Consider what words of advice, experiences or books you have read that have made a lasting impact on your life. The best thing about reading when you are going through a challenging time or even just a period of change, is that someone who has been there before can help, if only in a small way. Here are our recommendations of books that have changed our lives for the better, or tipped our perspective on its head for a moment in time.
The Invisible Gorilla and Other Ways our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons
The funny thing is, we feel like we have a reasonable understanding of how our mind works. The authors of ‘The Invisible Gorilla’ challenge this when they show just how our mind plays tricks on us and why people succumb to everyday illusions. The Invisible Gorilla shows how our intuition deceives us and how we can ‘train our brain’ to withstand it’s effects.
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink? Why does the line at the grocery store always slow down when we join it? In this book, Harvard psychologist Gilbert argues that our ability to remember past happiness is flawed. Added to this is that our ability to predict what will make us happy is not well developed. The net result is that our human minds are working against our own happiness. This book explores how we can best challenge ourselves to seek happiness.
Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
The premise of this book is that every day you go to work to trade the hours of your life for money. If you spend that money on things you don’t need, you are essentially trading your life for material possessions that don’t add value to your life. This is a classic financial self-help book that offers a nine-step program for how to live a more meaningful life, showing readers how to get out of debt, save money, reorder priorities, and convert problems into opportunities.
As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
“A person is limited only by the thoughts that he chooses.” A classic book that has helped thousands for over a century, “As a Man Thinketh” is based on the premise of ‘you are your thoughts’ and provides a guide on how to use your thoughts to the betterment of your life.
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
This book explores the thinking that the internet, for all its instantaneous information, is making us stupid. We are losing the ability to think deeply due to the ease with which we can easily source the answers to just about any question we can think of. “The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.”
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicolas Taleb
From the author of international bestseller The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness is the bestselling account of the hidden role of chance in life and the markets.Everyone wants to succeed in life. But what causes some of us to be more successful than others? Is it really down to skill and strategy – or something altogether more unpredictable? This book is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world.