Last updated on September 19th, 2022 at 08:14 pm
5 Life-changing Books You Should Read
Have you ever heard the saying that readers are leaders? The more you learn, the more you earn. I agree with that to a point. It used to be that I would just buy every single book that people recommended and read it religiously. And then I realized a lot of them kind of say the same thing.
I almost think it’s better to read one book five times than five books one time. And I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re like, “Well, Barrister, you’re going to recommend to me new books.” Yeah, but if I had to read these five over and over again, these are the ones I would reread and do go back to. And so in this today post, we are going over the five books.
Don’t cheat. Don’t cheat, guys. Don’t scroll down. I’m going to lay out each one, and I’m also going to give you a big giant takeaway from each, so you get some facts and a little preview of what you’re getting yourself into. All right, let’s do this.
First book. we got:
5. Jonathan Haidt: The Happiness Hypothesis
What ideas actually work to make people happy? One massive idea I get from this book as I was rereading it, is the ultimate freedom can make you freaking miserable. Okay? Now, I know this sounds like a paradox because some of you are in jobs right now that you don’t like, and you’re like, well, if I didn’t go to that nine to five or open the freaking Zoom meetings all day, I’d be a lot happier, Barry. Or some people, they’re in relationships and they think, like, ultimate freedom would be awesome if they weren’t.
Whatever you want to apply that to. This book talks about one study that I found fascinating, one dominant factor that looked at suicide rates amongst people. Do you know what that dominant factor was? Constraints. That the people who were more likely or less likely to off themselves.
It came down to having constraints, having something outside of themselves that they were responsible for. Then if we don’t have any responsibilities, in other words, if we’re totally free, we can also be totally miserable. I know this from personal experience. When I quit my job and I was in my mum’s basement, 30 grand in debt, technically, I was absolutely free. But I would wake up every day, like, thinking, I had to start this business right, with this overwhelming, crippling anxiety, because I’m like, Well, I’m starting from scratch.
I have all this freedom in the world, but where do I even start? And then your head gets spinning and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It wasn’t until I actually went back and took a part-time job working as a middle school counselor with kids, that gave me some constraints. Took up to 20, 30 hours a week that I was able to do this business. Because now, instead of having twelve or 18 hours a day to just work on this business, right?
I only had about five, so I had constraints and I was more productive. Talks about in nursing homes, patients who have something as simple as an animal or even a plant to water every day, they’re much less likely to get illnesses or die early. They have something to take care of. They have a reason. And the whole book kind of goes over some ideas like that where we think we want this, but actually, science says it’s this.
Don’t fall into the trap that doing anything you want all the time. “Me and me alone” isn’t the key to happiness. That could be hedonistic and lack fulfillment, because if you’re just living for yourself, eventually it’s going to get boring. Living for others, and having constraints is actually healthy and scientifically proven, the right ones to make you happy.
Look at this, people who are in relationships are likely to complain of bonds, constraints, and restrictions. But people who are not, are likely to be free, yet, miserable. How? Imagine having to wait on your phone all day, without a single call or message or the one you’d to pick, and be caught between an argument about what is the decent time to return from an upcoming concert or why you should take your new job.
Research says people are more likely to be depressed when they are alone than when they’re not. To be not alone means to be in a non-toxic relationship or non-verbally abusive relationship, of course.
We need a prop for this next one. When most people go about changing habits, they think about tactics. Give me the books to read. Give me the techniques, what meditation to do, and what manifestation technique.
This is right here. I know you’re like, Barr, where’s the book? It’s common, let me tell you. You need foreplays. You can’t just rush into things.
Most people approach change from three to one. I’m going to take some action, and I hope it changes my beliefs or my stories inside. And then hopefully, if it lasts long enough, I’ll change my identity. But the real change in your life happens when you go one, two, or three at the identity level. You rewire yourself and you adopt a new identity.
IDENTITY >> STORIES >> ACTIONS ✅
But for most people
ACTIONS >> STORIES >> IDENTITY ❌
Which is wrong
You create this Identity ahead of time. It knocks over your stories, and then your actions fall in alignment. In other words, this is the secret to changing the identity root. Most people go like this, and they wonder why they’re stuck. Does that make sense?
One book that opened my eyes to this, right is:
4. Atomic Habits by James Clear:
People were telling me to read this for probably a year since it came out. And I was like, I’ll get to it. And then I finally did.
I was like, Holy moly, that’s a great book. But it talks about this right here. The goal is not to stop reducing cigarette actions. The goal is to become a nonsmoker. The goal is not to put on your running shoes and run a marathon. The goal is to become a runner. The goal is not to be patient, the goal is to learn persistence, and become an endurer. In the book; James Clear says that every action is a vote for the person that you want to become. So I love that frame in your life today. Think about that.
