Hello wonderful humans! Welcome back to The Bliss Bean. I don't think this will
surprise anyone, but I was the type of kid who brought home stacks and stacks
of books from the library every week. My parents were always telling me to stop
reading because they said I would ruin my eyesight, and I did ruin my eyesight,
but I think I turned out better because of all that reading. I did kind of lose
my passion for reading a little bit in high school because it was like, with all
this assigned reading, why would I want to do even more reading on top of that?
But good news! I would say 2020 so far has been one of my best years for
reading in a while. On my Instagram Stories and I've been posting little
mini reviews and summaries of all the non-fiction books that I've read so far
this year, but I also got a lot of requests to just make like a dedicated
book recommendations video, so here it is! These are some of my favorite
non-fiction books that I've read that fall into the category of like
self-improvement and lifestyle, which is mainly what I read these days. I'm sure
there are books I forgot to add to this list, it's just the ones that I've read
most recently stand out the most in my memory. I've also been rereading
books, so I read somewhere that every time you read a book, the message that
you need most at that point in your life is what will stand out to you most, so
that means you don't have to worry about absorbing everything the first time that
you read it, because not everything will be relevant to your life situation. Just
focus on whichever pieces of advice resonate with you the most. So without
further ado, these are 12 books that I've loved that have had some impact on my
life. I've tried to organize these into categories like mindset and business, but
it's really hard because they cross over so much, but we're gonna start with the
category of productivity. First up, we have the classic 4-Hour Workweek by Tim
Ferriss. I feel like this book is like the poster child of the productivity
genre, they actually mentioned it in an episode of The Office. "I emailed you
about it. I'm not checking email until lunch. 4-Hour Workweek." I love that scene it
was so unexpected, it was like different parts of my life were suddenly
colliding, it was amazing. So what Darryl is talking about in that scene is the
technique of limiting checking your emails to
certain times of the day instead of checking them as soon as you get them
and allowing them to distract you throughout the entire day. And I think
that one technique is pretty representative of what the entire book
is about, some of it is very specific on "how do you start a business that
requires very little of your time?". Some of it is "how do you negotiate your
current job so that you can work remotely and spend as little time as
possible working?" But overall a lot of it is just solid productivity advice that
applies to everyone. So like one of my favorite takeaways from the book was Tim
Ferriss's 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of results come from 20%
of causes, so 20% of your activities yield 80% of your results. And this can
apply to so many areas of life because very rarely are all of our efforts in
one area equally as lucrative, so for example, which 20% of your work is
earning you 80% of your income? Which 20% of your studying is getting you 80% of
your knowledge? You can even apply to relationships like spending time with
which 20% of people yields you 80% percent of your value?So even if you
have no intention of quitting your job, starting a business, and moving to
another country, I think we can all benefit from taking this kind of
perspective of our lives and just striving to be more effective in
everything that we do, you know? The next book is The Power of a Positive No by
William Ury. This book is fantastic for all of y'all
have trouble saying no, I see you over-committing yourselves and stretching
yourselves too thin. I definitely struggle a lot with that so that's why I
picked up this book. The thing about saying no is that not only can it be
scary, but if you do it wrong it can end badly. People can get angry,
resentful feelings can go unshared. So this book really breaks down the
process of saying no in a positive way. Instead of
saying "no", this is the process that he proposes. First, you have to say yes to
your core values and your beliefs - what is most important to you, what do you
have to make time for, what is it that you just won't budge on? Then you firmly
say no to whatever is being asked of you, using your initial "yes" as your
reasoning and your reinforcement. And then finally you suggest an alternative that
would be beneficial to both parties, so basically this process is: Yes. No. Yes? He
gives a lot of helpful examples in this book that range from everyday situations
to, like, this guy is a world leading negotiator so he has been an adviser to
governments, a mediator in ethnic wars, and so you can really see how these
basic principles that he talks about really apply all across the board in all
range of situations. The next book is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
by Stephen Covey. I actually read the seven Habits of Highly Effective teens a
couple of years ago, but the habits are all the same it's just the explanations
that are a little different. So whether you want to be an effective teen or an
adult, or a person of any age, I definitely really recommend this book.
Each of the habits really builds onto one another, so you go from habit one,
"be proactive" which is about knowing that you have the power to choose and that
you are responsible for the choices that you make in your life, all the way up to
habit 7 which is "sharpening the saw". So after you've built the rest of these
habits, how do you take care of yourself and energize yourself to make sure that
you don't burn out? One of the things that stuck with me most from this book
was part of habit 3 which is "put first things first", where it gave an analogy of
designing your schedule being similar to filling a jar with rocks and gravel.
