the 5 books that changed my life

this video is sponsored by short form more about them later in the video hey guys how's it going welcome back to another video so in this video i'm going to talk about the five books that have really changed my life plus a couple bonuses because i just couldn't not include them so i split them into three different categories the first one is world view the second one is learning and productivity and the third one is personal finance so let's go first

category is world view so i have to say this was a really hard for me to trim down to just a couple books but i picked the two books i think has most greatly shifted my worldview and continues to influence and change my worldview over time the first book is called a million

miles and a thousand years by donald miller i first came across this book on one of ali abdol's videos where he just actually raved about it so i was completely sold and i bought the book on my kindle and oh my gosh he was not exaggerating this was just it was just such an incredible book i read the entire book with miss bannon that one night i did not sleep at all and it was just like the tears that flowed oh it was like a river i hadn't felt that inspired or cried that much about a book for many years prior to that it's about the author himself donald miller he wrote a pretty successful memoir which sold lots and lots of copies and after he became successful he actually fell into kind of a slump and he was kind of just coasting through life like nothing was very memorable to him until a film crew actually approached him to ask if they can make a movie about his life fictionizing his life and it was during this process where he came to his one big realization what makes a good story where a good movie that they're trying to make is actually also what makes a good life and just like the way that you can edit a movie to make it better to make it more engaging and make it more thrilling you can also do the same with your own life you can actually edit your own life to make it better more engaging and more thrilling so what makes a good story well that's something that most of us learned in like middle school and high school it's about the hero's journey you have a character that is you know just kind of living their life and then suddenly they're confronted um by something that happens like a call to action the hero has a choice whether to answer the call or not sometimes they don't have a choice and they just they're like forced into it and then they go on this like journey in order to try to achieve their goal and lots of hardships that happen along the way also friends that they meet along the way but finally you go through the climax and then the resolution which is when you kind of achieve whatever it is that you're trying to achieve and then you know you live happily ever after or you're confronted again by something else and that's also what makes a good life throws these calls to actions at you and you can also create your own call to action in order to have an engaging and thrilling and beautiful life your job is to answer that call and try to achieve these goals and along the way you're going to have a fantastic journey and meet lots and lots of different people too and that in the end is going to be what makes a good life a life that was worth living it's an amazing book beautifully written highly highly recommend second book that drastically changed my world

view is a book called man search for meaning by viktor frankl this book is a pretty recent read and it also hit me like a truck it's a really short book but it actually took me over a week to read it because there was just so much the author victor frankl is a psychiatrist and he went through the holocaust went through the horrors of the concentration camps and he was able to survive in the end gain insights into the human condition and into life i want to share with you guys two insights that hit me the hardest so the first one is everything can be taken from a man but one thing the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's own way this insight this quote was really powerful and helped me a lot during the pandemic it was a time where i felt like so many things were happening around me that i had no control over and i felt really overwhelmed and almost like paralyzed that time so i didn't know what was gonna happen i still have that choice of how i view it my attitude towards it and how i respond to it and i think that's made a really big difference because once i realized that i started feeling a lot more control over what was happening and of myself the second really big insight that i got from this book is exemplify through this quote ultimately man should not ask what the meaning of his life is but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked in a word each man is questioned by life and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life to life he can only respond by being responsible so this is a quote that i'm still digesting myself this is kind of how i interpret it and i would love to know in the comments uh how you feel about this as well i feel like i've always been searching for meaning in my life but i never like really got it you know there was not this like one thing that i'm like ah that's my meaning in life to answer to life's question about what your meaning is it's about stepping up to life when life throws things at you when things happen to you it's the way that you respond your attitude and your actions and that's how you define and demonstrate your purpose in life what's important to you and who you are as a person this was just a super powerful thing when i finally realized this and it's still something that impacts me a lot amazing book highly recommend as well it's not the easiest book to read but i think it's really worth it okay let's talk a little bit about today's sponsor sure fun short form is a platform that makes amazing book guides that is way more than just a book summary for each book guide they have a one pager and then a full guide that is super detailed and it has a lot more insights they also have interactive exercises that can help you apply the things that you learn in the book to your own life and what i think is the coolest feature is that for each book guide it actually extends past just that one book it takes insights from that book and actually connects it to the insights from other books as well you kind of get like a network of knowledge people use short form in a lot of different ways for me personally what i find the most valuable about short form is the fact that it allows me to get deeper insights and different perspectives about a book for example for man search for meaning it's such a densely packed book of wisdom and insights by reading the detailed book guide i feel like i was able to get a deeper understanding of the information that was being presented and the key ideas and concepts were really well presented and it was much more easier to digest short film has a really wide selection of books across lots of different genres like psychology business and my favorite genre which is like not exactly philosophy but pseudo philosophy they have new book guides and articles that come out every week and subscribers are able to vote to choose what book to cover next if you're a subscriber to this channel you're able to get a five day free trial to short form by going to this link over here we're clicking the link in the description thank you again to short form for sponsoring today's video now back to the video the second category

