8 Books Every Human Need Study For Successful In Life For Harsh Reality....
1.The Diary of a CEO” Will Change the Way You Lead Your Business....
Why I Chose This Book:
In 2023, the Diary of a CEO Podcast was the fastest-growing YouTube podcast, outpacing the Joe Rogan Experience. Steven Bartlett’s channel has exploded from 100k subscribers to 4.7 million in the last two years and is projected to reach 30 million in the next two years. It is also one of the top 10 podcasts globally on Spotify.
Steven Bartlett, the face of the podcast, has roots much deeper than his show. He has been the CEO, founder, co-founder, or board member at multiple industry-leading marketing abusiness companies, in addition to starting his first business at 18 years old.
Steven inspires me of what the next generation of young, focused, driven leaders can be, and how they can positively impact society now and in the future.
At 31 years old, Steven has been in the thick of marketing, business, and leadership growth and has interviewed hundreds of industry leaders in the same space. For me, at 26 years old, what better place to continue my personal learning and development journey than getting a behind-the-scenes look at the success he has achieved in business and life?
- Remove Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy disempowers employees, slows companies down, disincentivizes experimentation, delays innovation, and stifles goldmines of ideas that exist.
2. Fix the Incentives
Is your company set up so that what you expect of your employees aligns with what you incentivize them to achieve?
It could look like this: Create a recognition process designed to celebrate an employee or team when an experiment is successfully implemented, regardless of the outcome. People will appreciate the praise, and fear of trying will be removed.
3. Promote & Fire
Identify the employees that are failing the fastest and promote them as high as possible. Influence trickles down: you need people at the highest points of your company to be the most avid disciples of your cultural values.
Conversely, quickly remove individuals from the team who stand in the way of the flow of new ideas, especially if they are managers. One bad manager will destroy the morale, motivation, and optimism of the most entrepreneurial employees.
4. Measure Accurately
It’s difficult to improve on what you don’t measure, and where your focus is, your growth will be also.
Establish highly visible KPIs and clear goals, and make them everyone’s responsibility.
5. Share the Failure
To maximize the return from every failure, you need to share it. Disseminate the details of each experiment throughout the whole organization.
Openly sharing failures can prevent duplications and stimulate a culture of experimentation and new ideas.
By Hector Garcia Puigcerver and Francesc Miralles | Goodreads
Bring meaning and joy to all your days with the internationally bestselling guide to ikigai.
According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai–a reason for living. And according to the residents of the Japanese island of Okinawa–home to the world’s longest-living people–finding it is the key to a happier and longer life.
Inspiring and soothing, this book will bring you closer to these centenarians’ secrets: how they leave urgency behind; keep doing what they love for as long as possible; nurture friendships; live in the moment; participate in their communities; and throw themselves into their passions. And it provides practical tools to help you discover your own personal ikigai. Because who doesn’t want to find the joy in every day?
Takeaway from Ikigai
This book was recommended to me by two friends at different times. A short non-fiction that takes a close look at Japan and how people live as long as they do there. It is a treasure trove of knowledge, going into the many things that we can do to have longevity. The book has snippets of interviews with centenarians and supercentenarians who have lived a long life, trying to gauge from them what they did to have survived this long.
It’s not rocket science. By taking care of our bodies and mind with proper nutrition, movement and flow, we experience enjoyment and fulfilment. The desire to live continues and we continue. So simple! I love it!
I was pleasantly surprised when Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life mentioned concepts I was already aware of and expanded them to a whole other level. Two come to mind:
Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is a well known and loved book by close friends. I haven’t read it yet but I want to. I did not know that he developed logotherapy and the perspective to living that it represents. I was having a hard day when I was reading the chapter. I felt seen by the words:
1. A person feels empty, frustrated, or anxious.
2. The therapist shows him that what is feeling is the desire to have a meaningful life.
So many times, I try to fix the issue that is causing me anxiety rather than truly seeing it for itself. I just want a meaningful life. This puts control in my hands in how I can make it meaningful. I sat there looking at this second point for a long time.
3.The Psychology of Money
4.“Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds.” By David Goggins
I’ll highlight the lessons I learned from the book and leave this review with practical tips from the lessons below:
- Stay in the fight as long as possible: David Goggins made it a point not to quit on himself and pushed the boundaries often. This did not mean he had everything figured out but he knew what needed to be done to stay in the fight. He went through “Hell week training” to become a Navy Seal 3 times, attempted to break the world record for the most pull-ups 3 times, and ran ultra-marathons and triathlons without having any previous training on how to but learning by doing.
Life will not give you everything you need but get into the boxing ring, lace your gloves, take action, and stay in the fight for as long as you can to know if you have what it takes.