So the idea here is if someone gave you a jar, a bunch of big rocks, a bunch of
gravel, and then some sand, and they said, fit all of that into the jar, if you
started with the sand and then the gravel and then you tried to fit the big
rocks on top, you would run out of room. But if you put the big rocks in first,
and then the gravel, and then the sand, the gravel and the sand will kind of fit
in the spaces between the big rocks and you'll be able to fit everything into
the jar. So how does this relate to productivity?
In your life, your priorities are your big rocks, so like your important
relationships, work projects ,time that you spend working on yourself. If you
don't put that in your schedule first, your day will get filled up by emails
and chores and other little time wasting activities and you'll run out of room. So
what you have to do is start by scheduling chunks of productive,
uninterrupted time, and then fill in the rest of the little tasks around those.
5-4-3-2-1, the next book is the The 5 Second Rule by
Mel Robbins. The 5-Second rule states that if you have an instinct to act on a
goal, you must physically move within five seconds or your brain will kill it.
So I talked about this in my motivation versus self-discipline video. The thing
about exercising self-discipline is that the longer you wait, the harder it'll get.
The more time you spend negotiating with yourself, trying to get out of doing the
thing, the more you'll be like okay, yeah, maybe it's not worth doing the difficult
thing. So the book explains how we have to follow our gut instinct, because our
gut often guides us in the right direction.
Like when we think hmm, the weather is nice, maybe I should go for a walk today
and get some exercise, or if you're at a conference and you think
hm, maybe I should introduce myself to that person standing over there. If you
allow yourself to negotiate and make excuses, then you might end up just being
like "Eh I'll just stay home and watch TV today, it's not worth going outside" or
" Eh, I'm just too nervous to go talk to them" so you just have to count 5 4 3 2 1 and
start physically moving, like moving towards the closet to get a jacket to go
outside, or moving towards the person that you want to introduce yourself to.
The next category is for books about mindset ,so I feel like the productivity
category was more about specific techniques to help you be more effective.
This category is about changing your perspective of the world and gaining
confidence. So the first book I put in this category was You Are a Badass by
Jen Sincero. I had heard a lot about this book before I finally read it and I
was like, not prepared for how inspirational and motivational it would
be .Her writing voice is just really entertaining and engaging,
and for some people it might be too much but I liked it. There is a part of this
book where she refers to depression basically as something that you can
choose to not have, she says "if you're depressed, just act like someone who
isn't depressed" which is a problematic thing to say and there were a lot of
justifiably angry reviews of the book because of that, but I really think the
rest of the book has a lot of value in building your confidence and changing
your beliefs about what you're capable of and what you deserve, so I wouldn't
discount the book because of that section. The next book is The Universe
Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein, and when I was outlining this video and
trying to describe each book in just one sentence, for this book I wrote "every
challenge is an assignment and you always have the power to choose love
over fear". So there's a lot of chapters in this book that kind of cover
different steps or aspects of learning to trust in the universe but I would say
that's the overarching message, is just to choose love. Ever since reading this
book I find myself repeating its messages to myself throughout the day,
like it has changed my everyday outlook on life so much. Every time I start to
get frustrated or annoyed about something, I tell myself to choose love,
to choose to look at the good side of things and taink the universe for
everything that I have. So as I'm working, when I take a break
I'll just bel like "thank you Universe for allowing me to create this and to
share this with the world and help people" or if I'm with friends and family
I'll think "thank you Universe for giving me the time to spend with loved ones".
I think this sort of book makes spirituality really accessible because
personally, I'm not religious, but I really resonated with this perspective
of there being like a universal power in the world. The last book in this category
is Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, she is also the author of Eat, Pray, Love, which
is another of my favorites, but it just didn't really fit into the theme of this
video. So this book is all about the creative journey and how to stop holding
yourself back if you want to pursue something creative.
I think my favorite part of this book was where it talked about the "shit sandwich".
So the shit sandwich is the parts of a career that you don't like, because there
will never be a perfect job, there will always be some parts of it that you
don't enjoy, and so you just have to decide what you're willing to put up
with, basically. Aileen from the YouTube channel Lavendaire brought this up
in a recent newsletter where she said that being a YouTuber, her shit sandwich
was making weekly YouTube videos for two years with no income coming from it and
no idea of how she would create any sort of income from it. If you are passionate
enough about a career, the shit sandwich will be worth it to you, so you just have
to decide and figure out which career means that much to you.
