What is the book that has completely changed your way of thinking?
Someone suggested me "How to win friends & Infuence people". I read it 4 times in past 3 months. And I'll keep reading it through out my life. It has completely changed the way I see things. Now before I speak I think and I can understand how many mistakes I've been doing. It had a lot of impact on me. Like wise, are there any other books? Which book had such an impact on your way of looking at things?
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 77.5 ms ] thread7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a book I've never been able to get more than 1/3 of the way through, but its 'Circle of Control' framework made me a much happier and more content person.
I enjoyed Dale Carnegie, but took some of the lessons on board a little too much, which got me into trouble in some social situations where I didn't have awareness (eg, using mirroring or copying techniques to build rapport, and later discovering I was standing next to my girlfriend and flirting with other women!).
http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507853...
Hawkins was the founder of both Palm and Handspring, but comes from an academic background where he studied neuropsychology (how the brain works). The book is a thorough look at how the brain experiences the world, with the goal being the creation of artificially intelligent machines.
It'll change the way you perceive perception (if that makes any sense).
Art of Happiness - Dalai Lama
Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
Physics problems - Irodov
Seven Mysteries of Life - Guy Murchie
Those books are probably what made me into a self-sufficient human being who wants to stand on his own and keep living the best he can.
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No, seriously.
The Fountainhead
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
For me, probably the surrealist texts, esp Breton, Henry Miller and the beatniks. And from the phil. side, some Plato, Hegel, and lately R. Girard.
Narcissus and Goldmund - Hesse
Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
The Game - Neil Strauss
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank
Business @ The Speed of Thought - Bill Gates
The Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki
I've gotten more dates and had more success in the past year and a half than I probably had in my life up to that point.
Truth be told though, I think it's as much "magic sword" syndrome as anything. I big part of being successful with women is confidence, as we've all been told. Unfortunately you can't just tell somebody "go out and be confident with women" if they're not confident with women! But you can say "Here, here's this opener and some routines and some theories about attraction, and if you use this stuff you'll be successful" which gives them a certain form of confidence, which leads to some success, which leads to more confidence, etc. I look at it as way to kick off a positive feedback loop. Sorta like giving a young knight a "magic sword" to give him the confidence to go out and slay dragons.
Whether there's really much to the actual theories and what-not is debatable, but I have no doubt that dabbling in the PUA world has improved my life. And The Game was my "gateway drug" into that world, so it was definitely an influential book to me.
For me if I had to point at a single book it would have to be Bill Bryson, A short history of nearly everything.
It shows besides being a very compact overview of how we got where we are today how often we repeat our mistakes and how easy it would be to make this world a much better place than it is today and which forces are holding that back. It changed maybe not my way of thinking but definitely my view of the world in a way that changed how I lie my life. I used to be an idealist thinking that we could achieve some lofty goal of human accomplishment during my lifetime (for instance, an end to wars of commerce) but now I realize that we may not realize that goal ever.
So, effectively this book freed me from fighting windmills and freed my resources to try to improve the lives of those directly around me instead of on a larger scale. The effects have been pretty dramatic.
Another book which is rather on the extreme side is Eckart Tolle's "The Power of now!". Again, I sometimes couldn't stand his opinion. For example whenever he quotes Jesus and explains that most people get it wrong but in fact it would be like this or that.
But the book showed me that I was worrying and thinking way too much and that this is at best useless and sometimes even dangerous.
Often books don't even tell you something new. And I think even this is worthwhile as long as the author explains what you already know in a very different way.
To a lesser extent, The Double Helix, by James D. Watson.
It's real, it's true, it's my version of Cinderella story. I've read many motivational books, they're good, but Facebook Effect conveyed the idea of possibility to me, and I love it.
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...
"The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose. A truly brilliant and eminent mathematician/physicist boldly stepping up to grapple with the profound challenge of understanding how math, mind, and physics intertwine. Penrose's commentary on the role of entropy in cosmology transformed how I understand reality.
Keep in mind, my definition of "bad" is pretty loose. For example, one of the bad events I encounter on a regular basis is being stumped by a difficult math problem. If I were to allow myself to fall into a pessimistic line of thinking, it would make solving problems that much harder in the future.
Seligman found that pessimistic people learn to be helpless and that once they do, they stop believing in their ability to change things. For example, a certain subset of subjects who were given a series of unsolvable problems were unable to solve simple anagrams afterward. These people, according to the theory, learned to be helpless. However, there was a subset of people who were able to solve the anagrams. These were the people, according to the theory, who had developed the ability to remain optimistic in spite of misfortune.
Amazon link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1400078393/
Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance": For letting me know I was/am not alone (even in my alone-ness).
Upon reflection, I guess these books haven't changed my way of thinking. But they've influenced them. Perhaps Heinlein helped me to change from approaching the world as it was presented to me to approaching it as I actually saw and see it. Pirsig helped me recognize and... formalize[1], at least for myself, some of my thoughts on quality.
Emily Dickinson: Less really can be more. So much more.
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EDIT: Re [1], perhaps "explore" would be a better word.
IMO it's treatment of desire (from a negative (lack) to a positive (thought production machine); relationship of desired object to its platonic object desire; how desire is generated) is a great framework for advertising and product development.