In the book Tools of Titans by Timothy Ferriss and the chapter about the life coach Tony Robbins, he mentions a three hour seminarium with Jim Rohn when he was 17 years old as the best investment he has ever done. When Robbins a few centuries later asked Warren Buffett about his best investment ever, he answered that it was the speaking course with Dale Carnegie that he attended when he was 20 years old.
These type of answers are recurrent regardless of who you ask of the most successful in their areas. It is extremely rare that anyone mentions a financial investment as the best investment in their lives, no matter what kind of profits they have made. The investment by which they develop more skill, more insight and better capacity as individuals are what really is going to change to life for the better. It is a matter of changing ones mind-set, in order to be able to act in the right way in different cirvumstances.
However, it is also about acting upon the new wisdom. In the book there is also a mention, that Warren Buffett immediately after his course began teaching at University of Omaha and asked to get to teach, since he didn’t want to fall back in his old pattern when he was terrified before every public speech.
In the examples above both Tony Robbins and Warren Buffet invested substantial amounts to be able to attend those courses. In today’s society you don’t necessarily need to pay to get access to wisdom that can change your life. To regularly read could very well contribute to changing ones mind-set significantly regarding much here in life. Among the persons that recommends reading as the best for your personal development is Bill Gates.
Gates has declared that he in on average has read one book per week since he was a kid. He also regularly shares his best reading tips on his blog gatesnotes.com.
In a separate chapter Tim Ferris also mentions the favorite books from some of the over 200 persons that are top achievers within their areas. Tony Robbins, for instance, mentions the book As a Man Thinketh from year 1902, while the entrepreneur Derek Sivers recommends the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (1936).
To all our joy both these and a couple of other of the books mentioned books in this chapter is free to read on the internet. Most of these books have also been recommended by other famous and successful people in many of the other books I have read in my life. Therefore it could be worth your time to read these books and learn the wisdom that they contain.
Below are the 6 books with many recommendations through the years:
