Personal Growth Books: 6 of the Best I Have Read

Being the self-improvement nerd that I am, I read a lot – from personal growth books to blogs to articles – trying to learn and get whatever edge I can. Today, I am going to save you some reading time by cutting right to the chase and giving you 6 lessons from 6 of the best personal growth books I have read recently. Obviously, there are many lessons from every book we read, but today I am just going to focus on one actionable lesson from each of the 6 personal growth books.

I have read articles in the past that say we only remember 10% of what we read. I think that may be overgeneralizing things, as I believe what we remember is highly variable from person to person. However, I do agree that it is simply impossible to remember everything you read.

I am more of the opinion that certain aspects of certain books stick out to us more than others, causing us to remember them.

A perfect example being the 6 lessons that have stuck out to me from these personal growth books below. Oh, and as always, I will tell you how to make them actionable.

Before we start, I only have one request from you. I need you to promise to do me a little favor.

“What is the favor?”, you ask.

Aha…You will have to wait until the end of the post to find out!

And away we go…

(1)  Power Questions by Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas

Power Questions is a personal growth book centered around the power of using thought-provoking questions to improve your relationships and help you navigate various challenges in the workplace.

Lesson:  One of the examples used in the book is that of the ancient philosopher Socrates who would teach by asking questions rather than lecturing, hence the origin of the Socratic method which is used by many universities around the world today. Socrates summed up the Socratic method by saying “The highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.” 1

How to make it actionable:  Use questions instead of statements

In your daily interactions with others, try starting with a question rather than with a statement and see how the conversation changes.

So instead of saying “We need to communicate better”, try “What can we do to improve our communications?” or instead of telling your son “You better get a job this summer, you lazy bum!”, try “How is your job search going? what kind of jobs excite you? How can I help?” By the way, we explore Socratic questioning more in-depth in an upcoming blog post.

(2)  Choose Yourself by James Altucher

Choose Yourself suggests giving up traditional career paths. Rather, Altucher proposes: ‘choose yourself’ as a career path because many jobs are being eliminated by automation. He challenges you to focus on becoming the only person who controls your dreams instead of being at the mercy of an unknown future due to automation.

Lesson: Altucher gives some really great advice on creating daily practice habits in 4 areas of your life. Namely: mental health, physical health, emotional health and spiritual health. One of the ideas I found fascinating to improve your mental health was what he refers to as ‘the idea muscle’, meaning that to be good at coming up with new ideas takes practice. He says you need to exercise the idea muscle just like you exercise the physical muscles in your body to keep them strong. The main benefit being that no matter what situation you find yourself in, you will be able to come up with good ideas quickly.

How to make it actionable:   Writing down 10 new ideas every day.

Just like building physical muscles, you need to build idea muscles and he suggests doing this by writing down 10 new ideas a day – whether it is for a business, ideas for a book, things to do etc. Need some ideas on how to come up with ideas? Read, write, think of your childhood passions, watch TV, surf the internet, listen to podcasts. Personally, I get ideas for blog post topics from Pinterest, reading articles, podcasts, reviewing user comments on social media etc.

(3)  The Miracle of Morning Pages by Julia Cameron

Morning Pages is a great and short personal growth book which teaches about the benefits and practice of morning journaling.

Lesson:  We all have so much going on in our lives between jobs, kids, relationships, financial issues etc. that we end up with so much crap cluttering our brain. The idea is to lighten the load by journaling first thing in the morning to declutter our minds. You won’t believe the lightness and calmness you feel after doing this exercise every day.

How to make it actionable: Write 3 full pages first thing in the morning

The idea is to write 3 full pages of whatever is on your mind longhand as soon as you wake up in the morning.  Don’t think, don’t stress, just write whatever is on your mind until you hit 3 pages. You don’t review them after, you toss them out. I believe in this method so much that I am dedicating a full post to it next week. So you may want to wait until then to start!

(4)  The Success Principles by Jack Canfield

Canfield, the author of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul books, has another personal growth book called the Success Principles which consist of yes you guessed it, 64 principles for life success.

Lesson: One of the principles that I found particularly good was his principle called ‘Redefine Time’ where he suggests having 3 types of days: best results days, preparation days, and rest and relaxation days.  Best results days are those days where you spend at least 80% of your time executing on whatever your primary area of expertise is. Preparation days are when you plan for best results days by learning new skills, training, strategizing – whatever you can do to maximize your time during your best results days. Finally, rest and relaxation days are days free of work where you can relax and recharge.

How to make it actionable: Schedule each type of day in advance and make sure to take your vacation!

Canfield also suggests reflecting on the 3 best of each type of day you have had so you can understand common elements and replicate them.

(5)  Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Written by 2 former Navy Seal officers, Extreme Ownership explains how lessons they have learned in combat are applicable to any business environment and specifically leaders within those corporate environments.

Lesson: They cover 12 leadership concepts, but I will summarize only 1 from this personal growth book, which is to take extreme ownership or full responsibility for whatever has happened. So, if one of your employees has messed up because they have not understood instructions it is ultimately your fault. As their supervisor, you need to make sure they understood them in the first place.

How to make it actionable:  Take responsibility and improve the process

Instead of complaining or blaming others, take responsibility and figure out how to improve the process and solve the problem in the future.

(6)  Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss

One of the best personal growth books I have ever read. It consists of tactics, tools, and tips from over 200 world class performers Ferris has interviewed on his popular podcast. The thing I like about it is you can pick it up, learn something from one of his guests and then put it back down – the chapters are very short.

Lesson:  One of the concepts that I really liked is a question that billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel asks of himself. “If you have a 10-year plan of how to get [somewhere] you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months?” 2

How to make it actionable:  Take something that you want to accomplish, estimate how long it will take and then think about what you would have to do to get it done much faster if you had a gun to your head.  It’s not something that is easy to do, obviously, but what it does do is make you take a hard look at constraints you have placed upon yourself as well as assumptions.

That’s it, hopefully, today’s post gave you something new to implement in your life or at the least gave you something to ponder…

The Favor!

Ok, like I said earlier in the post, I need you to do me a favor. I’m not going to ask you to like the post, comment on it, share it, or even subscribe to our weekly newsletter – although it would be appreciated if you did any of those.

The favor I am asking is for you to share a book recommendation with me and other readers of Prime Your Pump either in the comments below or on one of the social media platforms we are on.

Specifically, share a book recommendation for one of your favorite self-improvement or personal growth books that you really got a lot out of.  Usually, these are non-fiction but there are also great fiction books like ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho that have great self-improvement lessons.

Like I said, share your recommendations either in the comments below, on any of the social media platforms we are on or by emailing me at rick@primeyourpump.com – I always love getting suggestions for new books.

Until next time, keep reading and as always…PYMFP!
–Rick

P.S. If you want to read any of these excellent books, you can click on the links in the References below to get to their Amazon.com pages. Happy reading!

 Use It or Lose It – Lessons from These 6 Personal Growth Books:

To make the 6 lessons from these 6 personal growth books actionable:

(1)  Use questions instead of statements.
(2)  Write down 10 ideas a day to build up your idea muscle.
(3)  Declutter your mind by writing 3 full pages every morning.
(4)  Using the concept of best results days, preparation days, and rest and relaxation days.
(5)  Stop complaining, stop blaming others, take responsibility and come up with solutions.
(6)  Eliminate constraints to figure out to get things accomplished quicker.

When to Use It:

The advice from these personal growth books can be used at various times in your life, depending on your situation.

What Do You Think?

Have you read any of these personal growth books or used any of these ideas? Do you have any good book recommendations for me and other Prime Your Pump readers? Please share in the comments below!

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