“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill
Do you want to be successful? I’m sure the answer to that is yes. No one strives to be low in life. Success is something that everyone wants, yet it keeps eluding. The key to create success for ourselves is in our hands. You can create success using your mind. As you read the mentioned books, you will notice that our mind is far more superior than we give credit. These are the ten bests must-read books for building your success. Please leave a comment and tell me your favorite book for success.
Think & Grow Rich – “The Secret of Success.”
Think and Grow Rich is written by Napoleon Hill. A man with whom Andrew Carnegie shared his formula of personal achievement to accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars. This formula also helped many other men earn their millions!
Carnegie did not compensate napoleon Hill for 20 more years of his service. However,
Carnegie agreed to make a “necessary introduction and cover travel expenses.” Napoleon Hill agreed to spend twenty years or more interviewing the most successful men and compile the research into the principles as “Philosophy of Individual Achievement.”
The most inspirational story in this book is the story of Napoleon Hill’s son. He shares with the reader how his son was born without a piece of physical equipment for hearing – ears. Yet his son went to become a successful man and was able to hear despite what the physicians had said.
If you study, understand, and apply the philosophy in this book, then you will be prepared to accumulate wealth and success.
Napoleon Hill mentions that “A peculiar thing about this secret is that those who once acquire it and use it find themselves literally swept on to success, with but little effort, and they never again submit to failure!”
These principles are so practical that they are still used by some successful entrepreneurs today. Bob Proctor, whom we will talk about later, has studied these laws for 60 years and has achieved great success.
As A Man Thinketh
Written by James Allen in 1903, As A Man Thinketh is a self-help book. This book is a short read and has seven chapters. Allen describes it as “a book that will help you to help yourself.” See it as a companion for oneself to lean on when in need. This entire book is influenced by the Book of Proverbs chapter 23, verse 7;
“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
It reveals the power that thoughts have over our personalities, our circumstances, and our well-being. It touches on discovering the benefits of learning to master our minds & direct our thoughts toward the goals we want to achieve.
Psycho-Cybernetics
Psycho-Cybernetics is a motivational book by Maxwell Maltz. He was an American cosmetic surgeon and author.
Maltz’s books, especially Psycho-Cybernetics, are claimed to have inspired the modern self-help book genre. He coined the term Psycho-Cybernetics.
This book focuses on how you can use your mind to steer yourself toward positive goals and success.
According to Maxwell Maltz, our actions, behaviors, and personalities are built on our self-image. For example, a person may successfully lose weight but will snap back to their old weight.
A person snaps back to previous weight not because the person lacks knowledge of losing weight or lacks the willpower. The person rebounds to the last body weight because of the self-image they hold inside her mind.
Simply said, we constantly try to match the external circumstances to the self-image we carry in our subconscious mind.
If we want to change the external circumstances, then we must change our self-image first. It does not matter how old we are; our self-image can be changed.
Psycho-Cybernetics is an excellent book with lots of proof of how self-image affects our world.
The Art of Exceptional Living
The Art of Exceptional Living is by Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn shares his philosophy for wealth and happiness.
This book is also available in audiobooks. I like listening to his ideas because it almost feels like a friend is talking to you.
Jim Rohn spent five years with his mentor Earl Shoaff and learned the “fundamentals of living,” which forever changed his life.
According to Jim Rohn, you do not have to be an over-achiever to be successful in life. Instead of doing extraordinary things to achieve success, he suggests doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
This book will help you move from having thought to act on that thought. It will help you build a new habit and stick to it by building on it every day.
Science of Getting Rich
The Science of Getting Rich is a practical guide to getting rich. This book was written in 1910, so the language is more sophisticated than the casual tone used in some other motivational books nowadays.
According to Wallace Wattles, “the science mentioned in this book is an exact science, and the failure is impossible.”
This book reveals how faith, life purpose, and vision can mold formless intelligence into riches.
By applying the science in this book, thinking, and acting according to the laws, anyone can get rich.
This book was an inspiration for the movie “The Secret.” To test if this law is accurate, you simply need to apply it yourself.
This book is a short read like “As a Man Thinketh.” However, read this book multiple times to fully grasp the “Science of Getting Rich.”
Atomic Habits
Atomic Habits by James Clear is the best book to read to learn how to form a habit. When you hear the word habit, you think only bad habits like biting your nails or not washing the dishes after using them. But you can form good ones. In this book, James Clear will teach you how to create beneficial habits to help you succeed. This book boils down setting and maintaining good habits to four simple laws
- Make It Obvious
- Make It Attractive
- Make It Easy
- Make It Satisfying
However, be prepared because some exercises (not strenuous physical exercises) James asks us to do may make you feel uncomfortable. I sure was uncomfortable, especially when he shares a “Habits Scorecard” strategy about making your current habits obvious. This exercise brings some of our aimless daily habits to our awareness.
Becoming Supernatural
Becoming Supernatural is written by Dr. Joe Dispenza. He initially appeared in a documentary called “What the Bleep do we know?”
He was scrutinized by many after his appearance in this documentary film. However, when he noticed that his information was helping some people heal emotionally, mentally, and physically, he went on to keep sharing his expertise with people regardless of whether “skeptics and rigid scientists” liked him or not.
In the book, Joe Dispenza shows how someone can alter neurotransmitters, hormones, genes, proteins, and enzymes through thought alone.
He teaches through examples how continually dwelling in “negative” past causes diseases in our body and how we can heal ourselves.
Habits of highly effective people
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey is a self-improvement book. Covey believes that our perception changes our world. The way we perceive something changes our perception, which in turn changes a given situation.
If you want to succeed in life, then you must identify the habits that will help you in your journey to success. Read this book if you’re going to learn a new skill. For success to thrive, you need to learn how to put it into action. By learning to be an effective person, you are already setting yourself up for immense success. You just won’t know it until you try it.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #@%!
The book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #@%! by Mark Manson is a counterintuitive approach to living a good life. Manson makes the argument-backed by both academic research and well-timed poop jokes- that “improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade but on learning to better stomach lemons.”
We as humans have flaws and are limited- as he writes, “Not everybody can be extraordinary- there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault.”
With chapters called Don’t Try, Happiness Is a Problem, The Value of Suffering, Failure is the way Forward, and The Importance of Saying No. This book will have you not giving a care in the world, but for only yourself.
You will be striving to build success in your life. While not giving in to other’s opinions because they are just that – opinions.
You Were Born Rich
Bob Proctor’s international best-seller, You Were Born Rich, guides you through all the major principles you must understand to unlock the vast wealth of potential buried inside you. In this book, you learn:
- What money is, and how can you attract more of it?
- How to build prosperous images in your mind that translate into magnificent results in your life.
- The Law of Attraction- why some people keep attracting negative results and others always seem to attract positive results.
- The role of faith in the success
- The keys to bringing abundance into your life.
- The Vacuum Law of Prosperity- why you must release the old to make room for the new
This book will help you change your point of view about yourself and your abilities. It will help give you the confidence to take your life by the horns and steer it to where you want it to go.
This book is available for free download at his website.
Conclusion
Success is like a building. You have to work on your foundation first. Without a solid foundation, your building blocks won’t have a firm ground to stand on. You are the foundation to your success. The person that you see in the mirror is the firm ground you need to solidify. For your success to mean something, you need to have yourself as a person ready.
You have to be ready for the ups, the downs, the no’s, the roadblocks, and all the greatness that will come with it. Success is something that you have to work for to keep. It won’t just stay with you if you just sit and stare at it. You have to get up and do something with it.
