10 Books That Changed My Life [0:00:00]
[Music] So, I'm going to start this list off with
a book that I'm betting none of you have read. It's called Beyond Winning: The Timeless Wisdom
of Great Philosopher Coaches. So, if you look at the details in this book
online, you'll see it was published in 1991, has four reviews with an average ranking of
3.8. That translates into this book is not flying off the shelves. Probably very few
people have ever read it. So, why is this book then on my list? Because
it was the right book, the right message, at the right time. The point I want to make
here is the book doesn't have to be a highly ranked bestseller to actually be a book that
can open your mind and transform your life. In today's video, gents, I'm sharing with
you ten books that have transformed my life in the last ten years.
Starting things off, we've got Clayton M. Christensen's How Will You Measure Your Life.
As a father, as a husband, as a business owner, as a guy that wants to enjoy his life and
still reflect on it, this book just spoke to me. I don't know Christensen's full background,
but I do know that he wrote in a way that I just really connected with simply why are
we doing all this and what's the goal, what's the purpose, what's the bigger meaning behind
actually doing everything. As I'm going through this book, it's just
it really felt like he wasn't trying to preach to me. He's a deeply religious man, but he
talked about why are we doing what we're doing. And, guys, this is so key. So many people
go through life and they climb that wall and they realize I'm on the wrong wall.
How many of you guys have had that happen to you? You reach that goal you spent years
working on it and you realize you didn't really want it. It was somebody else's dream. You
were doing what society told you to do. And, I absolutely love how he breaks it out and
he helps you hold true to what you're about. I highly recommend this book. Again, guys,
go check it out. Clayton M. Christensen's How Will You Measure Your Life.
And, by the way, gents, all the books I'll be talking about in today's video, I'm linking
to down in the description. You can find them actually over at Audible who is the sponsor
of today's video. And, if you've never checked out Audible or it's been awhile, you should
really go see what they've got going on. What I love are the Audible originals. So,
as an Audible member, every single month I get two of these Audible originals thrown
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And, if I decide to quit leave Audible, guess what? I get to of course keep all the audiobooks
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Next up, I've got a Stephen King book. Yes, a Stephen King book, not one of his horror
books though. I have actually never read those. What I have read though is On Writing: A Memoir
of the Craft. And I absolutely love this book. So, a lot of people ask, “Antonio, how do
you create so much content? I mean you've written like over a thousand articles, you've
made over a thousand videos. You've got all this content out there, how are you so prolific
with all this stuff?” And, I really it comes back to this book I
read by Stephen King and he talked about you sit down and you do the work. And he talked
about every single day, he would sit there and he would have no view. He would sit at
this desk and he would have to write so many pages. And he would sit there until he did
it. You know it sounds very simple, but so many
people don't put in the work. And to see a guy that's able to put out a book sometimes
twice a year, these huge volumes these great books which you know [in trance?] millions
of people. That had really inspired me. You know what? I can do that. I can sit down and
I can put in the work. Definitely highly recommend it. Go check it out.
Next up, we've got The Power of Moments, why certain experiences have extraordinary impact
by Chip and Dan Heath. I absolutely love this book because it talks about have you ever
thought about why there are certain things in your life you remember, the vast majority
of life you do not? What you have for breakfast four weeks ago? Of course, you don’t know,
no one remembers breakfast. But, what we do remember those big events in our life.
And what was so cool about this book is they talked about how you can actually choose to
create those moments with your family, with your loved ones, with even people at work.
So, if you want to turn your company around, you want to have extraordinary impactful moments.
They actually talk about how to do this with people.
So, if you want to get rid of you know reduce returns and grow your company or you have
a nonprofit that you really want to have a huge impact on the people that you have a
very short amount of time to interact with, it's an extraordinary book one that goes -- you
can apply it to business, you can apply it to your life.
And, I advise you to apply it to your life because what if you could just, yeah, you
don't get to see your girlfriend all the time, you want to spend more time with her. What
if you could create these extraordinary moments, it doesn't cost a whole lot of money. They
talk about how to do it in this book. Next up, we've got the 50th law by 50 Cent
and Robert Greene. I love the stories. I love everything that's in this book. He's got some
other books, Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature is really good. It's going to be twice
as long though, but he's one of the few authors that I have seen that actually have been able
to talk about the power of force and we're talking physical force.
