If you want to think what you’ve never thought…
And become who you’ve never been…
You have to read.
Not just inspirational posts.
Not summaries.
Books.
Books have more detail, better sources, and go through rigorous editing.
And most importantly, books will not lie to you.
They won’t hold back the truth because they think you aren’t ready yet, or because they think you can’t handle it.
The bar is far higher for books than anything you’ll find online.
Reading them is like grass-fed steak for your brain, compared to the processed sugar of X threads or whatever else.
They say, “leaders are readers,” and I know from experience after interviewing hundreds of entrepreneurs at the highest levels that they are voracious readers.
And they aren’t just looking for one-off ideas.
They’re looking for books that offer perspectives that differ from theirs.
Books that reveal what they aren’t seeing.
So, today I’m sharing 7 lessons from the 7 books that came up again and again.
Reading these books changed me more than any mentor, any conversation, and even many life experiences.
If you want to achieve far more, while actually working less and with less effort than ever….
Be more present, and feel freer in every moment…
And understand yourself at the deepest level you can…
These 7 books are worth your time.
This book changed my life.
Not just reading it, but working with the team to launch it.
It peaked in the top 20 of all of Amazon, was nominated for a Pulitzer, and the author Steven credited me with turning the book into a movement.
And the funny thing about this book is…
It’s a book about drugs.
Among other things.
And yet, the people who talk to me the most about it?
Leaders, founders of 8-figure media companies, and experts at the top of their fields.
Stealing Fire reveals the truth of what leaders are doing to reach the edge, stay at it, and hack their lives for flow. So, they can live and perform at the highest level.
You may wrongly assume that the people who live and operate at the highest echelons are buttoned-up squares.
But the truth is, they are often the most out-there people you’ll ever meet.
The difference is, they know how to integrate and unpack what they discover out there. And find ways to help what they learn improve their lives back home and in their workplaces.
In Stealing Fire, you’ll learn what Flow actually is, how there is a predictable process with triggers to get into flow, and what the mavericks at the bleeding edge of high-performance, from Red Bull athletes to Stanford Psychologists, are doing to harness this altered state to perform and feel their best.
This is another book I launched, but it fits right in with the last…
Because it’s a book fundamentally about what 10 extraordinary individuals do to live incredible lives, while being the happiest and most fulfilled they’ve ever been.
It’s interesting because the author, Vishen, is an engineer.
And yet the book is about meditation, altered states, and living a mission-driven life. But not in an anecdotal way…
He breaks these things down like code.
And shows you how to engineer altered states, meaning, and fulfillment into your life, no matter your starting point.
I had a hand in editing this book and live this quest alongside it being written.
Learning from these experts, and Vishen himself, is one of the fastest, most condensed ways to get the insights that took Mindavalley to 8-figures.
And as an individual, learn how to be both spiritual and wealthy. Effective, and at peace.
This book… is an experience to behold more than words to read.
At first glance, you can tell immediately that this book is unlike anything else you’ve picked up.
Every word on every page is stamped. It looks like someone was high on acid and just went crazy making it… and that’s actually pretty close to the truth.
If “going crazy” means shedding all the illusions of life that rob us of present moment awareness, happiness, and peace.
It’s written by Ram Dass, who’s a really popular ‘new age’ and meditation teacher. And reading this book is like getting his philosophy, and really a lot of the valuable lessons of Hinduism, downloaded right into your brain.
I read this during a difficult time in my life following a car accident, when I stopped working retail jobs and started failing at things I actually wanted to do.
I was really guilty then of living in a fantasy future and working every day for what I might someday have. While not actually experiencing where I was. Because I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want to feel the shame of failing.
But in the process, I was robbing myself of joy. And of absorbing the experiences that would actually lead to my growth and the life I live now.
It’s a very profound and very quick read that could be summed up as this:
There is only one present moment.
And it’s now.
But the magic of this book is that reading it is more of an experience than a set of lessons, and it will sink you deeper into that present moment than anything else.
The more present you can be, the more every aspect of your life will improve.
This book is unlike any other on this list.
It’s really a book about mathematics.
And I’m only okay at math.
But it wasn’t the new ways of doing math in this book that resonated with me. It was the man behind the math, Buckminster Fuller.
Bucky is regarded as a modern philosopher and inventor. He invented Geodesic domes, which are structures made out of triangles that are far more integral and last far longer than most modern buildings made of squares. Due to how they redistribute pressure. You’ve probably seen them at Disneyland if you’ve ever been, as Walt Disney was a big fan of them.
He also coined the term Spaceship Earth—his philosophy of unity, a cosmological model that transcends the whole notion that you’re from this nation, and I’m from that. Or this is your skin color, and this is mine. Instead, we’re all essentially passengers of Spaceship Earth.
