Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness

With Search Inside Yourself, Chade-Meng Tan, one of Google’s earliest engineers and personal growth pioneer, offers a proven method for enhancing mindfulness and emotional intelligence in life and work.

Meng’s job is to teach Google’s best and brightest how to apply mindfulness techniques in the office and beyond; now, readers everywhere can get insider access to one of the most sought after classes in the country, a course in health, happiness and creativity that is improving the livelihood and productivity of those responsible for one of the most successful businesses in the world.

With forewords by Daniel Goleman, author of the international bestseller Emotional Intelligence, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, renowned mindfulness expert and author of Coming To Our Senses, Meng’s Search Inside Yourself is an invaluable guide to achieving your own best potential.

https://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achieving/dp/0062116932

Free will - Sam Harris

A BELIEF IN FREE WILL touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. 

In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.

https://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Deckle-Edge-Harris/dp/1451683405

Own the Day, Own Your Life

The founder and CEO of Onnit, the mega lifestyle brand and one of the fastest growing companies in the country, teaches us how one single day of positive choices leads to a lifetime of concrete strategies for better living, optimal performance, and a stronger mind, body, and spirit.

Human optimization thought leader Aubrey Marcus’s personal and professional mission rests on a single question: How can we get the most out of our body and mind on a daily basis?

Marcus answers that question in Own the Day, Own Your Life an empowering handbook that guides readers to optimize every moment of the day, from waking in the morning, through work and play, until bedtime each night. With small, actionable changes implemented throughout the course of one day, we can feel better, perform more efficiently, and live happier. And these daily habits turn into weekly routines, ultimately becoming part of lifelong healthy choices.

From workouts and diet to inbox triage, mindfulness, shower temperature, and sex, this ground-breaking manual provides simple strategies for each element of your day. Drawing from the latest studies and traditional practices from around the world, Own the Day, Own Your Life delivers an optimization philosophy, including cutting-edge life-hacking tips, nutritional expertise, brain upgrades, and fitness regiments.

Own the Day, Own Your Life is a must-have "choose-your-own-adventure" guide for the everyman and everywoman—packed with pragmatic and effective strategies that empower you to enjoy your life, take charge of your health, and own the day.

https://www.amazon.com/Own-Day-Your-Life-Optimized/dp/0062684078

Esther Perel's Where Should We Begin? The Arc of Love

For her latest Audible Original, Where Should We Begin?: The Arc of Love, Esther Perel invites you to listen to private and intimate conversations exploring the evolution of relationships. Hear six sets of people at different points in their quest for romantic and familial love, including a young couple whose immigration status has forced them to consider marriage, a step-mother trying to put the pieces back together for four children whose mother died by suicide, a non-binary child desperate to connect with their single mother, a divorced couple whose two-household relationship may prove that marriage doesn’t have to end after divorce, and more. Listen and better understand your own relationships through the struggles of these people and Esther’s remarkable insights.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Esther-Perels-Where-Should-Begin/dp/B07H7QRHQQ

You Are Not So Smart

• Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

  
  
  An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise. 

  You believe you are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is, but journalist David McRaney is here to tell you that you're as deluded as the rest of us. But that's OK - delusions keep us sane. You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of self-delusion. It's like a psychology class, with all the boring parts taken out, and with no homework.Based on the popular blog of the same name, You Are Not So Smart collects more than 46 of the lies we tell ourselves everyday, including: 

  • Dunbar's Number - Humans evolved to live in bands of roughly 150 individuals, the brain cannot handle more than that number. If you have more than 150 Facebook friends, they are surely not all real friends. 
  • Hindsight bias - When we learn something new, we reassure ourselves that we knew it all along. 
  • Confirmation bias - Our brains resist new ideas, instead paying attention only to findings that reinforce our preconceived notions. 
  • Brand loyalty - We reach for the same brand not because we trust its quality but because we want to reassure ourselves that we made a smart choice the last time we bought it.

  
  

  https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592407366

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

What does everyone in the modern world need to know? Renowned psychologist Jordan B. Peterson's answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research.

Humorous, surprising and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awaits those who criticize too easily, and why you should always pet a cat when you meet one on the street. 
     What does the nervous system of the lowly lobster have to tell us about standing up straight (with our shoulders back) and about success in life? Why did ancient Egyptians worship the capacity to pay careful attention as the highest of gods? What dreadful paths do people tread when they become resentful, arrogant and vengeful? Dr. Peterson journeys broadly, discussing discipline, freedom, adventure and responsibility, distilling the world's wisdom into 12 practical and profound rules for life. 12 Rules for Life shatters the modern commonplaces of science, faith and human nature, while transforming and ennobling the mind and spirit of its readers.

https://www.amazon.com/12-Rules-Life-Antidote-Chaos/dp/0345816021

The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential by John C. Maxwell

#1 New York Times bestselling author John C. Maxwell explains how true leadership works and makes it accessible to everyone. Leadership does not come from your title. In fact, being named to a position is only the first and lowest of the five levels every effective leader achieves. To become more than a boss people are required to follow, you must master the ability to inspire and build a team that produces not only results, but also future leaders.