[0:05:12] And, this is something a lot of people ignore
especially academics, I don't have any experience with this. But, I saw this in the Marine Corps
that, yeah, you know we can talk and talk, but when it comes down to it, armed tough
men that go in and basically push things right, they shouldn't be ignored.
When you look at what Putin is able to go do in Ukraine or those that really aren't
afraid of what other people are going to say or what they think or that they're going to
do some online petition. This is one of those books that when you read it you're like, wow.
This is solid information. I highly recommend it for any student of history, anyone that
really wants to understand force and power in the world.
Next up, we've got Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success was actually written
by a number of authors, but Patterson is the lead author. What I love about this, it's
very much research-based and talks all about how to get people to change and to go down.
Now, there's been a lot of other books such as Habits. I've talked about Atomic Habits
as well, but those are much more recent. This one was written over a decade ago and I have
to say it was the first one I read on the subject and it had a profound impact on me.
Because I never thought about how whenever we're trying to make things happen, how if
we smooth out the path if we got -- get rid of all these distractions. If we actually
create systems, so that we will actually do the change, we're more likely to do them.
If you understand the powers in this book right here, you're going to be able to make
change whether it’d be yourself, your life, whether it be others. It's amazing the power
that's in this book. Next up, we've got Grit by Angela Duckworth.
And I absolutely love this one because everyone, a lot those people think, oh, you know someone's
good at this because they were born that way or they have this natural talent. And, really,
she dispels that myth and she gets into what --what really separates those that achieve,
those that able to succeed versus those that fail. And it really comes down to a lot of
times simply being able to put in the time put in the reps and to be able to deal and
overcome with failure. I remember when I went through Marine Corps,
you know, Officer Candidate School. It was something that I the whole reason I went there
was I wanted to challenge myself. And I knew if I could get through this, that the rest
of my life would be a breeze. Having gone through that experience having gone through
that hardship and realized that there's a lot of power when you do something like that,
and that's what they talk about in this book. So, if you want your kids to succeed, you
want your employees to succeed, you want to succeed, you need to develop grit. And she
talks about how to do that. Next up, we've got The Road Less Stupid by
Keith J Cunningham. I absolutely loved this book. So, here's a guy that has been very
successful in life. And, he talks about, you know, it's not about always making the right
decision. In fact, it's rarely that. It's about not making the stupid decision.
And, by simply taking the time to think and he talks about thinking time he actually breaks
out how to get into thinking time and to have somebody that has had these -- all this great
success in life to actually break out how to avoid these mistakes, how to not basically
pay the stupid tax. An amazing book, I highly recommend it.
Now, what you're not going to find on this list is the Death of Socrates or Meditations.
Great books, I've read them. I was a Philosophy major. But, I find that they're kind of hard
to digest they're not books I want to read again and again.
Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday on the other hand, I love reading it. Every few months,
I'm going to read this book. Why? Because he's able to take, you know, he talks about
Marcus Aurelius and he gets into these deep, you know, the Stoics and these philosophers.
He really just puts it together I think much better than the vast majority of people out
there. And, it's this information remembering the
ancient wisdom that's been passed on from generation to generation and to be able to
get through this, it's amazing. Ego is the Enemy is such a powerful read because he talks
about how our biggest enemy in life is this inflated ego that we all develop. I know I've
developed it. I bet many of you guys have. And it's something that when you get through
this book, it's a constant reminder it's something that really forces you to reflect on, hey,
am I you know believing am I -- am I drinking my own Kool-Aid? Am I not, you know, listening
to the voices around me that are trying to keep me from doing something stupid?
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown, one of my personal favorites.
I listen to this probably every two months. This is one of those refreshing books that
just helps me get my life in order. All of us are running into problems where you know
we've got all these apps on our phone, we've got these people grind -- grabbing our attention.
