Game Changers: What Leaders, Innovators, and Mavericks Do to Win at Life


Dave Asprey - 2018
    His guests were some of the top performing humans in the world, people who had changed their areas of study or even pioneered entirely new fields. Dave wanted to know: What did they have in common? What mattered most to them? What made them so successful—and what made them tick? At the end of each interview, Dave asked the same question: “What are your top three recommendations for people who want to perform better at being human?”After performing a statistical analysis of the answers, he found that the wisdom gleaned from these highly successful people could be distilled into three main objectives: finding ways to become smarter, faster, and happier. Game Changers is the culmination of Dave’s years-long immersion in these conversations, offering 46 science-backed, high performance “laws” that are a virtual playbook for how to get better at life.With anecdotes from game changers like Dr. Daniel Amen, Gabby Bernstein, Dr. David Perlmutter, Arianna Huffington, Esther Perel, and Tim Ferris as well as examples from Dave’s own life, Game Changers offers readers practical advice they can put into action to reap immediate rewards. From taming fear and anxiety to making better decisions, establishing high-performance habits, and practicing gratitude and mindfulness, Dave brings together the wisdom of today’s game-changers to help everyone kick more ass at life.

Executive Power: Use the Greatest Collection of Psychological Strategies to Create an Automatic Advantage in Any Business Situation


David J. Lieberman - 2008
    This book contains specific, carefully formulated psychological tactics that can be applied to any business situation, with any person. This book offers readers the opportunity to use the most important psychological tools governing human behavior, not just to level the playing field, but to create an automatic advantage in today's business world. The book will arm the reader with the tactics to: * Get back any customer you've lost. * Find out who in your company is loyal to you and who is not. * Get any group of people to get along and work as a team. * Turn a lazy worker into an ambitious go-getter. * Fire anyone easily, without an argument or even a difficult conversation. * Dilute the impact of negative publicity quickly. * Collect money owed, no matter how long it's been overdue. * Inspire your client, colleague, or boss to go along with your idea or plan. * Manage the unmanageable-get any employee to fall in line with the company line.

Stillpower: Excellence With Ease in Sports and Life


Garret Kramer - 2012
    However, in spite of a myriad of tools and techniques, success and contentment continue to be as elusive as ever, until now. Garret Kramer’s Stillpower offers a revolutionary explanation for this predicament and provides a basic, yet dynamic, approach for the future. In an accessible style, Kramer reveals the innate principles behind consistent achievement and highlights the misalignment between the experiences of all performers and the strategies of the coaches, psychologists, and experts who are hoping to help them.Stillpower uses real-life examples to explore such questions as: What is “the zone” and what must we do (or not do) to get there? Why do we need to understand the difference between insight and intellect? Is goal setting really useful? Why doesn’t willpower work? And why do the best mentors focus on a person’s state of mind and not behavior? Virtually all of us—athletes and non-athletes alike—are looking outside of ourselves, trying to unlock the keys to happiness, freedom, and excellence with ease. Stillpower encourages us to look within to finally find the answers.

Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions


John P. Kotter - 2005
    Fred must cleverly convince and enlist key players, such as Louis, the head penguin; Alice, the number two bird; the intractable NoNo the weather expert; and a passle of school-age penguins if he is to save the colony.Their delightfully told journey illuminates in an unforgettable way how to manage the necessary change that surrounds us all. Simple explanatory material following the fable enhances the lasting value of these lessons.Our Iceberg Is Melting is at once charming, accessible and profound; a treat for virtually any reader.

Dealing with People You Can't Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst


Rick Brinkman - 1994
    Rick Brinkman and Rick Kirschner armed a civility-starved world with no-nonsense strategies for dealing with difficult people with tact and skill. Since then, cell phones, the Internet, voice mail, and other technological wonders designed to bring people closer together have only made it that much harder to avoid "people you can't stand;" even worse, they've also created exciting new ways for annoying people to realize their talent for being pains in the butt.Updated and revised for the digital age, this new edition of Brinkman and Kirschner's bestselling guide shows readers how to successfully combat the whiners, grenades, tanks, snipers, close-talkers, pedants, and other rude, crude, and inconsiderate people who can ruin your day at work, in stores, on the street, in restaurants, at the movies, in waiting rooms, by fax, phone, and E-mail, and in cyberspace.

Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges


Amy Cuddy - 2015
    Too often we approach our lives' biggest hurdles with dread, execute them with anxiety, and leave them with regret.By accessing our personal power, we can achieve "presence," the state in which we stop worrying about the impression we're making on others and instead adjust the impression we've been making on ourselves. As Harvard professor Amy Cuddy's revolutionary book reveals, we don't need to embark on a grand spiritual quest or complete an inner transformation to harness the power of presence. Instead, we need to nudge ourselves, moment by moment, by tweaking our body language, behavior, and mind-set in our day-to-day lives.Amy Cuddy has galvanized tens of millions of viewers around the world with her TED talk about "power poses." Now she presents the enthralling science underlying these and many other fascinating body-mind effects, and teaches us how to use simple techniques to liberate ourselves from fear in high-pressure moments, perform at our best, and connect with and empower others to do the same.Brilliantly researched, impassioned, and accessible, Presence is filled with stories of individuals who learned how to flourish during the stressful moments that once terrified them. Every reader will learn how to approach their biggest challenges with confidence instead of dread, and to leave them with satisfaction instead of regret."Presence feels at once concrete and inspiring, simple but ambitious — above all, truly powerful." —New York Times Book Review

Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong


Eric Barker - 2017
    In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric Barker reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success and most importantly, how anyone can achieve it. You’ll learn:• Why valedictorians rarely become millionaires, and how your biggest weakness might actually be your greatest strength • Whether nice guys finish last and why the best lessons about cooperation come from gang members, pirates, and serial killers• Why trying to increase confidence fails and how Buddhist philosophy holds a superior solution• The secret ingredient to “grit” that Navy SEALs and disaster survivors leverage to keep going• How to find work-life balance using the strategy of Genghis Khan, the errors of Albert Einstein, and a little lesson from Spider-ManBy looking at what separates the extremely successful from the rest of us, we learn what we can do to be more like them—and find out in some cases why it’s good that we aren’t. Barking Up the Wrong Tree draws on startling statistics and surprising anecdotes to help you understand what works and what doesn’t so you can stop guessing at success and start living the life you want.

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)


Seth Godin - 2007
    Godin shows that winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt--until they commit to beating the right Dip.Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out fun...then gets really hard, and not much fun at all. You might be in a Dip--a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it's really a Cul-de-Sac--a total dead end. What really sets superstars apart is the ability to tell the two apart.Winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can beat the Dip to be the best, you'll earn profits, glory, and long-term security. Whether you're an intern or a CEO, this fun little book will help you figure out if you're in a Dip that's worthy of your time, effort, and talents. The old saying is wrong--winners do quit, and quitters do win.

The Leap: The Science of Trust and Why It Matters


Ulrich Boser - 2014
    Look at the headlines. Read the blogs. Study the survey data. It seems that everyone is wary, that everyone is just looking out for themselves. But a sense of social trust and togetherness can be restored.In The Leap, best-selling author Ulrich Boser shows how the emerging research on trust can improve our lives, rebuild our economy, and strengthen society. As part of this engaging and deeply reported narrative, Boser visits a radio soap opera in Rwanda that aims to restore the country’s broken trust, profiles the man who brought honesty to one of the most corrupt cities in Latin America, and explains how a college dropout managed to con his way into American high society. Boser even goes skydiving to see if the experience will increase his levels of oxytocin, the so-called "trust hormone.”A powerful mix of hard science and compelling storytelling, The Leap explores how we trust, why we trust, and what we can all do to deepen social trust. The book includes insightful policy recommendations along with surprising new data on the state of social trust in America today.

