Personal growth depends on the effort you put in
Here at 360 Living, we're big fans of continual learning, and reading is a great way to do that. Building authentic, lasting happiness is an ongoing journey, and it involves balance between many different areas of life.
Sometimes, though, we find ourselves in a rut. Maybe we're burnt out from work, or surrounded by the wrong crowd of people, or neglecting our physical or mental health.
There's a long list of factors that affect our happiness and overall well-being, so how do we get from "stuck" to "rolling"? Here are some of our favorite books to catalyze positive change in your life, get out of a rut, and find inspiration and fuel toward better living.
Must-read motivational books to change your life
The Miracle Morning, by Hal Elrod
If you start your days dreading the alarm, or having a hard time dragging yourself out of bed, or simply feeling uninspired, this book will put some pep in your step. It's based around a simple concept of habit-stacking, and it's based on the author's own personal experiment with incorporating a series of known life-improving practices. Author Hal Elrod, now a world-renowned speaker and entrepreneur, talks about how he hit a serious rut in his own life after a serious accident. He tells the story of how the Miracle Morning routine helped him pull himself up out of that and transform his life to something truly fulfilling and impactful. The activities in the Miracle Morning routine are pretty easy to remember, thanks to the handy acronym SAVERS: silence (meditation), affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing (writing).
In fact, I followed this routine for awhile before adapting it to my own more flexible version, and I found it really makes a remarkable difference in energy levels, mental health, and motivation. Similar to 360 Living, the book also includes a digital toolkit of materials to support readers' own implementation of the principles (including Hal's own affirmations, and fillable schedule to track your Miracle Mornings, and more). Plus, there's an active Miracle Morning community group on Facebook, that provides a nice continued source of accountability and support.
All in all, you could probably finish this book in a single weekend, and it can truly help you change your life. It's certainly worth the read.
The Compound Effect, by Darren Hardy
When you've interviewed as many millionaires, dream-following entrepreneurs, and other success stories as SUCCESS Magazine Publisher Darren Hardy, you gain an invaluable personal understanding of how to transform life for the better. With The Compound Effect, Darren has not only done that, but has gone further in turning around and sharing that knowledge and understanding with others. He's the founder of Success magazine, which means frequent and valuable interaction with some of this world's most inspirational and accomplished individuals.
The Compound Effect distills many of the lessons learned from those individuals into a simple but powerful principle. It's all about taking initiative and taking responsibility for your own life. It recogizes that each of us is faced with unique challenges and resources (or lack thereof), but that our mindset and our tenacity can make all the difference in the results we gain. The Compound Effect argues that we are absolutely capable of everything we dream to do if only we have the persistence to follow through. This often means doing the "unsexy" stuff, but Hardy gives example after example of how that has formed the most astounding individuals of our time, from athletes to entrepreneurs to visionaries and changemakers.
This book is actually the #1 recommended read within a particular large-scale peer-to-peer marketing business, because of its powerful ability to activate internal, intrinsic motivation within people. It's another one of the books recommended within 360 Living to help truly create our best lives, because consistent action is what forms the foundations of lasting success in any direction we choose.
The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz
Once in awhile there comes along an individual who contains a profound wisdom than most humans could contain. Don Miguel Ruiz (who also goes by Miguel Ruiz) is one such individual. In this bestselling book, he shares four straightforward rules that apply in surprisingly diverse ways to our lives. We won't spoil the surprise by sharing too much about the agreements themselves, but we will comment on the profound value of them. Mostly, the four agreements all point toward a single principle (which is also a strong theme in The Compound Effect): we are in control of our own reality.
The agreements themselves are simple, but when we apply them consistently to every area of life, we get impressive results. We start to view our situations less as a series of uncontrollable events, and instead focus on what we can do to respond to them for the best outcome. In brief, the agreements circle around our words, our interpretation of the actions of others, our thinking patterns, and the amount of effort we put into life. You'd be amazed how much these factors play a role in everything we take on in the path toward better living. Don't miss out on this valuable read that helps us rethink our approach and transform it into something that builds authentic happiness.
Check out these inspirational books and change your life!
So there you have it, three of our top book picks for getting life on track, or for kickstarting greater positive progress in life. There's no magic solution for how to change your life, but the nice thing about each of these books is that they apply very broadly to each foundational life area.
Of course we have many more suggestions on great reads and recommended resources to support specific topics like health, finding flow, relationships, and more, but it's always useful to gain knowledge like this that is widely-applicable. That's critical in figuring out how to change life when we're stuck in a rut.
Reading these books is likely to help you realize just how much potential you have within you to change your life for the better, starting from wherever you are today.
Written by: Jacquelyn Salvador
