What I realized after reading 25+ self-help books

Books are the greatest source of treasure, hands down. To see where I could go with this, I started reading sometime around September in 2017. I still remember the first book I read, “Who Moved My Cheese?”, a very short book making brilliant analogies between humans and mice. That book taught me, that no matter how you define your “Cheese”, you always got to keep moving. The more you stop to wonder, the more you end up self-doubting and second-guessing yourself.

Photo from Unsplash by Ugur Akdemir

I, in particular, have stayed in self-doubt and paralysis by analysis for more than a year, second-guessing even the slightest of errors in my emails & how I approached my bosses. This not only led to unnecessary tensions as to how I felt about myself, but this crept in other areas of my life. My physical activity reduced (although that is still less till date, no judgement here), I started over analyzing every little event in my life. There did come a point where I concluded that enough of this, you know, taking back the control over moment.

I curated my social media to follow amazing people like Gary Vaynerchuk, Tom Bilyeu & Impact Theory, Jay Shetty, Grant Cardone & many others, sometime around March 2018. This was also the time I started using my Kindle for real (I had got it in 2016, because I fancied a gadget for book-reading and carrying it wherever I liked without worrying about space). First few books I started with included Robin Sharma’s “The Monk who sold his Ferrari”, Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win friends & Influence People”. When I read these books, I quickly realized that the content you consume does make a difference. Not just in the form of social media, but also what you interact with on a daily basis.

Now let’s be brutally honest here, just reading books takes you no where. But reading does give you one thing. Insight in the Author’s mind. Reading different styles from different authors gives you a sense of how writing can appeal to audiences of similar nature. If you get what author is trying to say via his book, how in authors opinion, his book is solving the problem, you’ll have much more practical nuggets in hand which you can start applying in whichever area you want to improve.

Photo from Unsplash by Mikhail Pavstyuk

I started reading sometime around March 2018. And it’s been close to 17 months. I have completed reading around 26 books, which is very less as compared to few people. However, the lesson remains the same. Here’s what I realized after reading these books:

1. No book is the solution to your problems — No matter what you are going through, there is no book out there that will help you. Why? Because you need to take action on yourself to get out of your problems. No author can do that for you.
2. It doesn’t matter how much time to read — Essentially, every book has one central idea that forms the core of why the book was written. The quickly you can get hold of that central idea, the quicker you can get authors message. You might read it for an hour, or not. What matters is you have to read to get something out of it, not for achieving hypothetical metrics.
3. You cant be positive by reading books on positive thinking — Life is full of ups and downs, and these ups and downs are pivotal to shaping you as a person. You cant stay positive all the times. And that’s okay. All that you have to remember is that bad times can go away much quicker if you accept that they will. What happens is when you dwell in the present bad times you are in, you shape your thought processes to subconsciously act negative which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This then goes into a downward spiral, getting out of which becomes difficult over time.
4. Only you can be the judge of your own problems and how to solve them — There are few self-help books out there that will first tell you to look within and find the problem inside you. These books will first tell you that “you” have a problem and then will go onto how they can solve it. You may not realize it if you are not careful, you might end up judging and labeling yourself. You should only consider constructive criticism & judgement from your mentors who are there where you want to be. Your mentors would be able to give you a better perspective as to how you can improve & avoid the mistakes they made. Nevertheless, be your own judge, and if you feel you are right, do it. Even if you are wrong, you will eventually learn from your own mistakes.
5. Storytelling is an art — Now this in particular, is an interesting observation & yet a common one. Authors love to concoct a story around the central idea they wish to convey. This story is many times, so elaborately fabricated that you label and dismiss certain parts of it. Go beyond the story, don’t get lost in the story. You might end up judging the story altogether and miss the core message.
6. Appreciation the author for the efforts — It doesn’t matter if the book appealed to you or not. The fact that author went through the struggles to bring out the compiled lessons and experience in front of you for you to read is commendable.

I do read books on a daily basis in whatever time I feel like reading. I still feel that there’s a lot that I have missed out when I was reading these books. Which is why, I will revisit few of them to take the key messages from every book.

Here’s a complete list of the books that I have read so far, in no particular order.

1. The 10X Rule — Grant Cardone
2. Crushing It — Gary Vaynerchuk
3. The Monk who sold his Ferrari — Robin Sharma
4. The Mastery Manual — Robin Sharma
5. How to be a Bawse — Lilly Singh
6. Barking up the Wrong Tree — Eric Barker
7. How to win friends & influence people — Dale Carnegie
8. The Power of Now — Eckhart Tolle
9. The One Thing — Gary Keller
10. The Big Switch — John Thomas
11. GameChanger — Pranav Surya & M Pattabiraman
12. iWoz — Steve Wozniak & Gina Smith
13. The 5AM Club — Robin Sharma
14. Rework — Jason Fried (37signals, Basecamp)
15. Remote — Jason Fried (37signals,Basecamp)
16. The 5-Second Rule — Mel Robbins
17. Who Moved My Cheese? — Dr. Spencer Johnson
18. The DIP — Seth Godin
19. The Alchemist — Paulo Coelho
20. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — Stephen R. Covey
21. Magic of Thinking Big — David Schwartz, PhD
22. Rich Dad, Poor Dad — Robert Kiyosaki
23. The Art of Public Speaking — Dale Carnegie
24. The 4-hour Work Week — Tim Ferriss
25. The FOUR — Scott Galloway
26. The Secret — Rhonda Byrne
27. The Leader Who had No Title — Robin Sharma

… and still counting.

These books have been super helpful for me, however reading them or not is your choice. You can treat them as recommendations from someone who was able to take something meaningful out of them.

You can find me on Instagram here. I am still trying to get my head around GoodReads & Book Reviews, here on Medium.

Thank you so much for sticking around. Have a great day :)