2. You need to take AAR for successes and failures: AAR is an acronym for After Action Report in the military. It is not the sexy part of being a soldier but it is an important administrative procedure to debrief on what happened on a mission.
Many nuggets can be lost in life when you do not actively have an AAR system in your life. When you end any project in your life, take out your time almost immediately after to note the factors that worked in your favor and those that you could have controlled if you had more details or were conscious about them when you failed. Wisdom usually is more evident in retrospect.
Your AARs will ensure you make fewer errors when you are tackling life's challenges.
3. Fully Audit your life and prioritize: There are 168 hours in a week, you work about 40 of these hours, and sleep about 56 hours (if you get 8 hours of sleep every night) and this leaves you with about 72 hours. What do you do with these hours?
Do you just scroll through TikTok or chat on the phone with your friend about the very same thing you discussed last week?
I know the 2 most important gifts that are given to every human are Time and Attention. What you do with these 2 main ingredients will shape your life towards your dreams or lead to wasted potential.
5.Rich Dad Poor Dad
Rich Dad Poor Dad is a 1997 book written by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter. It advocates the importance of financial literacy (financial education), financial independence and building wealth through investing in assets, real estate investing, starting and owning businesses, as well as increasing one's financial intelligence (financial IQ).
Rich Dad Poor Dad is written in the style of a set of parables presented as autobiographical.[1] The titular "rich dad" is his best friend's father who accumulated wealth due to entrepreneurship and savvy investing, while the "poor dad" is claimed to be Kiyosaki's own father who he says worked hard all his life but never obtained financial security.
Kiyosaki's prior business ventures had been modest, but he promoted Rich Dad Poor Dad from self-publication to best-seller status and made it the cornerstone of a media and educational franchise.[2] For many years he avoided questions about the identity of the "rich dad," raising suspicions that no such person had existed.[3] Following the death of Hawaiian hotel developer Richard Kimi, he was identified as Kiyosaki's mentor.
6.Think and Grow Rich
Inspiration Behind the Book
Napoleon Hill, then a young special investigator for a nationally known business magazine, was sent to interview Andrew Carnegie. During that interview, Carnegie slyly dropped a hint of a certain master power he used—a magic law of the human mind, a little-known psychological principle—that was amazing in its power. Carnegie suggested to Hill that upon that principle he could build the philosophy of all personal success—whether it be measured in terms of money, power, position, prestige, influence, or the accumulation of wealth. That part of the interview never made it into Hill’s magazine, but it did launch the young author on a research journey that lasted twenty years. Think and Grow Rich is the result of Hill’s study of over five hundred self-made millionaires—a condensed, accessible explanation of his Law of Success philosophy, which includes thirteen steps to riches (financial, emotional, and spiritual).
Chapter Summaries
Desire: The Starting Point of All Achievement
Wishing your desires will materialize will not bring you riches. To attain any goal, you must have a burning desire, combined with belief you will possess it, backed by definiteness of purpose—the firm knowledge of what one wants. Hill details six steps for turning your desires into reality.
Faith: Visualization of, and Belief in the Attainment of Desire
Through affirmations or repeated suggestions to the subconscious, you can develop the emotion of faith, which is necessary to transmuting your desires into their physical or monetary equivalent.
Auto-suggestion: The Medium for Influencing the Subconscious Mind
Auto-suggestion refers to the use of self-directed communication and self-administered stimuli to channel thoughts from the conscious mind to the seat of the subconscious. Because the conscious mind often acts as a barrier to sensory impressions, auto-suggestion must be used to create thought patterns conducive to translating your desires into their physical equivalent.
Specialized Knowledge: Personal Experiences or Observations
General knowledge, or that typically taught in schools, will not help you accumulate riches, nor will specialized knowledge on its own. Rather, you must learn how to organize and use knowledge after you acquire it. If you lack the specialized knowledge necessary to build your business or attain your goals, you can supplement your own knowledge with that of other individuals by forming a “Master Mind” group.
Imagination: The Workshop of the Mind
The imagination is the unique faculty of humankind that shapes, forms, and gives action to desire. Hill distinguishes between two modes by which the imagination functions: the synthetic imagination, which does not create but rather arranges old concepts, ideas, or plans into new combinations; and the creative imagination, which, when stimulated by strong desire, picks up thought vibrations from other humans and from the ether, connects with Infinite Intelligence, and develops new ideas.
Organized Planning: The Crystallization of Desire into Action
In order to translate desire into its physical or monetary equivalent, you must form a definite, practical plan and put it into action. This chapter details how to build plans and ensure they are functioning to your advantage.
