How Books Can Change Your Life

I’ve admitted in another blog that I’m not a writer. Well, until recently I was also not a reader. My entire working life as an economics/business/humanities teacher, I’ve never really read many books.

I’ve always had so much reading to do in my job that actually reading a whole book in my own time when I had sports, movies and TV shows to watch just didn’t really appeal. I started a few, mostly that never got finished, unless they were sports biographies. I read some short books and almost developed a habit. But it never really stuck. But recently something changed all that. I think it was stress.

Stress?

I moved countries after going through a pretty tough couple of years in Hong Kong. Being separated from family due to COVID-19, suffering through six different quarantines in Hong Kong and Australia and a health scare for my father, who I also couldn’t see, all added up. Adjusting to a new job and country was one thing, but I also started to worry about the future and how retirement would look for my wife and me as we hadn’t been able to really focus on that, even after getting two daughters out of the house and through university.

I’ll get to the point eventually, but basically, I started reading books about retirement and investing. This led to reading some books that did more than open my eyes to the things that I wish I had known decades ago about personal finance and investing.

They also revealed a whole world of success for people who had solved some basic mysteries of life in such simple ways. These were books that showed a simple path to wealth (the actual title of one such book) and a different approach to money, what quality of life really is and how we can use future money to buy freedom.

I had read ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ years ago but I was now developing a deeper understanding of these things. Eventually, the books that I wanted to read moved from being purely about investment to being more about how to live the very best life possible. This then led to more self-improvement, productivity and even philosophical types of books.

But the biggest change is not that I’m reading a few books or that I’m making myself read more than I ever have before. It’s that I’m suddenly craving books. I seem to have this new lust for knowledge and it appears to have completely changed my mindset (‘Mindset’ by Carol Dweck is a great book by the way.

Each book seems to have contributed a little to my overall happiness, confidence and general outlook on life. But the weirdest thing is that I’m no longer turning on the tv the moment I get out of bed or the moment I get home from work. Instead, tv watching (apart from weekend sports of course) has been replaced with reading or listening to books or listening to podcasts.

So What’s Really Changed?

Here is a brief summary of other changes that I have attributed to my new reading habits.

– my stress levels have fallen and I’m sleeping better

– I’m enjoying going to work each day

– I’m waking up earlier to read, journal, exercise and meditate each day

– I’m becoming more disciplined

– I’m more positive about the future and retirement

– And I’ve started writing a blog 

I’m not saying that this is the result of just reading more. But that the things that I am reading are giving me tools to apply to life and that these things are making a difference. So I thought I’d share just a few of the books that I have actually completed. I’m currently reading several others as I can’t seem to just read one book at a time.

10 Books That Are Changing My Life

So here we go. I will write brief descriptions for the first five pictured here. But I would like to add some honorary mentions (ten) that I may get to later as well.

The Latte factor, The 5 second rule, Think like a monk, The 4 hour work week, The 7 habits of highly effective people, Grit, The world becomes what we teach, Die with zero, Playing with fire, The millionaire next door..

‘Your Money or Your Life‘ by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez.

This book is all about changing your relationship with money and finding financial independence. It really is brilliant. Some themes in this book relate to how we are selling our lives for money when we should be taking life back, getting money to work for us and finding meaning beyond material things. It is one of many inspiring books that people striving for FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) refer to. For me, it was all about reassessing how I viewed and used money, just as another great book ‘The Psychology of money’ by Morgan Housel does. It provides a guidebook towards financial freedom through following 9 well-set out steps.

‘The simple path to wealth’ by JL Collins.

Just like ‘Your Money or your life’ this is a guidebook to reaching financial independence well before retirement age through understanding how to make life changes and use the power of compound interest and investing in index funds over the long term. But it is much more than this. It is a fresh look at how we all can improve our future lives by making good decisions now and how the answers are there for all to see if we just take the opportunities and stick to a plan. It actually originated from a blog of financial advice written for his daughter. I love the simple way that this is written and the stories that are used to get the message across.

The Miracle Morning‘ by Hal Elrod.

This one is possibly having the greatest impact on me right now. It’s well worth checking out his TED Talk too. I have created my own morning ritual/routine based on the suggestions in this book. As a result I’ve found that I’m far more productive, positive and overall happier by making these changes. Get up early, have time to yourself, find some quiet or mediation time, get your heart beat racing a little by exercising, read and write and begin your day on top of things rather than running out the door in a rush. Simple stuff but effective. It’s not surprising to find that the majority of successful people are early risers. ‘The 5 am club’ by Robin Sharma follows a similar theme but through telling a story.

‘The monk who sold his ferrari’ by Robin Sharma.

A story about a successful lawyer who discovers the true meaning of life in a spiritual journey through the Himalayas. This is incredibly written and very easy to read. It has so many lessons about life and asks the reader to really reassess the value of our lives and the contribution to the world that we make. In a way, this book encouraged me to read Jay Shetty’s ‘Think like a monk’ which is also amazing.

‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear.

This one is definitely going to be worthy of several reads. I love the focus on how to change habits and also the improvements that come from just aiming for a 1% per day kind of change. This aligns with many other things that I’m currently reading as well as the philosophy of ‘kaizen’ which is Japanese for continuous improvement and is the cornerstone of the success of companies like Toyota. I teach this to my business studies class. Like many things, its the small changes that can have the greatest impact.

So there are just a few books to maybe add to your reading list. I hope to add a few more to mine over the course of this year. Maybe I’ll review a few more then.