self-help books can be amazing but if we don't read certain other types of books first we won't be very effective at actually using what we learned from them after more than 15 years in both academic coaching and business building here are the top five books I found that aren't your typical self-help books but which are foundational for the growth and success you're looking for I also have a bonus six recommendation that's not a book but that's commonly overlooked so stick around to the end the first book on this list is Limitless by Jim quick so
many times we read a personal growth book a business book or a book for professional development but by the end of it we find ourselves incapable of actually implementing pretty much anything from it and this is for a very simple reason we want to learn something new but we've never been taught how to learn you might hear this and think this sounds irrelevant but consider this imagine you're in a statistics class listening to the lecture from the professor but you're just sitting there trying to passively soak it all in however at the same time sitting
next to you is another student who has a notebook his textbook open to the chapter being covered a personalized study plan already set up a study group established along with Professor office hours blocked out on his calendar and a few specific productivity hacks and healthy habits in place who do you think is more likely to get the a you or that student well to get an A in life which is why we read self-help books right we need to go into our reading with a spefic specific set of beliefs habits and strategies already set up
and that's where this book really shines this book teaches us how to learn what I love about it is two things one it's not just a bunch of strategies or hacks but it's also not just a bunch of theory there are strategies hacks and even brain boosting food recipes combined in this book in a really Hands-On way with exercises you can start doing right away to improve your learning ability and two it's extraordinarily science-based there are too many books out there to count that base their advice on personal stories or just imagination and when it
comes to something as important as where and how to focus our brain power to get the maximum results we need reliable clinical data I definitely recommend this as a foundational book for you to 10x the results you get from all the other books you want to read the second book I recommend before getting started with self-help books is being logical a guide to good thinking by DQ m m I still get his name wrong mckinne you're probably wondering why a book on logic is on this list well that's pretty simple along with the important skill
of learning how to learn which Quick's book Limitless helps us develop critical thinking is one of the most underrated and underutilized skills nowadays but without it personal growth is impossible and not enough people are talking about this fact you see there's this toxic element among finance and wealth gurus that's well let's just be straight up it's anti- education I mean how many times have you seen some meme on Instagram or Tik Tok about how you don't need college to be successful or how C students hire a students and okay I get it yeah for sure
you can absolutely be financially successful without college no doubt and college isn't for everyone for sure but does that mean we shouldn't educate ourselves and we should glorify being stupid and uninformed well that's just what this whole grind culture seems to imply in fact I can't tell you how many times in sales training I've been told to be less analytical and more balanced yes you want to use emotion yes we need to develop people skills but that doesn't mean getting rid of being logical in fact ignoring logical thinking altogether or not using it properly can
lead directly to financial ruin and here's a simple example to show you how let's say you think to yourself all business ideas that give me a 10% return are good business ideas this in it self doesn't seem unreasonable you also tell yourself all business ideas that can give me a 10% return are worth investing in okay also pretty reasonable but then you conclude from this all good business ideas are worth investing in this conclusion is 100% invalid it's a logical fallacy called affirming the consequent and do you see how thinking in this way could cause
you to make a lot of bad decisions yet this is the kind of thinking a lot of us use every single day the the way mckenery lays out the book it's pretty easy to read even if you have no technical background or academic background and learning this way of thinking is going to help you so much to spot BS claims in self-help books when you see them and separate the real useful advice from the junk advice definitely a book you want to read before reading self-help books the third book on this list is Captivate by
Vanessa van Edwards it's a mustre before reading most self-help books because it gives gives you a clear framework for how to use the information from them with real people in the real world this book not only tells us but also shows us literally everything we need to know in order to get results we're looking for from our interactions with people in fact the book is so jam-packed with Hands-On advice examples assessments and exercises that you could literally study and practice what's in the book for at least an entire year it's that comprehensive don't know what
to say at a networking or social event want to learn how to get people to like you more and want to do favors for you need keywords and phrases to use to get people to respond to your texts or direct messages this book's got it and one thing about the book I love in particular is its use of the ocean assessment or what's called often the Big Five personality assessment now we could go down a rabbit hole here about which personality test is most accurate or even as some psychologists and philosophers have claimed about how
there might not even be such a thing as personality in the in the first place I told you philosophical rabbit hole but leaving all that stuff aside the ocean assessment is along with a lot of the other assessments she offers in the book a great way to help us understand how different people are communicating just because you like compliments doesn't mean other people want them just because you prefer to work alone doesn't mean others do just because you think someone will like having an extra perk or reward as a thank you doesn't mean the people
