Kickstart your personal development with these 4 powerful self-help books. Read at least one of them and be a different person instantly, like in just 1 month. These books are available in online stores and probably in popular book stores in the Philippines.
I start reading because my peers influenced me as they also aspire to become a better version of themselves. I am thankful to them and to these books since after reading these, my life has changed tremendously for the better.
Among these four (4) personal development books, I especially recommend ‘The Power of Subconscious Mind.’ It has phenomenally changed my mindset. From scarcity thinking to abundance thinking, from being resentful to being grateful, from living with fear to living with purpose and excitement.
4 Personal Development Books to Changed Your Life
The One Thing by Garry Keller
Here are my takeaways for this particular personal development book. Basically, this book will help us to focus on our goal in the sense that we have to spend time meditating on the one thing that we really need to do to accomplish it. Once we determined the “One Thing” we focus our energy on it until its done.
This book also teaches the Domino Effect when comes to achieving bigger goals. First, we need to have a goal, let’s say 1-year goal. Then we need to breakdown that bigger goal to smaller tasks. We can start on accomplishing the most important daily tasks that if combined can accomplish weekly tasks, that if combined can accomplish monthly tasks and so on until we can accomplish our 1-year goal. According to the book, extraordinary success is sequential and not simultaneous.
Whenever we have an overwhelming goal based on our perspective. We need to break it down to smaller goals. Begin by asking ourselves the focusing question “What’s the one thing I can do, such by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary.
The book also helps me understand the difference between having an accountable mindset and the victim mindset. To sum it up, the characteristic of an accountable mindset is acknowledging that there is a problem, owning it up, then come up with a solution. Victim mindset usually is ignoring the problem, blame other people, and hopes that the problem will solve itself.
The Power of your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy
For the whole month of May, I am reading this book. This is a 20-chapter book. I read it every day mostly at night before going to sleep and in the morning after sending my son to school. I sometimes finished 1 chapter in a day, sometimes finished just 10 pages. But I make sure that every day I will see the pages of this book.
What this book is all about? Let’s put it this way, we have two minds: the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious mind is in-charged of our moral reasoning that thinks about right and wrong, to believe or not. This reasoning is based on our values, knowledge, and upbringing.
Then there is this subconscious mind that works 24 hours a day even when we are sound asleep. It is the one in-charged of your heart to pumps blood, to breathe, your wound still heals, your stomach still digests food even when we are asleep. The subconscious mind has no capacity to reason out, it just absorbs whatever the conscious mind tells it. It is like a ship that needs a navigator and the captain is our conscious mind or basically us.
The subconscious mind is said to be connected to infinite intelligence. It can pick up whatever you believe in life whether good things, or bad ones, and it has the power for those things come to pass. Every time we say our declarations and affirmations repeatedly, we are actually talking to our subconscious mind.
We say it repeatedly because we want our subconscious mind to pick up the thought as if it was real. The vision board is another thing because it helps us to better imagine what we really want in life. It is like helping our subconscious mind to know our clarity of intent. Then we just have to trust our subconscious mind to make whatever it is to happen.
How to harness the power of our subconscious mind? There are many ways as stated in the book like using our imagination to acquire the things we dream about, heal a terminally ill person, find missing things, attract blessings, get hired in a dream job, and a lot more.
But to summarize it all, we should stop thinking about negative things towards other people and to ourselves. We should shift our belief from scarcity to abundance. If we do this, our subconscious mind will make sure that it will come to pass. The subconscious mind is probably the one stated by this bible verse.
Mark 11:24 – Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
This book changed my mindset. It helps me find the rationality of why we need to do affirmation and declarations every day.
EGO IS THE ENEMY by Ryan Holiday
I have acquired some knowledge from this book. Based on what I have understood and as a summary, our EGO was the hindrance from achieving our dreams, what we aspire to be. It is also the reason we achieved our dreams, and once we got successful, ego also the reason that we are not able to maintain that level of success and eventually failed us.
I will remember this book when I feel that I am entitled to something. When reading Facebook post and I think that I am better than, more than the person whose post I am staring at. When I’ve done something remarkable and feel the need to post it on Facebook so others will applaud me. I know now that the culprit is my EGO.
EGO detached us from reality it makes us live in our created fantasy. It is the reason we sometimes day-dream of how great we are when in reality we are nowhere near it. Because becoming great (in the chosen field) requires hard work. Unfortunately, EGO wants us to skip that part.
According to the book, we should abhor flatterers as we would on deceivers. The reason is that once that flattery remark begins to sink in our head and we start believing that we are great, that is the start of our downturn. 
I highlighted some phrases in this personal development book:
– It’s time to sit down and think about what’s truly important to you and then take steps to forsake the rest.
– Instead of pretending that we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution and executing with excellence.
– Pick up a book on a topic you know next to nothing about.
– When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you met him he will win.
– All of us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want.
– Urgent and important were not synonymous
– Almost always, your road to victory goes through a place called ‘failure’
– There are two types of time in our lives: dead time, when people are passive and waiting, and alive time when people are learning and acting and utilizing every second. Deadtime is revived when we use it.
– the bigger the ego, the harder the fall
– When we lose, we have a choice: Are we going to make it a lose-lose situation for ourselves and everyone involved? Or will it be a lose… and then win?
– When you take ego out of the equation, other people’s opinions and external markers won’t matter as much
– A person who judges himself based on his own standards doesn’t crave the spotlight the same way as someone who lets applause dictate success
– People learn from their failures. Seldom do they learn anything from success
– The training was like sweeping the floor. Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clear forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Here is another personal development book that I was able to finish reading in a matter of 2 days. At first, I thought I am already fast at that pace, but my son was able to finish reading it in just 2 hours hahaha.
The Alchemist, A fable about following your dreams by Paolo Coelho. The book edition in the photo is only .75 inches thick. Its basically, thin as compared to other books I’ve included in the list but it is really worth reading.
I decided to read this book because I saw my son reading it while waiting for his aunt to finish her online teaching. As I’ve mentioned before, he finished reading it in 2 hours. After he read it, I asked him to compare the “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” by Robin Sharma, “The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason, and “The Alchemist” by Paolo Coelho. He said that the latter learnings are like the combined of the first 2 mentioned.
I got intrigued so I read it. I only finished reading the quarter of the pages, yet I am already mind-blown.
Here are some of the motivational key phrases I’ve encountered. There are many more, but I decided not to include all of them here so as not to spoil if you choose to read the book.
- “The world’s greatest lie (read the remaining part in the book)”
- “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
- “If you start out by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose the desire to work toward getting it.”
- “Everything in life has its price.”
- “Every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”
- “There was nothing to hold him back except himself.”
- “Principle of favorability (read the remaining phrase in the book)”
- “The secret of happiness is… (read the book to find out)”
- “I am afraid that if my dream is realized, I’ll have no reason to go on living.”
- “Maktub, it is written.”
Alright, I hope you’ve learned something from this post. These 4 self-help / personal development books are available in different online stores such as Amazon or in Local bookstores in the Philippines. Such as National Book Store, Power Books, and Fully Booked. In Singapore, it is available in the Kinokuniya bookstore.
Note: I will be updating this post as I am continuously reading other mind-blowing personal development and self-help books every month to help me look at life from a different perspective.