There are many things like that which we are taught one way to do growing up, assuming it’s the way.
When in reality, it’s just the way we were taught. And a larger, cosmological perspective can change the way we approach even something as tangible as mathematics.
This book taught me that, and I liked it so much, I got one of his ideas tattooed on my skin at 19. This is his Dymaxion Map, which is a model of the earth, but maybe not as you know it. Where every country is in perspective. To me, I loved this because it showed Antarctica is not a giant wasteland that stretches the entire bottom of the globe, but instead is more of a big island.
It’s the same land, but the perspective is far different. Far truer. And it made me wonder, what do people value most—a map that puts their country at the center of it, or one that shows the landmasses as they actually are?
This book was the most mind-opening of all on this list.
After reading it, I fell into a depression for a couple of days, because what it shared is so true, I could not deny it. And it made me feel empathy for so many others. As well as shock at how many things that are innate to our cultures are actually engineered by smart individuals like Clotaire.
If you want… to learn how the world really works and why universal parts of life like love, death, sex, and religion mean very different things in different parts of the world… And better understand the meaning you were programmed to have…
Read The Culture Code.
This is by far the most interesting book on this list in my opinion.
The author, Clotaire, is a consultant who was retained by most of the top Fortune 50 companies, or was at the time.
He’s the guy Japan called to ask how to market coffee to a country that doesn’t like coffee, but loves ice cream.
That Jeep called to ask how to market their trucks to Americans.
Why do the French let their cheese live, and mold, while Americans wrap it in plastic and store it in the fridge like a morgue?
In it, he shares that the worst life to be reincarnated into is an American Woman, for all the things working against them in culture. It’s a fascinating, fascinating read. And will make you realize just how different we humans are.
And how to respect those differences and free yourself from some of the things you’ve been taught, so that you can’t just assume that “that’s just the way things are.”
This book will stop you from burning out and help you achieve far more in your life, with far less effort.
If you can get through its scholarly nature.
This is the most powerful book on this list, if you actually read it, and understand and apply the lesson within.
Which is:
You’ll have an easier time getting what you want if you aren’t attached to getting it.
We’ve all experienced this: stuttering our words with someone we’re attracted to, while being a genuine Casanova with someone we have no romantic interest in.
Turns out this phenomenon works on all levels. In this book, it’s referred to as the ‘law of the reversal of intention’ for getting what you want.
It’s something that has been written about in Buddhism, Christianity, and it’s perhaps the most important lesson to learn if you are highly ambitious and want to achieve more, more frequently, while actually stressing less.
By divorcing the belief that success is hard work, and by being unattached to the outcome while committed to your role in the process.
This book goes into the nature of the resistance and sabotage that stops us from getting what we want, and redefines what many would call “the law of attraction” and turns it into something you can actually harness to achieve your most significant goals in life. While actually doing less and having a more enjoyable time of doing it.
If you want… a book that goes deeper than Carl Jung on depth psychology, while giving you a practical lens for learning from your higher self and changing your beliefs, from Hawaiian mystics…
Read Mastering Your Hidden Self.
This book changed my life when I was 17 or so.
It taught me more about psychology than studying it in university.
It showed me that many things we assume you must be highly educated to know can be known from lived human experience.
In this book, the practice of Huna, from Hawaiian mystics, is revealed and their profound and simple ideas about things like the: sub and super consciousness, unconscious beliefs, and other things that many are obsessed with now…
They not only had an understanding of these things thousands of years ago, but they also had perhaps more accurate words for them.
And entire sciences dedicated to working with these higher aspects of the human psyche. For healing and self-realization.
You know it’s funny, this book was recommended to me by Neil Strauss, a famous pick-up artist. I read it, because I wanted to learn how to talk to girls, and it was the most interesting book he mentioned.
I find it hilarious that this is a book that basically leads to a type of enlightenment. And here was this whole community of men, who found talking to women so challenging that it was simply easier for them to become enlightened along the way by comparison.
Reading it will help you see parts of yourself that may be a mystery to you, and understand the interconnectedness between you, what you believe, and the rest of the animate world.
So if you want to think what you’ve never thought...
See what you’ve never seen...
And become what you’ve never been—
These books are where to begin.
Each of these books changed my life, and I know they’ll change yours.
Here are the links to them:
The Code of the Extraordinary Mind
Pick out at least one that called out to you and read it.
New behaviors, new results, require new perspectives, new thoughts…
So, don’t just rely on your algorithm to give you what you need.
These books will.
And what you’ll get out of them will be different than what I did, or anyone else.
So, pick one, give it a go.
And comment letting me know what you think.
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