7 Most Inspiring Books
Sometimes it just seems as if life circumstances cause you to hit an emotional wall. It is during these times that taking the steps required to live a life that is happy and fulfilling is nearly impossible. The tasks of building success in your career and relationships can feel virtually insurmountable. This is when you need a bit of inspiration to keep you going. If you are an avid reader, here are a few inspirational books that you should definitely consider picking up the next time you are at the library or bookstore.
1. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
Author: Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt explores the ways in which different cultures, philosophers, and religious groups think about happiness. His studies include belief systems from various periods in history. Haidt balances the beliefs of these various groups by providing an analysis that compares these beliefs with facts that have been vetted by scientific study. It is amazing to see that some of the thoughts about happiness that existed hundreds of years ago and by people who live completely different lives, are so similar.
2. Principle-Centered Leadership
Author: Stephen R. Covey
Leaders can have power, intelligence, and wealth, but if they don't have principles, they cannot truly lead people. They can only lead them. Covey has compiled a collection of inspirational stories about well-known leaders. Through their examples, you can develop the type of leadership skills that you can use to motivate others to work together in spite of any personal strife. This book is geared towards business professionals, but the lessons can be used by anybody in the position to guide and influence others.
3. Bold
Authors: Steven Kotler and Peter Diamandis
This is a book about exponential technologies. The term sounds complex, but it truly is not. Exponential technologies are simply technological innovations that have had much more impact on our lives than the inventors of these technologies could have ever imagined. The most well-known of these technologies is most likely the internet. The authors of Bold show you how to harness the power of exponential technologies and achieve great things.
4. Go Girl: The Black Woman's Book of Travel and Adventure
Author/Editor: Elaine Lee
Go Girl! Is Elaine Lee's collection of essays that she compiled specifically for this book. The authors are all African American women, and the subject of each essay is the experiences each women has had traveling the world. There are many famous contributors to this book, including Alice Walker. Elaine Lee allows other writers to shine throughout most of this book, saving her own travel stories for the last chapter. Her story is worth waiting until the end to read. There aren't many travel books written from the perspective of people of color or women. Lee's work does justice to both groups.
5. The Tao of Pooh
Author: Benjamin Hoff
Let's start with the enormous creativity of this book. How many millions of people have read Winnie the Pooh stories, and watched the accompanying movies never thinking of Pooh as anything more than a cute and quirky character? While the rest of us were doing that, Benjamin Hoff had a different thought; What if Pooh was a wise old soul applying Ancient Eastern Religious philosophy? As it turns out, his thought isn't at all far off base. Out of all of the characters in the 'great big woods', it is Pooh who simply accepts everything and everybody as they are. We could learn a lot from Pooh's inspirational world view.
6. The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Author: Mitch Albom
The story revolves around the character Eddie. Eddie is a disabled veteran who makes his living as a repairman at a Coney Island inspired amusement park. Eddie believes his life has been nothing special and that he has created an empty, meaningless legacy. Then, on the day that Eddie turns 83 he is killed in a terrible accident while attempting to save a little girl's life. When he arrives in heaven, he is shown that his life was much more meaningful and more valuable than he ever realized.
7. Eat, Pray, Love
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Sometimes, the things that are supposed to make us happy and fulfilled are the things that make ups feel imprisoned. Elizabeth Gilbert had a life that most of us would envy. She was a successful career woman. She was married to an equally successful man, and she lived in a beautiful house. She was also utterly miserable. Her marriage ended in divorce, and Elizabeth struggled greatly with depression. Then she decided to make a change. Eat, Pray, Love is the story of her decision to experience the three elements in the title in three distinctly different parts of the world, Italy, Bali, and India.