6 Books That Turned Around My Life in 6 Months
A new career, more money, and a greater sense of life purpose
Happy Friday, subscribers! This is a little personal post for me because I’ve put my vulnerabilities out there, but I hope some of you can resonate with it and can find some light.
It’s a long one too (10min read), so I’ll shorten it for you to directly jump to the book which best fits you. I know you’re busy, and I respect your time. :)
Skip to:
If you deal with low self-esteem; lack of purpose of what you want to do.
If you want free.e and natural tools for better physical, mental, and emotional health.
If you’re a believer of the Law of Attraction.
If you’re intrigued by the impact of your mind on your body, and your life.
If you/ your parents are divorced, and you love a good laugh while reading.
If you’re creative.
I’d love to know if you choose any of these books to read next, hit Reply and let me know.
Imagine this.
One day you’re looking at some people having a wonderful life. Not in just superficial terms, but they genuinely look so happy. They’ve found a purpose, and their passion pays them to pursue it. It’s almost envious how sorted they look.
You want this freedom. You want to be your own boss; you want to do cool things. You want to make money good enough to gift your mom something which will make her smile and to travel places resources currently don’t allow you to. You want this life, an ideal life.
Instead, you go back to your usual day around your ordinary tasks. Doing assignments, sending updates, making reports. Before you sleep, you again imagine — what if, you could live that way too? But your inner voice tells you that’s a game for a few and not for you to win. You’re okay where you are, and this is the way you have to be. Each day you wake up and get back to the routine.
But something happens. Amidst your daily routine and the usual reading you do, you feel yourself change. Week by week, month by month. It happens slowly, but your entire energy changes.
You feel rebellious. You don’t want to settle for what society has set for you. You want to get your life in your own hands without thinking about the risk, because deep inside you know it will work out. You feel sure of everything like you haven’t before.
6 months later, you’ve made more money than you imagined making a few years down your monotonous career path. You’ve met people who actually care, who want to lift you each time you fall. You’ve got the courage to pursue your passion.
You’re becoming the person you always aspired to be, but there were several roadblocks on this way earlier. People want to pay you for what you enjoy doing, it’s all falling in place.
If this could happen to me in 6 months, imagine what can happen to you? Some of our paths will be rough, longer, and take a different route than others. But what matters is that we’re a step closer to where we want to be, instead of settling which we’re told to do since inception.
Here are the 6 books (in order) which completely turned my life around in ways I never imagined.
1. Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins
Do you feel like doing something big with your life, but then your inner voice tells you to shut up?
Do you have moments where you feel you’re not good enough?
Do you contemplate your life purpose only to never find a definite answer?
If your answer was yes to any of all the above questions, you need to grab this book right away. I’ve had low self-worth for the longest time and have had moments when I looked at my work and felt I don’t belong here, but didn’t know what else to do.
If it wasn’t for this book, I would have never figured out what do I want to do in life and how should I get there. I’m not sure if I’ve found my life purpose or my life purpose for now, but either way that works for me.
This book also has several techniques to tame your negative chatter.
My favourite one is taming the random negative thoughts which come to your mind. Tony tells you to picture the negative thoughts and then reduce them in size and fade them away. Yes — it works. Just like visualising what you want to manifest (goals, dreams) is better when done in bright colours and large images.
This book also has a variety of examples and studies about negative belief systems (the negative notions you have about yourself) and how your beliefs hold you from doing things in life. On the brighter side, your belief systems can also be turned around.
“The birth of excellence begins with our awareness that our beliefs are a choice. We usually don’t think of it that way, but belief can be a conscious choice. You can choose beliefs that limit you, or you can choose beliefs that support you. ”
― Anthony Robbins
An interesting thing I learnt is that your state impacts everything around you. If you’re happy, you give out good energy and do everything with good energy and good things happen to you. It has a detailed perspective on this and how can we make our state positive most of the times.
This book helped me with my confidence by battling my negative belief systems; little did I know that his one-hour goal setting exercise will lead me to determine my career path.
2. The Wellness Sense by Om Swami
This book takes an amalgamation of Ayurvedic and scientific approach to physical and mental wellness. It has an easy language as compared to some wellness books which overdose on info which is incomprehensible to laymen.
Swami emphasises on several ways one can achieve an optimum state of health — physical and mental.
He has several techniques, exercises, and tips for the same.
My favourite method visualising your body to avoid illness and diseases. Since I have a permanent injury in my knees, I find this quite helpful and do it for a minute every day after yoga. To do this, you have to:
Lie down comfortably
Imagine your body cells
If you’re experiencing any pain, imagine those cells in red
Visualise a white light coming to your body and lighting up your body
Slowly think of those red cells also turning white
This was similar to Sadhguru’s Chit Shakti meditation for good health.
“If you can either change your perspective or your response towards what you find disturbing, ninety per cent of the job is done. ” ― Om Swami
His techniques on emotional and mental detoxification are helpful too and hardly take over 5 minutes.