you're giving them to even care understanding how people best receive what forms of communication is a key to Lasting success the fourth book you definitely want to read before self-help books is a personal MBA by Josh kman because it gives you the systems and operations to actually apply those people skills to now you might be thinking I don't care about getting an MBA or doing anything in business but let me tell you although this is strictly speaking a business book this book by no means is only for entrepreneurs in said it's also for anyone who
wants to become more informed about their own industry and become more valuable in their current role what I love about this book is that it's essentially a business 101 book that's very simple and easy to read making it also an ideal place to start for anyone who wants to start any kind of project but doesn't know where to start calman covers every aspect of business including what types of business exist how to evaluate a business how to put together a business plan mistakes to avoid all components of business such as Logistics Marketing sales you name
it in fact if you're looking for a really objective way to figure out what business is right for you he has helpful lists in the book that you can literally check off to see how viable your idea is if you're reading it for your current role or for a better role it's really essential because calman explains so much in this book about how different company departments work and how they all work together also I really love how this book is laid out in sections and sub sections calman wrote it in such a way that you
can open to literally any page in the book and read a section or a term he defines completely out of context and extract only the information or concept you're looking to learn about absolutely zero fluff here and that brings us to our last book on our list although you'll definitely want to still stick around for the bonus sixth recommendation the fifth book is psycho cybernetics by Dr Maxwell maltz now you might be surprised I'm recommending this because it's technically a selfhelp book and I told you at the beginning of this video that I was going
to recommend books you should read before reading self-help books but psycho cybernetics isn't just any self-help book it's a foundational one in fact so many of the most popular self-help gurus from Tony Robbins to Deepak choa to Wayne Dyer and so on got a lot of their own ideas from this book the author Dr maltz was originally a plastic surgeon but eventually got into psychology after witnessing time and time again the incredible results his plastic surgery patients experienced some of them went on to have amazing results in life and improve their self-esteem and self-confidence but
others remained miserable believing themselves to be ugly despite their Flawless appearance malt wanted to know why and interestingly enough he wrote this book just as What's called the cognitive Revolution was happening in the field of psychology and this book seems to reflect a lot of the new ideas and findings of the time that are still widely accepted today his core insight here is that our self-image or literally how we see ourselves in our mind has an immediate and concrete impact on the results we get in our lives he confirmed what scientists such as Albert bandura
would find later through repeated experiments that we have what's called a self system that we form ideals and standards around and which affects what kinds of actions we take and how we take them Mal's ideas of an automatic cybernetic system in our mind that creates our results directly from our self-image are similar to the ideas of selective attention and perceptual filtration that would be further developed in subsequent decades to show put simply that we tend to receive and find what we're focus on the most the way maltz outlines these Concepts and the examples and exercises
he recommends were lifechanging for me when I was at one of the toughest most stressful periods of my life and it's foundational for understanding pretty much everything else you read in personal development that came after it okay so ready for the bonus I promised you well it's something that is especially a no no among a lot of self-help gurus and it's not a book recommendation but instead it's to sign up for targeted RSS feeds or newsletters in other words read the news why is this such a no no in the self-help space you ask well
there's this toxic idea among a lot of self-help gurus that you shouldn't read the news why because it's negative and negativity so the argument goes makes us think and feel negative emotions which leads to negative results basically we're all little babies who need to be shielded from the big bad world but especially nowadays this is a great way to stay ignorant and just get steamrolled by everyone else who is making at a point to become informed daily new informations and new findings are being developed daily world events are also happening daily that we all need
to stay on top of books are static they don't change based on new findings or new information and so they can only help us so much now can you get stuck in a spiral of negativity by reading news sure you can but remember we are in control of what we read we don't have to respond and react to every popup or notification we can discipline ourselves to control the information we read that's why I recommend signing up for targeted RSS feeds or newsletters something for General world news is usually a good idea so we're not
totally ignorant and disconnected from what's going on around us one or two newsletters Rel related to a skill we're looking to develop and one or two newsletters related to an industry we're involved in or want to get involved with those are great places to start for example I have a few feeds related to neuroscience and psychology some newsletters related to marketing and Entrepreneurship some related to YouTube obviously and then a few for news diversity of sources is important in this process again for maintaining our critical thinking skills and by the way if you want a
great newsletter to sign up for be sure to grab my proud future guide in the pinned comment below this guide will take you step by step through the process of defining your purpose and creating an action plan to pursue it and you'll receive weekly emails from me to help personally guide you through this process now it's your turn which of these books will you get started with first and what's your learning goal I'd love to hear what you're working towards and if you want to keep leveling up your critical thinking to live a life of
impact then be sure to watch this next video
