Life-Changing Lessons Learned from Books

Eight lessons in how to think, live, work, and thrive

As I’ve mentioned before on how I use Robert Greene’s notecard system, books can be a treasure trove of life-changing lessons.

Reading is not a passive activity; it’s a journey of personal growth and transformation. These life-changing lessons were gleaned from books, providing insights and wisdom that can shape one’s mindset, habits, and approach to life. Reading these books not only imparts knowledge but also encourages self-reflection and personal growth, empowering you to lead a more fulfilling and high-performing life.

To produce a change in your life, you must take action.

Reading helps to reshape your mindset and character, but only if you read with a penchant for change.

1. The Power of Mindset: These books will help you cultivate the power of thinking to shape your inner and outer worlds. This has been the most important lesson I have ever learned from reading, both in the practice and what I was learning.

• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
• The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz

I wrote several stories about mindset, grit, and the magic of thinking big because these concepts are fundamental to how I approach my life and work.

2. How to Manage Time Effectively (especially in a highly distracted world): There is nothing more valuable than managing time, especially the ability to perform deep work and critical thinking in today’s complex environments. You need “rules” and systems for how you do work, or else you will fall victim to any of the hundreds of things vying for your attention.

• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
• Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy

Deliberate practice is a concept introduced by Anders Ericcson and described by journalists in Outliers, Talent is Overrated, and The Talent Code.

If you frame the work you do around deliberate practice and deep work, you’ll set yourself apart from everyone else and rise to whatever role/capacity you desire.

3. Resilience in the Face of Adversity: At some point, we are all going to experience setbacks. How we deal with those setbacks often determines the course of our lives. Books like The Obstacle is the Way are instrumental in this reframing; we don’t just fear obstacles; we seek them out.

• The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday
• Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
• Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins

4. How to Be an Effective Leader: Leadership is not just telling people what to do. In fact, the best leaders are hesitant about giving out their sole opinions, knowing that their view of the solution is most likely lacking perspective.

• Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek
• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
• Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. by Brené Brown

Although the best leaders lead from the front and set the example, they are rarely the loudest and most opinionated.

They rely on their instincts combined with deep work, communication skills, and the ability to leverage the combined efforts and talent of those around them.

5. How to Be Emotionally Intelligent (and why it’s more important than just being smart): Sheer intellect is not that useful unless you remain in a single, technical role. However, we rarely, if ever, stay in a role in a single capacity. Instead, we must act and think globally, using communication skills to interact with people and technology.

• Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman
• The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brené Brown
• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg

This type of intelligence requires EQ, not just IQ. The interesting thing is you can use EQ to build IQ, especially in certain skills. However, if you rely solely on IQ, you will struggle to leverage EQ.

6. How to Communicate Effectively: The more we rely on technology to drive how we live and work, the bigger the divide between people is created. We communicate globally, quickly, and seamlessly, but it comes at the cost of true interpersonal connection. Communicating effectively takes these factors into account.

• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Al Switzler, Joseph Grenny, and Ron McMillan
• Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds by Carmine Gallo
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss

7. Why Continuous Learning and Growth is Vital to Long-Term Success (and how to keep at it): What got you here won’t get you there or stated more succinctly: learn or die.

• Learn or Die: Using Science to Build a Leading-Edge Learning Organization by Edward Hess
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
• The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge

8. The Purpose and Meaning of Life (and to create a Massively Transformative Purpose or Life’s Task): The desire to succeed is the most important factor for success. Desire drives everything else, and desire is only created by cultivating a passion for what we do. I call it an MTP but I also love the idea of a life’s task from Robert Greene.

• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
• Mastery by Robert Greene

I write about books and how they impact high performance every week.

You can view my series for the Outwork Book Club, my annual one-sentence reviews, or my actionable guides of the concepts that I read about at the High-Performance Lifestyle publication.

There are many ways to learn, and like the modern-day philosopher James Clear, as noted repeatedly, the teacher learns the most, not the student.

“The teacher learns more than the student.

The author learns more than the reader.

The speaker learns more than the attendee.

The way to learn is by doing.” — James Clear

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