Decision: The Mastery of Procrastination
Procrastination and indecisiveness are major causes of failure. Men and women of great wealth, on the other hand, share in common the ability to reach definite decisions quickly and change their minds slowly. This chapter teaches you how not to be swayed by the opinions of others but instead to keep your own counsel (and that of your Master Mind group) so that you make firm, productive decisions that ensure your success.
Persistence: The Sustained Effort Necessary to Induce Faith
Most people will throw in the towel at the first sign of opposition. However, willpower, combined with desire, is necessary to ensure that one’s objectives are reached. Hill provides four steps for cultivating the habit of persistence, your insurance against failure.
Power of the Master Mind: The Driving Force
Individuals can attain and apply power through the formation of a Master Mind group, an alliance of individuals with different strengths and perspectives who coordinate their knowledge and efforts to attain a definite purpose. Master Mind groups bring both economic advantages (riches) as well as psychic benefits (a cosmic harmony that generates a “third mind,” or spiritual unit of energy operating at a higher frequency).
The Mystery of Sex Transmutation
Sex transmutation entails the channeling of carnal desires and their corresponding energies into other outlets than those that are purely physical—namely, creative ones. A correlative to this principle is the importance of selecting a compatible partner.
The Subconscious Mind: The Connecting Link
Hill describes the subconscious mind as the intermediary between the finite mind of man and Infinite Intelligence that enables humans to tap into the forces of the Universal Mind. He emphasizes that it alone is the medium for translating mental impulses into their spiritual and physical equivalents.
The Brain: A Broadcasting and Receiving Station for Thought
Hill writes, “Through the medium of the ether, in a fashion similar to that employed by the radio broadcasting principle, every human brain is capable of picking up vibrations of thought which are being released by other brains.” In this chapter, he explains the process by which the mind is stimulated by external vibrations and supplies a method for using emotions to increase the mind’s receptivity to these sensory stimuli.
The Sixth Sense: The Door to the Temple of Wisdom
The Sixth Sense refers to the faculty of the subconscious also termed the Creative Imagination by which humans, through no effort of their own, receive communications from Infinite Intelligence. Hill calls this principle the “apex” of his Law of Success philosophy, for it can be comprehended and applied only after mastering the first twelve principles.
How to Outwit the Six Ghosts of Fear
In order to implement these thirteen success principles, you have to prepare your mind to receive the philosophy. The first step to prime your psyche is to study, analyze, and understand the three enemies you’ll have to defeat: indecision, doubt, and fear. This chapter outlines and explains the cure to the six basic fears that, although often hidden in the subconscious, hold humans back in their pursuit of riches: the fear of poverty, the fear of criticism, the fear of ill health, the fear of loss of love, the fear of old age, and the fear of death.
1. Be Human
The other day, I was at a farm picking up some apples and a pumpkin. When I went up to pay, I realized no one was behind me. I had no need to hurry; the farmer, who was acting as the cashier, was staring straight into my eyes and smiling. I woke up, bantered with him, and shared a laugh, instead of shoving money and hustling away (I blame New York for encouraging my tendency to slip past people interactions as quickly as possible).
It was a bit of sunshine in my day.
Now, I just have to bring that to everything I do.
Schwartz advises you to treat people as well as you can, whether you’re in a leadership position or all the way at the bottom of the totem pole.
Give everyone the benefit of the doubt, have patience, and remember that most people are good deep down. Give people the beauty of grace.
I always try to remember the Pygmalion Effect: People will rise to your expectations (so set them high!).
Another tip is conversation generosity.
As Schwartz puts it:
“There is no surer way to get people to like you than to encourage them to talk to you.”
You should aim to let your chit-chat partner say more than you do. This works absolute wonders in interviews, coffee dates, romantic dating, and with family. People like you more the more they get to talk about themselves. So, ask questions, be curious, and as Schwartz says, be human.
2. Thinking It’s Possible Makes It So
Believing Allows You to See the Routes to Success
“Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution pays the way to solution.”
Schwartz uses a class example to illustrate this point. He had his students think of all the ways to end the prison system within a certain number of years. Within minutes, the class turned from nitpicking all the downsides to closing prisons, to thinking up creative, innovative solutions. The hardest part of the exercise, Schwartz writes, was calming his students down to end the thought experiment as people fed off each other’s creative energy of solving a hard problem.
Assuming a seemingly impossible objective is possible is used by many contemporary personal development authors. For example, Tim Ferriss uses it when he describes comfort challenges, where he asks his readers to try to make X amount of money in a certain time frame.
When you change from thinking, this might be possible, to how do I accomplish it? your mind immediately goes to work to find a way to accomplish your mission.
An example in my life was my goal of teaching yoga while still in the military. Once I changed from just wishing I was a yoga teacher, to realizing I wanted to teach before the end of the year, I found multiple routes to success.