I totally recommend this book if you’re looking to get in touch with your body and heighten your practices for better mental and physical health.
3. The Greatest Secret by Rhonda Byrne
I pre-ordered it, that’s how excited I was! I’m a huge believer in The Secret and Law of Attraction and have read all of her books. The Greatest Secret, as compared to other books, was rather disappointing.
But it makes it to this list because of a very important reason.
Why it was disappointing was because it kept repeating the same thing — awareness.
Why it’s important is because awareness is something we’re constantly unaware of nowadays. We’re in touch with others but hardly in touch with ourselves.
This book emphasises how your state of mind can impact your feelings and emotions, which affects everything else around you. It highlighted the importance of being hyperaware of our thoughts because they’re so powerful. Thoughts become things.
“A belief is just a thought that we think over and over again — until we believe it. All beliefs are limited because they come from the mind.” — Rhonda Byrne
Even though I meditate in the morning after my workout, I try to do a ‘thought check’ every hour, if not more often. Each time I feel upset, angry, irritated, or just have an unpleasant thought, thought becomes things comes to my mind and I try to move on.
When you consciously try to think well most of the time, you feel happier and content. Your vibrations are positive, which helps in attracting more positivity in your life.
4. The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy
This book doesn’t need much explanation as it’s really popular. I read this book as a teenager and recently read it again. Now, this shall be one of the few books I must read every year to get a refresher course.
This, like The Secret, emphasises on the power of your thoughts on your life. Whether it’s your work, health, relationships, or career — your thoughts can impact them.
After reading this book, every night before sleeping I muttered I am a writer to myself. I pictured myself being happy, having enough money, and typing on a keyboard. I pictured myself getting a good contract from a great client.
“As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment.”
― Joseph Murphy
All that I pictured came true. In fact, it’s in process and is still happening. I am still repeating this exercise each day.
5. Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me by Sopan Deb
Sopan Deb is a journalist and a stand-up comedian.
This is Sopan’s real story which highlights his troublesome childhood. If you’re from the West, know that in South Asian families, speaking about mental health is not something we do openly. It’s changing now, but times were different decades ago when Sopan was growing up.
His parents quarrelled for years and he doesn’t remember any happy moments with them. They eventually got divorced and Sopan lost touch with them. He blamed them for his childhood and his insecurities.
Approaching his 30th birthday, he reconnected with his parents who he hadn’t spoken to in years. Its then that he got to know that his mother was in deep depression and even suicidal, and his father wasn’t the stone-hearted man he thought he was.
This touched me on a personal level because my parents’ aren’t together too. I too have blamed my childhood for my insecurities. And even though my relationship with my parents is great, deep down I’ve always wished my childhood was ‘normal’ like others.
After reading this, the wound which has been deep inside me kind of healed. I felt I made it all about me. But it was their marriage, their failed marriage, it had a much deeper impact on them not just in their relationships but as individuals which I overlooked.
They concealed their hurts like Sopan’s parents because in our society we don’t talk about these things. We just suffer alone.
This book made me empathise on a level I didn’t know was possible. I cried so much while reading it, but most of the crying came from unstoppable laughter because 70% of this book is pure amazing humour.
6. The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin
“The proven truth about creativity: it’s the result of desire — the desire to find a new truth, solve an old problem, or serve someone else.” ― Seth Godin,
I finished this book in 3 days because I couldn’t stop reading it. This is also the only book I’ve used a pencil on, underlining important lines like I’m studying it for exams.
If you’re creative, and especially a writer, you cannot miss out on this.
When you perceive your work as a service, it puts the responsibility on your shoulders. As a writer, that means that you absolutely cannot write crap.
This book emphasises how can we practice our art effectively, and that not doing what we love is selfish because we’re depriving others of the value we can put on the table, the people we can be of service to. When you perceive your work as a service, it puts the responsibility on your shoulders. As a writer, that means that you absolutely cannot write crap.
Seth emphasises to not focus on your outcomes but focus on your art. This reminds me of a dialogue from the famous Bollywood movie, 3 idiots:
Don’t run after success. Chase excellence and success will run after you.
In the last few months that I have been writing publically, I have never cared about any stats, views, or other metrics. My only focus has been to hone my craft and have fun as I learn more, not just around my craft but also discover myself in this process.
Seth highlights:
do your work for your audience and then yourself
always perceive your work as a service to others
know your audience beforehand
don’t focus on being liked by the mass, but being admired by a few
creativity shouldn’t wait for inspiration but should be done even when you don’t want to
These are a few out of the 100+ brief lessons he has written.
Takeaway
Books indeed can be our superpower, because they can expose us to own superpower which we didn’t know to exist. They can give us a direction to be the superwoman/superman we want to be, and hold us when we fall, only to pick us up and show us a path.