The Connector Manager: Why Some Leaders Build Exceptional Talent - And Others Don't


Jaime Roca - 2019
    One performs much worse than the rest, and one performs far better. Which type are you?Based on a first-of-its-kind, wide-ranging global study of over 9,000 people, analysts at the global research and advisory firm Gartner were able to classify all managers into one of four types:- Teacher managers, who develop employees' skills based on their own expertise and direct their development along a similar track to their own. - Cheerleader managers, who give positive feedback while taking a general hands-off approach to employee development. - Always-on managers, who provide constant, frequent feedback and coaching on all aspects of the employee's performance. - Connector managers, who provide feedback in their area of expertise while connecting employees to others in the team or organization who are better suited to address specific needs.Although the four types of managers are more or less evenly distributed, the Connector manager consistently outperforms the others by a significant margin. Meanwhile, Always-on managers tend to see their employees struggle to grow within the organization. Why is that?Drawing on their groundbreaking data-driven research, as well as in-depth case studies and extensive interviews with managers and employees at companies like IBM, Accenture, and eBay, the authors show what behaviors define a Connector manager, and why they are able to build powerhouse teams. They also show why other types of managers fail to be equally effective, and how they can incorporate behaviors of Connector managers in order to be more effective at building teams.

The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results


Gary Keller - 2013
    The One Thing explains the success habit to overcome the six lies that block our success, beat the seven thieves that steal time, and leverage the laws of purpose, priority, and productivity.

Busy: How to Thrive in a World of Too Much


Tony Crabbe - 2014
    We feel overwhelmed by busyness because of the demands on our time: our inbox and our to-do list are bulging, a huge amount of people expect things from us and our organisations are trying to do more with fewer people. But it doesn't have to be that way. In reality, busyness isn't essential. Yes, there is a lot to do, but believing you're always busy because you have so much to do is both false and unhelpful. Busyness is a normal response to a world of too much, but it isn't the only response.In Busy Tony Crabbe draws on solid psychological research to address one of the great problems of modern life: we're too busy. But it isn't a time-management book. Rather than providing advice for increasing productivity and efficiency, it sets out four key strategies (corresponding to sections of the book) for thriving despite of the overload of too much:1. Mastery - to move beyond busyness you need to regain a sense of mastery over your life. This section shows you how to build a sense of control back into your life, take responsibility for making choices and how to set boundaries to protect you from the flood of demands and information.2. Focus - in a world of too much, success is not about doing more at work but about making an impact. This section outlines three ways to move to a career strategy that doesn't rely on productivity alone.3. Engagement - busyness can cause you to disengage from the people, values and activities that are important to us. This section provides you with the three keys to re-engaging with your work and life.4. Momentum - part of the challenge to moving beyond busyness is that even if you agree you should make the change, you're too busy to find the time and energy to do anything about it. This section is dedicated to helping you make the change, creating the impetus, energy and clarity to move to a life less busy.

The Slight Edge


Jeff Olson - 2005
    Learn why some people make dream after dream come true, while others just continue dreaming and spend their lives building dreams for someone else. It's not just another self-help motivation tool of methods you must learn in order to travel the path to success. It shows you how to create powerful results from the simple daily activities of your life, by using tools that are already within you.In this 8th anniversary edition you'll read not only the life-changing concepts of the original book, but also learn what author Jeff Olson discovered as he continued along the slight edge path: the Secret to Happiness and the Ripple Effect.This edition of The Slight Edge isn't just the story, but also how the story continues to create life-altering dynamics—how a way of thinking, a way of processing information, can impact daily choices that will lead you to the success and happiness you desire. The Slight Edge is "the key" that will make all the other how-to books and self-help information that you read, watch and hear actually work.

Do the Work


Steven Pressfield - 2011
    Do the WorkOur enemy is not lack of preparation; it's not the difficulty of the project, or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account.The enemy is resistance.The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications and a million reasons why he can't/shouldn't/won't do what we know we need to do.Start before you're ready.

Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone


Mark Goulston - 2009
    Just Listen does this by providing simple but powerful techniques readers can use to really get through to people. You’ll learn how to: make a powerful and positive first impression; listen effectively; make even a total stranger (potential client) feel understood; talk an angry or aggressive person away from an instinctual, unproductive reaction and toward a more rational mindset; and achieve buy-in--the linchpin of all persuasion, negotiation, and sales. Whether they're coworkers, friends, strangers, or enemies, the first make-or-break step in persuading anyone to do anything is getting them to hear you out. With this groundbreaking book, readers will be able to master the fine but critical art of effective communication.