I woke up at 4am and taught mobility yoga at a Crossfit gym before I had to head to post. I taught fellow service members one day a week at the on-post athletic facility, and on weekends I substituted for several local studios. I made it happen once I turned the thought into, I’m finding a way to make it happen.
3. Ignore the Haters
Super simple advice, but always smart to remind yourself: If someone is a downer, gossiper, naysayer, or just plain mean, ignore them.
Change the subject, walk away, or simply nod and say, “Oh, I see.” For people you can’t run away from at work, Ask a Manager has some good advice.
When it’s your family, remember, even the most advanced of us struggle with that. As Ram Dass said:
“If you think you are enlightened, go and spend a week with your family.”
At the end of the day, if you can spend 80% of your time with positive (or even neutral), supportive folks, you’re golden.
4. One Step At a Time
This story stuck with me.
Schwartz illustrates the point that every big endeavor requires a repetition of small, seemingly simple endeavors, with the following vignette.
From Chapter 12:
Eric Sevareid, an author and correspondent, reported in Reader’s Digest in 1957:
“During World War II, I and several others had to parachute from a crippled Army transport plane into the mountainous jungle on the Burma-India border. It was several weeks before an armed relief expedition could reach us, and then we began a painful, plodding, march ‘out’ to civilized Inida. We were faced by a 140-mile trek, over mountains, in August heat and monsoon rains.
In the first hour of the march I rammed a boot nail deep into one foot; by evening I had bleeding blisters the size of a 50-cent piece on both feet. Could I hobble 140 miles? Could the others, some in worse shape than I, complete such a distance? We were convinced we could not. But we could hobble to that ridge, we could make the next friendly village for the night. And that, of course, was all we had to do…
When I relinquished my job and income to undertake a book of a quarter of a million words, I could not bear to let my mind dwell on the whole scope of the project. I would surely have abandoned what has become my deepest source of professional pride. I tried to think only of the next paragraph, not the next page and certainly not the next chapter. Thus, for six solid months, I never did anything but set down one paragraph after another. The book ‘wrote itself.’”
Shwartz says, “progress is made one step at a time. A house is built one brick at a time. Football games are won a play at a time…Every big accomplishment is a series of little accomplishments.”
To make your dreams come true, you must take action, but that action shouldn’t be grand.
For me, it’s sitting my butt down and writing as often as I can; or, it’s signing up for a course that will make me better, and actually completing it and participating fully.
For you, it might mean securing a domain name, setting up your first website, and launching a first product.
Or, perhaps it’s going to the grocery store, buying healthy food for the week, and making one healthy meal. And then another, and another.
Whatever your goal, you can take one forward step toward it, probably right now (look away from the internet and go, go, go!).
5. Do More, Not Less (But Take Time to Think)
This phrase, written in the book, (and posted on my Twitter a few months ago), is a longtime favorite maxim:
If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it
I see this play out everywhere: at work, it’s the person who already wears five hats who is asked to plan the holiday party, order business cards for everyone in the company, fix the landing page, and attend a last-minute conference as well as take care of day-to-day duties, while the person with one role, who works strictly 10–5pm, fails to accomplish the one thing on his plate.
In the military, it was the same thing. The person in the S-3 operations shop who worked the craziest hours, yet still found time to work out, see his family, and help mentor junior soldiers, was the go-to person to help you book your range, figure out a funding issue, and to arrange travel and school for me and my soldiers. Meanwhile, the senior sergeant who sat in the corner with a laptop and one duty, somehow failed to accomplish his one task on time or to standard.
With friends, I notice that I’m able to consistently coordinate time on our calendars to get dinner, drinks, or catch-up, with the people who have the most on their plate: multiple jobs, crazy work hours, blossoming side projects, a consistent exercise routine, and complex family situations.
Those who don’t work full-time, have any side jobs, any regular hobbies or practices, or any true deadlines, are the ones who cancel, fail to follow through, and who never seem to make progress on their personal goals.
Being busy forces you to find ruthless efficiency and prioritization.
In my personal life, I’ve found that my capacity to get shit done increases the second I add responsibilities, projects, classes, and hobbies to my plate.
Even Jennifer Lawrence agrees:
“When I’m not working, I am the laziest person. I can literally lie on a couch and watch television for 15 hours.”
Only you know your capacity, but I’d always advise adding more before taking away. At the very least you might stretch and find you’re able to do much more than you thought. Volume also brings the need to quit wasting time on stupid stuff. For me, it’s social media and endlessly reading random articles on the internet. When I have a full plate of work, freelancing, yoga teaching, volunteering, meal prepping, and social activities, I stop dawdling time away on unfulfilling time-sucks.
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