Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In


Roger Fisher - 1981
    One of the primary business texts of the modern era, it is based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, a group that deals with all levels of negotiation and conflict resolution. Getting to Yes offers a proven, step-by-step strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict. Thoroughly updated and revised, it offers readers a straight- forward, universally applicable method for negotiating personal and professional disputes without getting angry-or getting taken.This is by far the best thing I`ve ever read about negotiation. It is equally relevant for the individual who would like to keep his friends, property, and income and the statesman who would like to keep the peace." --John Kenneth Galbraith"

Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World


William H. McRaven - 2017
    McRaven addressed the graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin on their Commencement day. Taking inspiration from the university's slogan, "What starts here changes the world," he shared the ten principles he learned during Navy Seal training that helped him overcome challenges not only in his training and long Naval career, but also throughout his life; and he explained how anyone can use these basic lessons to change themselves-and the world-for the better.Admiral McRaven's original speech went viral with over 10 million views. Building on the core tenets laid out in his speech, McRaven now recounts tales from his own life and from those of people he encountered during his military service who dealt with hardship and made tough decisions with determination, compassion, honor, and courage. Told with great humility and optimism, this timeless book provides simple wisdom, practical advice, and words of encouragement that will inspire readers to achieve more, even in life's darkest moments.

Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion


Gary Vaynerchuk - 2009
    In Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk shows you how to use the power of the Internet to turn your real interests into real businesses. Gary spent years building his family business from a local wine shop into a national industry leader. Then one day he turned on a video camera, and by using the secrets revealed here, transformed his entire life and earning potential by building his personal brand. By the end of this book, readers will have learned how to harness the power of the Internet to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true. Step by step, Crush It! is the ultimate driver’s manual for modern business.

Self Matters: Creating Your Life from the Inside Out


Phillip C. McGraw - 2001
    Key questions and an amazingly clear "map" are now at your fingertips to begin your journey to "Live by Design." These are questions that, with the help of this book, you can answer and bring into action-oriented focus:What are the ten most defining moments of your life?What are the seven most critical choices you have made to put you on your current path?Who are the five most pivotal people in your world and how have they shaped you? Identifying and working with these key elements are at the heart of Dr. Phillip C. McGraw's latest work, Self Matters, and soon they will be at the heart of your own new work: you. Through his books, McGraw has changed the lives of millions. In introducing the world to his matter-of-fact, tell-it-like-it-is philosophy of life, Dr. Phil, as he is known to his legions of fans, has put an end to the "everyone's a victim" attitude that had taken hold of our culture. Published in over twenty-five countries, and with millions of books sold, his two number one bestsellers, Life Strategies and Relationship Rescue, forced readers to take a serious look at the excuses they had so long been clinging to as to why they were not happy, not successful, and not enjoying their one chance at living. Now, Dr. Phil takes those lessons a great leap further and explores one of the most challenging questions facing us all: When you look in the mirror, who is truly hiding beneath that face? Instead of taking a surface look at the way we live our lives, Dr. Phil demystifies how your self-concept came to be and gives a nuts-and-bolts approach to creating a new plan for living and, in turn, for discovering the real you. In this groundbreaking work, Dr. Phil challenges you to find your "authentic self" -- that person you once were before life took its toll. It is you at your greatest, most fulfilled, most real moment. It is the person you have always wanted to be, but were too distracted, busy, or scared to become. Instead, you have created a "fictional self" -- taking on the identity of who you believe you are supposed be, the person people tell you you are. The incongruence between these two selves is what leads you to feel that your life is incomplete, unbalanced, and altogether more difficult than it really should be. The good news is it no longer needs to be that way. By using the plan set forth in Self Matters, Dr. Phil helps you to demystify your self-concept and learn how to reclaim your authentic self. In evaluating your life by only the facts, you can learn to think beyond the excuses and fears that have masked the person you have always wanted to be. Self Matters is one of the most forward-thinking works on self-concept and self-esteem ever published. For the first time, an author tells it how it is and, in the process, teaches us all how to live the lives we have always wanted but prevented ourselves from living. We get only one chance in this world, and now, Dr. Phil shows all how to make the most of it.

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism


Olivia Fox Cabane - 2012
    What you'll find here is practical magic: unique knowledge, drawn from a variety of sciences, revealing what charisma really is and how it works. You'll get both the insights and the techniques you need to apply this knowledge. The world will become your lab, and every person you meet, a chance to experiment.The Charisma Myth is a mix of fun stories, sound science, and practical tools. Cabane takes a hard scientific approach to a heretofore mystical topic, covering what charisma actually is, how it is learned, what its side effects are, and how to handle them.

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact


Chip Heath - 2017
    If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember twenty years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers? What if you had a better sense of how to create memories that matter for your children? This book delves into some fascinating mysteries of experience: Why we tend to remember the best or worst moment of an experience, as well as the last moment, and forget the rest. Why “we feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.” And why our most cherished memories are clustered into a brief period during our youth. Readers discover how brief experiences can change lives, such as the experiment in which two strangers meet in a room, and forty-five minutes later, they leave as best friends. (What happens in that time?) Or the tale of the world’s youngest female billionaire, who credits her resilience to something her father asked the family at the dinner table. (What was that simple question?) Many of the defining moments in our lives are the result of accident or luck—but why would we leave our most meaningful, memorable moments to chance when we can create them? The Power of Moments shows us how to be the author of richer experiences.

Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams


Barbara Sher - 2006
    What Sher has discovered is that some individuals simply cannot, and should not, decide on a single path; they are genetically wired to pursue many areas. Sher calls them "Scanners"--people whose unique type of mind does not zero in on a single interest but rather scans the horizon, eager to explore everything they see.In this groundbreaking book, readers will learn:• what's behind their "hit and run" obsessions• when (and how) to finish what they start• how to do everything they love• what type of Scanner they are (and which tools they need to do their very best work)

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms


Vishen Lakhiani - 2016
    Learn to think like the greatest creative minds of our era—to question, challenge, and create new rules for your ideas of love, education, spirituality, work, happiness, and meaning. The Code of the Extraordinary Mind is a blueprint for retraining our minds to hack everything—how we work, love, parent, and heal—and learn to succeed on our own terms. No matter where you’re starting from, you can build a life that’s truly extraordinary and make a dent in the universe. In this book, you will learn to bend reality, question the brules, transcend the culturescape, embrace your quest, practice consciousness engineering, live in blissipline, and push humanity forward. You will question your limits and realize that there are none. Your understanding of the world around you and your place in it will change, and you will find yourself operating at a new, extraordinary level in every way—with happiness, purpose, fulfillment, and love.

The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less


Richard Koch - 1997
    Although the 80/20 principle has long influenced today's business world, author Richard Koch reveals how the principle works and shows how we can use it in a systematic and practical way to vastly increase our effectiveness, and improve our careers and our companies.The unspoken corollary to the 80/20 principle is that little of what we spend our time on actually counts. But by concentrating on those things that do, we can unlock the enormous potential of the magic 20 percent, and transform our effectiveness in our jobs, our careers, our businesses, and our lives.

The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life


Bernard Roth - 2015
    It’s a muscle, and once you learn how to flex it, you’ll be able to meet life’s challenges and fulfill your goals, Bernard Roth, Academic Director at the Stanford d.school contends.In The Achievement Habit, Roth applies the remarkable insights that stem from design thinking—previously used to solve large scale projects—to help us realize the power for positive change we all have within us. Roth leads us through a series of discussions, stories, recommendations, and exercises designed to help us create a different experience in our lives. He shares invaluable insights we can use to gain confidence to do what we’ve always wanted and overcome obstacles that hamper us from reaching our potential, including:Don’t try—DO; Excuses are self-defeating; Believe you are a doer and achiever and you’ll become one; Build resiliency by reinforcing what you do rather than what you accomplish; Learn to ignore distractions that prevent you from achieving your goals; Become open to learning from your own experience and from those around you; And more.The brain is complex and is always working with our egos to sabotage our best intentions. But we can be mindful; we can create habits that make our lives better. Thoughtful and powerful The Achievement Habit shows you how.

The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy


Jon Gordon - 2007
    Jon infuses this engaging story with keen insights as he provides a powerful roadmap to overcome adversity and bring out the best in yourself and your team. When you get on The Energy Bus you'll enjoy the ride of your life!

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance


Angela Duckworth - 2016
    Rather, other factors can be even more crucial such as identifying our passions and following through on our commitments.Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently bemoaned her lack of smarts, Duckworth describes her winding path through teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not genius, but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance. As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Duckworth created her own character lab and set out to test her theory.Here, she takes readers into the field to visit teachers working in some of the toughest schools, cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she's learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers; from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to the cartoon editor of The New Yorker to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that not talent or luck makes all the difference.

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work


Mason Currey - 2013
    Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up in the kitchen, the top of the refrigerator as his desk, dreamily fondling his “male configurations”. . . Jean-Paul Sartre chewed on Corydrane tablets (a mix of amphetamine and aspirin), ingesting ten times the recommended dose each day . . . Descartes liked to linger in bed, his mind wandering in sleep through woods, gardens, and enchanted palaces where he experienced “every pleasure imaginable.” Here are: Anthony Trollope, who demanded of himself that each morning he write three thousand words (250 words every fifteen minutes for three hours) before going off to his job at the postal service, which he kept for thirty-three years during the writing of more than two dozen books . . . Karl Marx . . . Woody Allen . . . Agatha Christie . . . George Balanchine, who did most of his work while ironing . . . Leo Tolstoy . . . Charles Dickens . . . Pablo Picasso . . . George Gershwin, who, said his brother Ira, worked for twelve hours a day from late morning to midnight, composing at the piano in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers . . . Here also are the daily rituals of Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, John Updike, Twyla Tharp, Benjamin Franklin, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, Anne Rice, and Igor Stravinsky (he was never able to compose unless he was sure no one could hear him and, when blocked, stood on his head to “clear the brain”). Brilliantly compiled and edited, and filled with detail and anecdote, Daily Rituals is irresistible, addictive, magically inspiring.

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.

Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results


Stephen C. Lundin - 1996
    In Fish! the heroine, Mary Jane Ramirez, recently widowed and mother of two, is asked to engineer a turnaround of her company's troubled operations department, a group that authors Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen describe as a "toxic energy dump." Most reasonable heads would cut their losses and move on. Why bother with this bunch of losers? But the authors don't make it so easy for Mary Jane. Instead, she's left to sort out this mess with the help of head fishmonger Lonnie. Based on a bestselling corporate education video, Fish! aims to help employees find their way to a fun and happy workplace. While some may find the story line and prescriptions--such as "Choose Your Attitude," "Make Their Day," and "Be Present"--downright corny, others will find a good dose of worthwhile motivational management techniques. If you loved Who Moved My Cheese? then you'll find much to like here. And don't worry about Mary Jane and kids. Fish! has a happy ending for everyone. --Harry C. Edwards