15 Astounding Books to Uplevel Your Life
Laurie Moser . Published June 26, 2023
Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash
Have you ever wished you could be well-read and find those books that change your life?
But how do you know what books to read?
There are so many books out there. Just step foot, in any bookstore or library. The rows of self-help, biography & memoir, personal development, health & wellness, and money management books are endless.
You feel overwhelmed just staring at all those books. Where do you start?
I have a plan for you. I have put together a list of 15 books that I have personally read. All these books have uplevelled my life in different ways.
These books will have you on your way to an eye-opening and epic life.
Now, let’s get into the books.
Mindfulness and Happiness
1. The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins
This is a transformative guidebook to taking action, changing your behaviour and living life with less fear and more courage. The tips contained within are memorable, easy to implement and instantly effective. Anyone can start using them today to take control of their life and move confidently toward a brighter tomorrow.
Key Takeaways
The five-second rule is a simple decision-making tool that can change your behaviour. You can’t control your feelings but you can always control your actions. The five-second rule is an amazing tool to help with procrastination.
2. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
This book offers a specific method for putting an end to suffering and achieving inner peace, living fully in the present and separating yourself from your mind. The book also teaches you to detach yourself from your “ego” – a part of the mind that seeks control over your thinking and behaviour. It argues that by doing so you can learn to accept the present, reduce the amount of pain you experience, improve your relationships and enjoy a better life in general.
Key Takeaways
By focusing only on the present and ignoring the past or future, you can greatly improve your life. This book makes you self-aware of the power of “ego,” and how it keeps you from being happy and present.
This is a guide to finding happiness and fulfilment inside yourself, instead of constantly hunting for external affirmation. By learning to define your own standards of success, and by measuring your achievement backward, you’ll appreciate how much progress you’ve actually made, and experience renewed motivation in every area of your life.
Key Takeaways
You can turn any seemingly negative experience into a GAIN by reframing what happened to you. See the lesson in what happened. Use the last hour of the day to celebrate your wins and plan for future achievements. Start with 3 wins for the day and 3 wins for tomorrow.
4. Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day - Jay Shetty
The three stages of adapting to the monk mindset are:
letting go of external influences and fears that hold us back to make space for growth.
reshaping one’s life to make confident and purposeful choices.
expanding our gratitude and sharing our gifts with the world.
Key Takeaways
The more you care about what other people think of you and your need for validation from others, the less control you have over your life. Know your values, they are your compass in life.
Productivity
5. Atomic Habits by James Clear
This book provides a practical and proven framework for creating good habits and shedding bad ones. Drawing on scientific research and real-life examples, it shows how tiny changes in behaviour can result in the formation of new habits and help you achieve big things.
Key Takeaways
Small habits can have a surprisingly powerful impact on your life. Make the habits that you want to create so easy and simple to start. You want to write a book, open up a blank document and write 1 word.
6. Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life - JIM KWIK
This is an empowering how-to guide for making full use of your brain’s incredible capabilities. It goes out to anyone who’s ever felt too dumb, too slow, or too unskilled to succeed. Learn how to unlimit your brain and gain the power to achieve anything at all.
Key Takeaways
You can learn anything that you want to. You just haven’t been taught the correct ways to learn. Each of us has the power to change our brains.
Personal Development
This is your guide to living life to the fullest. Sincero provides an analysis of exactly what’s holding you back and provides powerful strategies geared toward breaking bad habits so that you can truly live out your dreams.
Key Takeaways
Negative thoughts about yourself are holding you back from being the badass you really are. If you learn to love yourself, you will have a better life. Your thoughts are powerful, use them to help you.
8. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam M. Grant
This book examines the science behind changing your mind and persuading others to change theirs. It explores the biases and assumptions that we bring to our decision-making, and outlines how individuals and organizations can build a mindset of lifelong curiosity.
Key Takeaways
In a constantly changing world, it pays to change your mind. You might not know what you don’t know. Even the most ignorant beliefs can be changed when you ask the right questions.
This is a hands-on guide to healing our bodies and minds. The physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of our health are all interconnected. By changing how we eat and exercise, engaging in mindfulness and tackling past trauma, we can heal ourselves and transform our relationships.
Key Takeaways
To heal our minds, we have to heal our bodies, and vice versa. Reparenting ourselves can reprogram our core beliefs. We need to identify childhood trauma in order to heal.
Biography & Memoir
10. Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds – David Goggins
This is the inspirational true-life story of David Goggins, one of the world’s fittest men. David is an inspirational athlete and military man. His story illuminates a path that anyone can follow to push past pain, demolish fear, and reach their full potential.
Key Takeaways
Fear and disappointment held Goggins back from reaching his full potential as a young man. When he did the work on his mind, he became unstoppable for what he could achieve. Your mind is either working for you or holding you back. You can make your mind focused and unbreakable.
11. An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
Test pilot and astronaut Chris Hadfield was the first Canadian to space walk, and this is his story. He offers insight into life in the space business, from training and lift-off to space research and coming home. He outlines the surprising challenges astronauts face, both off and on this planet, and offers some of the wisdom he gained from leaving our natural home and coming back down to Earth. Even if you never make it to the stars, you’ll find that we have a lot to learn from spacemen.
Key Takeaways
How to renew your commitment to pursuing your own dreams, big or small. The experiences that Chris had in space can teach you to find your own success and happiness in life.
Motivation & Inspiration
12. Everything Is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
This book provides an optimistic, but also pragmatic philosophy of self-empowerment. While fully recognizing the fact that life is full of difficulties, it encourages us to roll up our sleeves and pursue our dreams anyway. To that end, it teaches us how to counteract our self-limiting beliefs and other self-defeating tendencies, such as letting fear and indecisiveness get the best of us.
Key Takeaways
The belief that “everything is figureoutable'' is a powerful weapon against our self-limiting beliefs. At the bottom of most self-limiting beliefs are really just excuses. By taking action, with small daily steps, you gain clarity and overcome indecisiveness.
13. Believe IT: How to Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable by Jamie Kern Lima
IT Cosmetics founder Jamie Kern Lima tells the wild but true story of how a once struggling waitress turned her upstream idea into a bestseller. She eventually sold the company for more than a billion dollars and became the first woman CEO of the hundred-year-old L’Oreal brand.
Key Takeaways
Follow your ideas and keep going. Turn down the volume of your inner critic. How to deal with rejection, haters and mean girls.
Money & Investments
This book teaches how women can attain financial success by casting off impostor syndrome and demanding that they be paid what they’re really worth. Here, you’ll learn how the ability to earn, save, and manage money has been denied to women – and why that’s a bad thing for the world as a whole.
Key Takeaways
Women often tell themselves stories that prevent them from becoming wealthy. Women, especially women of colour have been oppressed for centuries, so be kind to yourself. When women make money, they make the world a better place. Why you need to set your goals much higher with your ability to earn money.
Combining autobiography and personal advice, Rich Dad, Poor Dad outlines how you can become financially independent and wealthy. The author argues that what he teaches in this New York Times bestseller are things we’re never taught in society, and that what the upper-class passes on to their children is the necessary knowledge for getting (and staying) rich.
Key Takeaways
Challenges the belief that your house is an asset. Teaches parents why they can’t rely on the school system to teach their kids about money. Explodes the myth that you need to earn a high income to be rich and explains the difference between working for money and having your money work for you.
Start Now - Uplevel Your Life
There you have it, my 15 book recommendations to uplevel your life.
Start with one, and then onto another.
Remember, it’s not a reading race, go at your own pace.
You got this!
One book at a time for an epic and astounding life.
