Find Your Why: A Practical Guide to Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team


Simon Sinek - 2017
    However, many people have had trouble bringing the book's message into their own career and company. Now, along with two of his colleagues, Peter Docker and David Mead, he has created a guide to the most important step any business can take: finding your why. This easy-to-follow guide starts with the search for your personal why, and then expands to helping your colleagues find your organization's why. With detailed instructions on every stage in the process, the book also answer common concerns, such as: What if my why sounds like my competitor's? Can you have more than one why? And, if my work doesn't match my why, what do I do? Whether you're entry level or a CEO, whether your team is run by the founder or a recent hire, these simple steps will lead you on a path to a more fulfilling life and longterm success for you and your colleagues.

How to Live a Good Life


Jonathan Fields - 2015
    . . another book that tells you how to live a good life? Don’t we have enough of those?You’d think so. Yet, more people than ever are walking through life disconnected, disengaged, dissatisfied, mired in regret, declining health, and a near maniacal state of gut-wrenching autopilot busyness.Whatever is out there isn’t getting through. We don’t know who to trust. We don’t know what’s real and what’s fantasy. We don’t know how and where to begin and we don’t want to wade through another minute of advice that gives us hope, then saps our time and leaves us empty.How to Live a Good Life is your antidote; a practical and provocative modern-day manual for the pursuit of a life well lived. No need for blind faith or surrender of intelligence; everything you’ll discover is immediately actionable and subject to validation through your own experience.Drawn from the intersection of science, spirituality, and the author’s years-long quest to learn at the feet of masters from nearly every tradition and walk of life, this book offers a simple yet powerful model, the “Good Life Buckets ” —spend 30 days filling your buckets and reclaiming your life.Each day will bring a new, practical yet powerful idea, along with a specific exploration designed to rekindle deep, loving, and compassionate relationships; cultivate vitality, radiance, and graceful ease; and leave you feeling lit up by the way you contribute to the world, like you’re doing the work you were put on the planet to do.How to Live a Good Life is not just a book to be read; it’s a path to possibility, to be walked, then lived.

Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less


Alex Soojung-Kim Pang - 2016
    Rest is something to do when the important things are done-but they are never done. Looking at different forms of rest, from sleep to vacation, Silicon Valley futurist and business consultant Alex Soojung-Kim Pang dispels the myth that the harder we work the better the outcome. He combines rigorous scientific research with a rich array of examples of writers, painters, and thinkers---from Darwin to Stephen King---to challenge our tendency to see work and relaxation as antithetical. "Deliberate rest," as Pang calls it, is the true key to productivity, and will give us more energy, sharper ideas, and a better life. Rest offers a roadmap to rediscovering the importance of rest in our lives, and a convincing argument that we need to relax more if we actually want to get more done.

Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-Outs, and Triggers


Faith G. Harper - 2017
    Your brain knows it's not good to do these things, but it can't help it sometimes--especially if it's obsessing about trauma it can't overcome. That's where this life-changing book comes in. With humor, patience, science, and lots of good-ole swearing, Dr. Faith explains what's going on in your skull, and talks you through the process of retraining your brain to respond appropriately to the non-emergencies of everyday life, and to deal effectively with old, or newly acquired, traumas (particularly post-traumatic stress disorder).

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time


Susan Scott - 2002
     The master teacher of positive change through powerful communication, Susan Scott wants her readers to succeed. To do that, she explains, one must transform everyday conversations employing effective ways to get the message across. In this guide, which includes exercises and tools to take you step by step through the Seven Principles of Fierce Conversations, Scott teaches readers how to: * Overcome barriers to meaningful communication * Expand and enrich conversations with colleagues, friends, and family * Increase clarity and improve understanding * Handle strong emotions-on both sides of the table

The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done


Piers Steel - 2010
    Writing with humour, humanity and solid scientific information reminiscent of Stumbling on Happiness and Freakonomics, Piers Steel explains why we knowingly and willingly put off a course of action despite recognizing we'll be worse off for it.For those who surf the Web instead of finishing overdue assignments, who always say diets start tomorrow, who stay up late watching TV to put off going to sleep, The Procrastination Equation explains why we do what we do — or in this case don't — and why in Western societies we're in the midst of an escalating procrastination epidemic.Dr. Piers Steel takes on the myths and misunderstandings behind procrastination and motivation — showing us how procrastination affects our lives, health, careers and happiness and what we can do about it. With accessible prose and the benefits of new scientific research, he provides insight into why we procrastinate even though the result is that we are less happy, healthy, even wealthy. Who procrastinates and why? How many ways, big and small, do we procrastinate? How can we stop doing it? The reasons are part cultural, part psychological, part biological. And, with a million new ways to distract ourselves in the digitized world — all of which feed on our built-in impulsiveness — more of us are potentially damaging ourselves by putting things off. But Steel not only analyzes the factors that weigh us down but the things that motivate us — including understanding the value of procrastination.