If you're a family man or if you just got a girlfriend, if you want, you know, have
people that you stay in touch with good friends from college. You know what it's like, you
just get way too busy with life, how do you do it all? And, what Greg talks about in this
book is that you don't. You cut out the non-essential. You have to go through and realize that the
vast majority of things in your life, they are noise, they are distractions.
[0:10:01] And this is something that you've got to do
every couple months because, yes, even when I get everything lined up within the period
of a couple months I get a lot of distractions that jump back into my life. And, it's something
that I need to take the step back and I need to go through this and I need to cut off the
non-essential. So, no matter where you're at in life, Essentialism by Greg McKeown,
I highly recommend it. So, let's talk about money. The issue I think
is that most of us have gotten bad advice about money. So, there's tons of books I could,
some are going to be very high level. They talk about the right mindset especially if
you want to build long term wealth. Other books out there they're going to be ultra
specific. They're going to talk -- you know this one right here just got into the exacting
details about how I should set up my finances as an entrepreneur. I absolutely love this
book. But, the book I want to highly recommend that
you start with is I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. There are many other books
out there like this. I really like his point always about you know people say, “Oh, you
should save money, don't buy a latte. Never buy anything at Starbucks.” He's like, “You
know what? If that makes you happy, do it.” But, instead, go over and renegotiate on your
home loan and save tens of thousands of dollars right there by actually noticing that your
credit score got better in the last five years and that you should actually go and refinance
the whole thing. These are the kind of things, he talks about the big wins. And, I don't
see a lot of -- I see everyone's trying to get you to do these things that you don't
want to do versus he's like, nah, you know, it's okay right now, but focus in on the big
wins and that's what he zeroes in on. One thing I stole from Ramit which I haven't
seen other people talk about is to have multiple savings accounts. We're not talking just two
or three, we're talking in my case 20 savings accounts. And, all of a sudden, I realized
that, hey, anything we want to save up money for; vacations, for each of our kids. I mean
I've got an account for my dog because we take the dog to the vet, you know, for food
and everything. We just simply put money away every single month, so there's just money
always sitting there and it's not something that comes off of a credit card or goes, you
know, even out of our checking account. It's just simply the dog has its own account. Yes,
it does. Next up, we've got the Formula: The Universal
Laws of Success by Barabasi. What I love about this guy is that he actually took -- he's
a network scientist and he took all this information to figure out what truly makes somebody successful.
And, he didn't shy away from the fact that a lot of it is actually the intangibles.
He did say, of course, that you've got to have talent, you've got to be good at something.
And he gives all these examples of people who are great at something that nobody's ever
heard of that history has forgotten. Why? Because they didn't have these other parts
of the formula. Which he talks about is being able to engage with others, being able to
build up a reputation to actually -- it's really interesting.
He talks about how do you value art, why is some art worth a whole lot and other art is
not worth as much. And what he came to find out is it was the artists who not only had
great talent, but they also got their art to be shown in certain galleries by they had
built up relationships. They were actually in certain areas that they would actually
get their art there. So, very interesting if you're someone that's into art if you're
someone that's trying to figure out how to be the best in your field, you've got to read
you've got to get through this book. Now, I'm a huge fan of history, so I'm going
to bring in a couple right here. I've got the Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant
and A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Now, if you've read either of
these or familiar with these authors, you'll realize they're very different. They couldn't
talk about history in different -- in more different ways, but both of them if you make
it through this, you are going to all of a sudden just have a better understanding of
why we do what we do and a bigger scope of just human nature.
And, what's cool and I love about history is that when you understand it, you start
to see what's going on in the news today and you realize that there is nothing new. That
we're simply about human nature and that we will always do these things. You need to be
careful of human beings because we have some very bad tendencies especially when we get
into groups. And this has been shown again and again throughout history. So, to actually
get through both of these, I highly recommend it. Again, I’ll link the audio versions
down in the description which I absolutely love.
So, what video to watch next? How about my list of books for ambitious men? So, if you
want to go out there and change the world, you want to start a nonprofit that’s going
to help people, you want to start a business that's going to make you a multimillionaire.
Guys, you want to check out this list I've got for you right here.
[0:14:24] End of audio