3 Books That Changed My Life
When it comes to being a successful entrepreneur it is all about mindset. And most of my mindset came from reading awesome books in my early years. I guess I started reading actively when I was about 12 years old. The First book I remember reading was a book about how you could live without limits. It was then when I realized that reading might be my chance to achieve more in life and get to a point where I dreamt of being in the future.
Since then, I have read probably hundreds of books. Most of them were non-fiction. Stuff about entrepreneurship, motivation, marketing, personal development and so on. The only fiction book I remember reading was Harry Potter. I love Harry Potter.
So, what were the three books that changed my life?
Here we go with number one: The 5 AM Club
This book is about getting up early. I read the book about a year ago. During reading, I was totally caught up by the awesome storyline the author wrote. The story spoke directly to my heart and that is the kind of stories I love reading.
In Robin Sharma’s book the 5 AM Club he talks about a major idea of getting up early and starting your day with straight routines. Every day. He talks about ‘pockets‘ which represent certain activities like sport, reflection, learning and so on. I copied his idea and I use that still today. I expanded those pockets for me: Sport, Grow (reading), learn (language, piano), Reflection (about my companies) and Meditation (Visualization).
This also represents my daily routine which I put in place over a year ago.
And that changed my life a lot as I am developing myself day in day out.
That feels awesome.
Besides the concept of the ‘pockets‘ Robin Sharma delivers many useful ideas and concepts which you can easily implement in your day-to-day life such as working on constant improvements.
One thing I still struggle with is keeping my hands on technical devices after 8 pm. This is certainly important as we need our brains to cool down. The same thing is the case for the morning hours. I don’t use my phone or any source of external distraction for the first two hours at least. That enables me to be totally with myself. No distractions allowed. That rule (at least in the morning) I follow and defeat it with my life. And that also changed my life. As I don’t get disturbed by messages or calls. Which enables me to start my day positive without external influences?
Book number two is a book I just read a few days ago. It is called: Into the Magic Shop.
This book is just real magic. James R. Doty tells a story about a young boy who is performing some small magic tricks to his friends and family. One day, he loses his plastic thumb and tries to see if he can find one in the local magic store. There he meets Ruth. An old woman offers him to teach real magic. As he has nothing to lose he starts seeing her every day for the whole summer and learns a lot about meditation. Although the word meditation isn’t used in the book it is about meditation, visualization and calming or controlling your mind. Which is very essential for me as I have a very distracted mind. Lots of ideas are rushing through my head. That is quite distracting usually.
In the beginning the young boy can’t even believe what this technique might deliver him in his future life but as the story moves on he takes one milestone after the other and progresses to the man he always wanted to be: a successful wealthy surgeon.
While he is enjoying great success in life he forgets slowly to keep his habit of performing his visualization daily and stops completely at the end.
During the burst of the dot-com bubble his whole fortune was wiped away overnight. This is the time he starts to reflect again and to come back to his proven habit of visualization.
At the end he finds his way by opening a research Center at Stanford with the financial aid of the Dalai Lama.
The whole story really captivated me. I was always doing meditation with apps and other little helpers. But using this framework provided in this book helped me to improve the results and the habit of meditating daily a lot.
The steps the young boy learns from Ruth are:
- Relax your body from toe to tip.
- Calm your mind
- Open your heart (essential point for me. This took me also some coaching to get there)
- Visualize what you want (really precisely!)
Book number three. This is a really short one. It is The Alchemist written by Paolo Coelho.
This book is a story about a shepherd boy, who has a recurring dream about a treasure hidden close to the pyramids in Egypt. He feels really uncertain about that and doesn’t give too much attention to it in the first place.
As his life goes he meets several people that help him to see the signs life offers him. Eventually, he decides to follow his dream and tries to get to the pyramids in Egypt. He sells all his sheep and makes himself on the trip to Africa.
Arriving in Africa he loses all his money to a thief and is just about to give up on his dream. He finds an easy job at a crystal merchant and helps him to ameliorate his business to unseen levels of success. From there he regains enough energy to follow the signs again to find his treasure.
During his travel through the desert he gets caught up in desert wars and is forced to stay at a desert village for a while where he meets the alchemist who teaches him some more lessons about life and the signs.
After having crossed the desert he finally gets to the pyramids where he doesn’t find anything but thieves who rob him again. One of the thieves recounts his dream about a hidden treasure in the back of an abandoned church in Andalusia.
Santiago eventually finds his treasure there.
I really like the book as it points out that you should always listen to the voice of your heart. And that this voice will direct you right where you want to be.
From now and then I find it really difficult to listen to the voice of my heart, but I try my best to settle down and listen carefully.
The other thing the story tells are the signs. Signs are everywhere and we can easily see them. If we are aware of them. They help us to move forward into the desired direction.
At the end the book gives us the chance to realize that we can live a full and happy life if we can understand our feelings or emotions. This idea opens up the chance to live a life. In happiness without the need to find that happiness on other people, things or places.
I hope you could get the basic ideas out of those three books. Those are the three most life-changing books for me.
Maybe they are the same for you?
Give it a try!