Alrighty, the next category is business. The first book that I picked for this was
You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero, so yes, this should sound
familiar. This book is very similar in tone to You Are a Badass but it focuses
specifically on making money. It's less about the practical steps of setting up
a business and more about the mindset that you need in order to invite
abundance into your life and gain the confidence to know that you can earn
money. When you read a book like this I think it's really important to
actually do all of the exercises that it tells you to do, so there's a bunch of
like, questions to think about and prompts to answer at the end of each
chapter, and the first time that I read this book I skipped over all of
that because I just wanted to read the book quickly, but I'm reading it now for
the second time and actually answering everything, which is taking quite a while
but you get so much more out of the book if you actually take the time to apply
it to your own life and really think about all the concepts that you're
learning about. The next book is She Means Business by Carrie Green. So the
first part of this book covers the mindset that you need in order to start
a business . Clearing away your doubts, clarifying your vision, getting excited
about your dream, and then parts two and three really get down into the
nitty-gritty of business. It goes over how to write a mission
statement, define your audience, create content, promote yourself, find mentors,
build team of people... It's so so good and it
feels so relatable because it's written in a really friendly and encouraging way.
It just makes you feel like you can do anything. So if you want to start a
business, especially an online one, I feel like the advice is particularly
applicable to online businesses, this is the book for you. Next up is Lean In by
Sheryl Sandberg. I actually did not even have this on my to-read list, the only
reason I picked it up was because it was immediately available at the library, but
I'm so glad I did because I love this book. As a woman who's like, starting her
career, I guess, this brought up so many points that I had not even considered
about confidence and leadership and the kinds of obstacles that women face in
the workplace. I'm not anywhere near starting a family but I did take some
notes on key points like the fact that parents, children, and marriages can all
flourish when both parents have full careers, sharing financial and childcare
responsibilities leads to less guilty moms, more involved dads, and thriving
children. I was super impressed by how much research she had backing up her
points but it was also paired with a lot of personal stories that I found
really fascinating because, I mean, she's the COO of Facebook, she's so successful,
and so to read about how she got there is just really really cool. Okay, final
category is kind of a catch-all category, but I just named it the life category
because it's like, life advice, I guess. So the first book here is The Defining
Decade by Meg Jay. In case you're wondering, the defining decade she's
referring to here is between ages 20 and 30. I picked up this book because a
couple of people had recommended it and also because I was a little nervous
about the fact that I'm turning 20 at the end of this year. So the book is
divided into three sections: work, love, and brain and body. I think my biggest
takeaway from the work section was the importance of weak ties and how it is
your weak ties rather than your close friends that will open up the most doors
for you and help you to grow the most. The section on love really busted a
lot of myths for me regarding marrying young and the corresponding divorce
rates, and also how moving in with someone
isn't necessarily a good test for marriage, so that was really interesting,
I thought. And then the brain and body section talked about how it's totally
normal to lack confidence in our careers at this point in our lives because we
just simply don't have a lot of experience. It also talked about not
waiting too long to have kids and that was something I really hadn't thought
about, and it was just very eye-opening and honestly scary.Overall this book just
really drills it into you that your 20s are when you make your most important
life-changing decisions, but rather than scaring me that message actually
comforted me because it was really exciting to think that I'm really just
at the beginning of my life and there's still so much room for possibility. So I
would definitely recommend this book if you're in your 20s but even earlier than
that, I would say like 17 through your 20s. Alright the last book is The Life-Changing
Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. This is a classic. It was so exciting to see
this book start to get popular because I feel like it was floating around the
self-improvement sphere for a while before it really blew up and now the
fact that everyone knows her name is just, it's really cool to see.
I love the whole tone of this book because you can really tell how
passionate she is about what she does and how she spent her entire life honing
and perfecting these tidying techniques. I think she does a fantastic job of
putting into words what we already intuitively know about the way that our
living spaces affect how we feel. I read this after decluttering my room and it
did not make me declutter my room again, but it definitely motivated me to keep
it decluttered and kind of clarified my "why" behind keeping my room neat and
tidy. So those are all of my favorite recommendations, I do also read fiction
books once in a while but I don't know what I would recommend out of those, I
just like escaping into another world for a little while, and I feel like I'm not
good at reviewing fiction books, but I did want to mention a few books that I
still have on my to-read list though, so I keep my list of books to read in my
Notes app. I actually love using the Notes app and use it for so many things
because it's so simple and it also syncs with my computer which is really nice. So
I really want to read Atomic Habits, I feel like every single YouTube video I
watch, someone mentions Atomic Habits. The Power of Now, How to Win Friends and
Influence People, What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, and I've
also been hearing a lot about Cal Newport's books so I really want to check
out the one on Digital Minimalism. And then there's a bunch more in here that I
still need to get to. Making this video actually made me so excited about
reading again, like as I was writing the outline, I just wanted to drop the work
that I was doing and go read. So I hope this inspired you to read as well, it's a
good habit to develop, it's also just a good way to relax and disconnect from
the internet. So I hope you enjoyed the video, if you liked it please give it a
like and subscribe to my channel, and I will see you next week. Bye! <3