One of the habits I learned to cultivate early in my sales career was the habit of reading 15 minutes per day. It’s something I’ve tried to carry on daily, even still today. Something I also learned was to read books more than once. Someone once said that when you read a book through a second time, you don’t see something in the book that wasn’t there before, you see something in yourself that wasn’t there before. Charlie "Tremendous" Jones says that you’ll be the same person in 5 years that you are now with one exception - the books you read.

To me reading is like mind medicine. When I was introduced to self improvement books I devoured them. I couldn’t believe that someone was writing something that I could benefit from. In school all I read were boring text books or fiction books that also bored me (with one exception - The Catcher in the Rye). Consequently, after I got out of school I didn’t touch another book. Nine years later when I was introduced to network marketing, the first book they told me to read was The Magic of Thinking Big by Dr. David Schwartz. I was just blown away that someone I didn’t know believed in me so much! And all the authors since then haven’t stopped believing in me since. Now I just have to figure out how to start believing in myself! ;)

Even before network marketing, my mother was reading a book and she asked me if I wanted to read it and it blew me away and was probably the first seed in my personal development journey. It was called "Bradshaw on the Family: A Revolutionary Way of Self Discovery" by John Bradshaw. This was a groundbreaking book on how unhealthy habits are passed down from parents to children. This book helped me understand some of the aspects of my own child hood that I was blown away by.

Because reading is so important to me, I’d like to leave you with a list of books that you can start with if you’ve never read any kind of self help books before. These 9 books are just the beginning but if you read all of them you’ll begin building the foundation of an awesome life to come. Here are they are:

1. The Magic of Thinking Big – David J. Schwartz, Ph.D.
2. The Power of Positive Thinking – Norman Vincent Peale
3. What to Say When You Talk to Yourself – Shad Helmstetter, Ph.D.
4. Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill
5. As A Man Thinketh – James Allen
6. Thinking For A Change – John C. Maxwell
7. How To Win Friends And Influence People – Dale Carnegie
8. You Were Born Rich – Bob Proctor
9. The Science of Getting Rich – Wallace Wattles
 

There are many more excellent books but I think these are a great place to start. I’m opening this post up for comments as well because I’d like to hear about some of your top self help books that have had a profound impact on your life.

I know you can do it and I definitely believe in you!