life when we are giving our very best in pursuit of self-directed meaningful goals.  Through this book learn how to channel flow, and your life will forever change.

4. As a Man Thinketh – by James Allen

as a man thinketh
Thoughts are things. We are what we repeatedly think about.  Learn to first create in your mind the life that you want, then manifest its reality through your hard work and actions.  A classic – short simple and powerful.

5. Mastery – by Robert Greene

mastery
Mastery teaches you to take the long run, and seek a higher form of success, one that very few people every achieve – the level of mastery.  Learn from case studies of some of the worlds’s greatest masters and absorb practical advice on how you can apply it.

6. The Alchemist – by Paulo Coelho

alchemist
An easy to read, highly descriptive, story that teaches a powerful metaphor – how to pursue your dreams.  Learn the obstacles that will arise, and learn how to channel your courage on the path of what you value most.

7. Awaken The Giant Within – by Anthony Robbins

awaken giant
Don’t let the TV infomercials fool you – this book has high quality strategies that are immediately applicable to get control of your emotional self.  When you can control the inner, then the outer follows.  Get leverage on yourself by reading this book and applying the strategies you learn.

8. The Game – by Neil Strauss

the game
A fascinating read – my advice – read it from a cultural psychology perspective.  You will see that there are certain patterns of behaviour and influence what work with people.  Learn how people think and what attracts them, and what repels them.  You will need to be a master of influence in order to achieve any dream that involves other people.

9.  The Way Of The Superior Man – by David Deida

way of superior
This book is more applicable for men, but worth reading by anyone. Get leverage over yourself.  This book helps you to understand various emotional challenges that many men experience and how to gain mastery over one of the most difficult opponents: yourself.

10.  7 Habits Of Highly Effective People – by Stephen R. Covey

7 habits
A practical masterpiece with easy to follow instructions and guides.  Useful for both businesses and individuals.  Learn to “put first things first” and “begin with the end in mind”.  This book is a classic in management and leadership literature, and should be mandatory reading for anyone who is in a position of influence.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Best Quotes and Sayings about Books

(C) Joy Prichard Studios


It is no secret that I love books.  Though I prefer the printed book, I also have electronic collections on every advice imaginable.  From speaking about the future of books or how books make a better life to visiting bookstores and libraries around the globe, I share this passion with many of you.  And it’s not just about the content inside.  I also love collecting my favorite book covers each year.
Charlie “Tremendous” Jones was one of my great influencers.  He repeatedly said that, “You will be the same person you are today in five years but for two things:  the people you meet and the books you read.”
Books change lives.
Here are some of my favorite quotes about books:


“I cannot live without books.” –Thomas Jefferson

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.” -Abraham Lincoln

“I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at people.” –Charles Bukowski

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” -Walt Disney

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” -Henry David Thoreau

“Books open your mind, broaden your mind, and strengthen you as nothing else can.” -William Feather

“A book worth reading is worth buying.” -John Ruskin

“All good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had really happened.” -Ernest Hemingway

“So many books, so little time.” -Frank Zappa

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” -Cicero

“Good books don’t give up all their secrets at once.” –Stephen King

“Books are mirrors. You only see in them what you already have inside of you.” -Carlos Zafon

“You are today who you’ll be in five years except for the people you meet and the books you read.” -Charlie “Tremendous” Jones

“My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.” –Abraham Lincoln

“Be awesome! Be a book nut!” –Dr. Seuss

“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Outside of a dog a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog it’s too dark to read.” -Groucho Marx

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” -Ernest Hemingway

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” –C.S. Lewis

“Classic – a book which people praise and don’t read.” –Mark Twain
“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you’ll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.” -Stephen King

“The covers of this book are too far apart.” –Ambrose Bierce

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience. This is the ideal life.” -Mark Twain

“A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.” –Thomas Carlyle

“Books are the training weights of the mind.” -Epictetus

“Tis the good reader that makes the good book.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.” –Dr. Seuss

“If you love books enough, books will love you back.” –Jo Walton

“The book you don’t read won’t help.” –Jim Rohn

“A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.” -Franz Kafka

“Never judge a book by its movie.” –J.W. Eagan

“A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.” –Salman Rushdie

“A man will turn over half a library to make one book.” –Samuel Johnson

“A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.” -W.H. Auden

“Rereading, we find a new book.” –Mason Cooley

“No two persons ever read the same book.” –Edmund Wilson

“Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.” –P.J. O’Rourke

“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.” -Alan Bennett

“A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.” –Chinese Proverb

“The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.” –James Bryce

“To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” –Edmund Burke

“A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it.” –Edward Morgan

“You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.” –Paul Sweeney

“Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life.’” –Helen Exley

“What you don’t know would make a great book.” –Sydney Smith

“A good book has no ending.” -R.D. Cumming

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” -Daniel Handler

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” –Haruki Murakami

“The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.” –Northrop Frye

“Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.” –Jeremy Collier

Labels: ,