The 5 Levels of Leadership are:

1. Position-People follow because they have to.
2. Permission-People follow because they want to.
3. Production-People follow because of what you have done for the organization.
4. People Development-People follow because of what you have done for them personally.
5. Pinnacle-People follow because of who you are and what you represent.

By combining the advice contained in these pages with work and a willingness to learn, anyone can rise to a higher and more effective level of leadership and thus make a greater impact.

Deep Work Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

Popular blogger Cal Newport reveals the new key to achieving success and true meaning in professional life: the ability to master distraction. 

Many modern knowledge workers now spend most of their brain power battling distraction and interruption, whether because of the incessant pinging of devices, noisy open-plan offices or the difficulty of deciding what deserves their attention the most. When Cal Newport coined the term deep work on his popular blog, Study Hacks, in 2012, he found the concept quickly hit a nerve. Most of us, after all, are excruciatingly familiar with shallow work instead - distractedly skimming the surface of our workload and never getting to the important part. Newport began exploring the methods and mind-set that foster a practice of distraction-free productivity at work, and now, in Deep Work, he shows how anyone can achieve this elusive state. 

Through revealing portraits of both historical and modern-day thinkers, academics and leaders in the fields of technology, science and culture, and their deep work habits, Newport shares an inspiring collection of tools to wring every last drop of value out of your intellectual capacity. He explains why mastering this shift in work practices is crucial for anyone who intends to stay ahead in a complex information economy and how to systematically train the mind to focus. Put simply: developing and cultivating a deep work practice is one of the best decisions we can make in an increasingly distracted world.

https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692

Your Competent Child: Toward A New Paradigm In Parenting And Education by Jesper Juul

Readers comments: A Fabulous, Important Book, Jesper Juul provides parents with such an amazing, simple, and absolutely vital approach to raising children that it rings true on every page. Some of what he suggests we as parents do is difficult - as it is against our "knee-jerk" reactions we may have learned from our parents, but all of it is right on about how we can raise confident, healthy, whole humans, right from the start. I was thrilled to have discovered a book that allowed me to see different possibilities with child raising. Anyone with a child will gain immensely from reading this book, seeing themselves (as I did, over and over again) in his numerous examples, and learning how to move on from there. Without reservation, I am grateful for this book and highly recommend it. No Parent Should Be Without It, There are not enough superlatives to describe how helpful this book has been to our family. With tremendous wisdom and a warm, pragmatic eye, Mr. Juul helps us redefine the ways we look at a child's behavior and our relationship to our children and ultimately, each other. This is a book that doesn't offer easy answers or 'tricks' to help in the raising of your child. This is a book that helps you see with a child's eye, hear with a child's ear, and feel with a child's heart in ways that feel so natural and obvious, you will wonder why you haven't thought of them before. But trust me, you haven't. It is a book that offers day-to-day skills along with the thinking that helps generate them, leaving the reader feeling smart and well-satisfied. This groundbreaking book should be on the shelf of all parents everywhere. If you read only one book on raising your child, this is the one. I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you have children - read this book!, This is an amazing book that will surely turn upside down any thoughts you ever had about raising children.

https://www.amazon.com/Your-Competent-Child-Parenting-Education/dp/1452538905

Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger

In his signature larger-than-life style, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall is a revealing self-portrait of his illustrious, controversial, and truly unique life.

The greatest immigrant success story of our time.

His story is unique, and uniquely entertaining, and he tells it brilliantly in these pages.

He was born in a year of famine, in a small Austrian town, the son of an austere police chief. He dreamed of moving to America to become a bodybuilding champion and a movie star.

By the age of twenty-one, he was living in Los Angeles and had been crowned Mr. Universe.

Within five years, he had learned English and become the greatest bodybuilder in the world.

Within ten years, he had earned his college degree and was a millionaire from his business enterprises in real estate, landscaping, and bodybuilding. He was also the winner of a Golden Globe Award for his debut as a dramatic actor in Stay Hungry.

Within twenty years, he was the world’s biggest movie star, the husband of Maria Shriver, and an emerging Republican leader who was part of the Kennedy family.

Thirty-six years after coming to America, the man once known by fellow body­builders as the Austrian Oak was elected governor of California, the seventh largest economy in the world.

He led the state through a budget crisis, natural disasters, and political turmoil, working across party lines for a better environment, election reforms, and bipartisan solutions.

With Maria Shriver, he raised four fantastic children. In the wake of a scandal he brought upon himself, he tried to keep his family together.

Until now, he has never told the full story of his life, in his own voice.

Here is Arnold, with total recall.

https://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Unbelievably-True-Story/dp/1451662440