Get Rich, Lucky Bitch: Release Your Money Blocks and Live a First Class Life


Denise Duffield-Thomas - 2013
    Why do most women settle for pennies instead of embracing true wealth? It's not because you're not smart or ambitious enough. You've just been programmed to block your Universal right to wealth with guilt, shame, or embarrassment. Even if you're unaware of these blocks and fears, you're probably not earning what you're really worth. Join Lucky Bitch author Denise Duffield-Thomas on a journey of self-discovery so you can smash through your abundance blocks and join a posse of women all around the world who are learning to live large and become truly lucky bitches. Are you ready to get rich, you lucky bitch?

30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans


Karl Pillemer - 2011
    After a chance encounter with an extraordinary ninety-year-old woman, renowned gerontologist Karl Pillemer began to wonder what older people know about life that the rest of us don't.His quest led him to interview more than one thousand Americans over the age of sixty-five to seek their counsel on all the big issues- children, marriage, money, career, aging. Their moving stories and uncompromisingly honest answers often surprised him. And he found that he consistently heard advice that pointed to these thirty lessons for living. Here he weaves their personal recollections of difficulties overcome and lives well lived into a timeless book filled with the hard-won advice these older Americans wish someone had given them when they were young.Like This I Believe, StoryCorps's Listening Is an Act of Love, and Tuesdays with Morrie, 30 Lessons for Living is a book to keep and to give. Offering clear advice toward a more fulfilling life, it is as useful as it is inspiring.

The Strangest Secret


Earl Nightingale - 1956
    Live this new way, and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed.Money? Yes, lots of it. But what's more important, you'll have peace. You'll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives. Start today. You have nothing to lose, but you have a life to win.

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 Headspace Guide to Meditation & Mindfulness


Andy Puddicombe - 2011
    The result? More headspace, less stress. Andy brings this ancient practice into the modern world, tailor made for the most time starved among us. Switch off after work Fall asleep at night Feel less anxious, sad, or angry Control your cravings Find a healthy weight©2011 Andy Puddicombe (P)2012 Macmillan Audio

Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder


Arianna Huffington - 2014
    Arianna Huffington's personal wake-up call came in the form of a broken cheekbone and a nasty gash over her eye -- the result of a fall brought on by exhaustion and lack of sleep. As the cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group -- one of the fastest growing media companies in the world -- celebrated as one of the world's most influential women, and gracing the covers of magazines, she was, by any traditional measure, extraordinarily successful. Yet as she found herself going from brain MRI to CAT scan to echocardiogram, to find out if there was any underlying medical problem beyond exhaustion, she wondered is this really what success feels like? As more and more people are coming to realize, there is far more to living a truly successful life than just earning a bigger salary and capturing a corner office. Our relentless pursuit of the two traditional metrics of success -- money and power -- has led to an epidemic of burnout and stress-related illnesses, and an erosion in the quality of our relationships, family life, and, ironically, our careers. In being connected to the world 24/7, we're losing our connection to what truly matters. Our current definition of success is, as Thrive shows, literally killing us. We need a new way forward. In a commencement address Arianna gave at Smith College in the spring of 2013, she likened our drive for money and power to two legs of a three-legged stool. They may hold us up temporarily, but sooner or later we're going to topple over. We need a third leg -- a third metric for defining success -- to truly thrive. That third metric, she writes in Thrive, includes our well-being, our ability to draw on our intuition and inner wisdom, our sense of wonder, and our capacity for compassion and giving. As Arianna points out, our eulogies celebrate our lives very differently from the way society defines success. They don't commemorate our long hours in the office, our promotions, or our sterling PowerPoint presentations as we relentlessly raced to climb up the career ladder. They are not about our resumes -- they are about cherished memories, shared adventures, small kindnesses and acts of generosity, lifelong passions, and the things that made us laugh. In this deeply personal book, Arianna talks candidly about her own challenges with managing time and prioritizing the demands of a career and raising two daughters -- of juggling business deadlines and family crises, a harried dance that led to her collapse and to her "aha moment." Drawing on the latest groundbreaking research and scientific findings in the fields of psychology, sports, sleep, and physiology that show the profound and transformative effects of meditation, mindfulness, unplugging, and giving, Arianna shows us the way to a revolution in our culture, our thinking, our workplace, and our lives.

A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"


Marianne Williamson - 1992
    Whether psychic pain is in the area of relationships, career, or health, she shows us how love is a potent force, the key to inner peace, and how by practicing love we can make our own lives more fulfilling while creating a more peaceful and loving world for our children.

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.

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams


Deepak Chopra - 1993
    Based on natural laws that govern all of creation, this book shatters the myth that success is the result of hard work, exacting plans, or driving ambition.Instead, Deepak Chopra offers a life-altering perspective on the attainment of success: When we understand our true nature and learn to live in harmony with natural law, a sense of well-being, good health, fulfilling relationships, and material abundance spring forth easily and effortlessly. Deepak Chopra is the bestselling author of numerous books and audio programs that cover every aspect of mind, body, and spirit. His groundbreaking books blend physics and philosophy, the practical and the spiritual, with dynamic results.The Seven Laws of Success distills the essence of Chopra's teachings into seven simple, yet powerful, principles that can easily be applied to create success in all areas of your life. Filled with timeless wisdom and practical steps you can apply right away, this is a book you will want to read and refer to again and again.