Big or small, every action you do or you could say every thought or belief or judgment cast a vote for the person that you want to become. And again, those votes, if you collect enough evidence for something, they influence your identity level. So we can approach this in two ways. We can create this identity and then start casting votes for the person we want to be and reinforce it. And what’s really crazy is most people don’t realize this, and they cast votes against themselves out of alignment with what they say they want to do and who they want to become.
And that’s why a lot of people have this weird confusion when their life show up, right? There’s a gap. It’s like who I view myself as and what I’m actually doing right here. And the bigger this gap is, the more confusion we feel inside, and the more depression can creep in. Stress, anxiety, overthinking, imposter syndrome.
So the secret is changing your identity,
rewiring it, and closing this gap right here. Once you do that, it’s really easy to get up and live life and feel fantastic because you’re in integrity with what you say you’re doing and what you’re actually doing, if that makes sense. Atomic Habits. Great book.
3. I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi:
2020 was a crazy year for finances. I don’t know if any of you saw the stock market, right? Just when I also heard, like, something, 35% of all US. Dollars got printed in the last six months of 2020 or something like that. From a financial standpoint 2020, it was the best of times and the worst of times for a lot of people, just like Charles Dickens said in his Tales of Two Cities
A lot of people lost their jobs, you can blame the pandemic, but a lot of people got the filthy, stinking wrench. And you had your investments in the right place. Realize that investing, saving money, financial security, and all the stuff that we view as kind of like boring or too complex isn’t as complex as it is. You just got to know the game. So you can join people instead of saying, oh, that’s just for rich people or elite people.
I have been recommending this one for probably a couple of years now and this really goes into some more of those rules, right, of how to kind of set yourself up for 10, 20, 30 years from now so that you’re going to be well off.
It doesn’t require an insane amount of smarts or even insane amounts of income. It requires insane amounts of discipline. You make a million dollars and you spend it. How much did you make? Zero doses.
The system is actually set up for pretty much anyone to win if you know the rules. I don’t mean to rant here, but I was talking to someone in Seattle, over the phone, regardless of political beliefs, right? But it’s super blue. And so I’m talking to this woman, and she’s just complaining about how they’re rich and they have stocks and they’re so evil. And I was like, Wait, you know, you can invest in the stock market too.
It’s not like there’s an income cap. You can buy a freaking share of AMC for $8 or Apple or Tesla, or you can even buy partial shares. My point is don’t be intimidated by it.
It’s better to make 100,000 and save 40. You are richer at the end of the year than that person who made a million and spent a million. It’s not about the money you make, it’s about the money you keep. And I love that this book emphasizes that and gives you really practical ways to influence it using compounding in the long term. If you love it so much, Barry, why don’t you marry it?
But if we’re not applying it over here, if you don’t have fruits to show for it, what is it really? It’s entertainment. At a certain point, I find with a lot of people, just to be brutally honest, and I have this to myself, we spend so much time in education that it becomes entertainment. You can listen to podcasts all day long thinking they’re educational, right? But if they’re not making your life better objectively, it really is entertainment.
Where do we flip the switch towards having all this potential over here of education that we have in our brain, right, and really applying it in our lives to see the benefits?
This is a toss-up. I have two that I’ll give you, and one is kind of like, what the heck?
2. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson:
It was a fun light-hearted read and you know, all kind of full of self-development. These ideas and the science of improving yourself, the good intention about that is like I will be better right? But if we never apply, we turn ourselves in and we feel guilty and beat ourselves up because we are not applying that even if something.
You know what, this is not a book, but more of a process that you can do in an active form. There comes a point in your life where you realize that you have to be brutally honest with yourself. If like I’m consuming info out of education, which seems like reading coaching videos, seminars, and motivation, that seems like education, right? And it can be.
1. Breaking the Habits of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza:
It takes about meditation and the power of meditation. I found some science behind it and if you are analytically wired like myself, the why behind why you do something. This book breaks it down. If you can make up with something as little as like 8 weeks, 12 minutes a day just meditating has a significant impact as places of your brain starts to wring up like the empathy settlers, the part that makes you more loving, more consistent, more loving and other pathways start kind of reducing a little bit like your amygdala which is the fight or flight or all these like judgemental centers and whatever parts are contributing to that part of the brain kind of reduces if you want some science why you mediate or how that shift you into your 2.0 version of yourself, the book is fantastic. It is fantastic. It may be a little dense, but there are some parts you will really have to pay rapt attention to.
Comment down below and tell us your no. 1 book, if it is also on this list, tell us what is interesting or what you have learned about it so far!