that i'm going to cover is learning and productivity both of these books i've already talked about on this channel but i just have to include it in this list because they are just so massively changed my life the first one is called ultra learning by scott young i'm not

exaggerating when i say that this book is responsible for me getting my current job when i first got the interview at my job i didn't know any sql and sql was a really core component as a data scientist so i had to learn sql in 11 days which i will link over here or over there uh which i made a video about how i did that and the way that i did it came completely from the concepts that were covered in this book it synthesizes techniques that what he calls ultra learners use who are people that are able to learn things really effectively and quickly for example like learning an entire new language in two to three months he summarizes how they're able to do this which is completely different from the way that you do things at school it's a super insightful book that's also really practical and is backed by a lot of science and i can also vouch for myself because it's worked for me the next book is called

four disciplines of execution so from ultra learning it teaches you how to learn best how to learn most quickly and most effectively but just because you know what to learn doesn't mean that you're actually gonna do it and that's where four disciplines of execution comes in do you ever know that you have to do something and you know exactly what it is that you need to do but you just kind of like not do it well this book basically tells you what you have to do so that you can actually guarantee the execution portion here's the four disciplines that the book talks about the first one is to focus on the wildly important the second is to act on lead measures three is to keep a compelling scoreboard and four is to create a cadence of accountability and the book explains that if you have four of these disciplines in place then you have a very high chance of executing and executing well if you've been following this channel for a while the scoreboard system that we use as well as the study latino live streams are based on these principles and i'll link the videos over here about how we apply these disciplines into our lives and make it work but yes this book has really changed my life i attributed to helping me develop the study habit i'm able to consistently follow for the past nine to ten months now it's helped me keep progressing on youtube and it's also helped me learn more about personal finances and work towards my saving goal and speaking about personal finances now let's talk about the third category personal finance i've read quite a few

books in this category and for a lot of them i've kind of taken bits and pieces from and learned a lot from them but there is one book that just stands out to me the most it's extremely impactful but still super simple and super timeless and that book is the richest man in babylon which you can access for

free it's a book that really covers all the fundamentals of finance i feel like a lot of financial books these days and just like financial gurus they really over complicate things when essentially it boils down to some very key principles that if you follow then you're going to be able to build wealth and you're able to manage your finances properly and this book does a absolutely amazing job of this so something that you learned from this book is what he calls the seven cures for a lean purse which if you follow these seven cures you will find that you're gonna gather riches in life and you will have a fattened purse and what i found to be the most impactful thing that i learned from this book is what is called the five laws of gold and let me read them out to you number one gold cometh gladly and an increasing quantity to any man who will put by not less than one-tenth of his earnings to create an estate for his future and that of his family number two gold laboreth diligently and contently for the wise owner who finds for a profitable employment multiplying even as the flocks of the field this means put your money to work and find profitable investments number three gold clingeth to the protection of the cautious owner who invests it under the advice of men wise in its handling put your money in the hands of people who actually know what they're doing number four gold slippeth away from the man who invested in businesses or purposes with which he is not familiar or which are not approved by those skilled in its keep but this is something that's super relevant to our day and age when there's just so much fomo when it comes to investing so if you're gonna invest in meme stocks crypto or maybe nfts then you should do that as long as you know what it is that you're doing number five gold flees the man who would force it to impossible earnings or who followeth the alluring advice of tricksters and schemers or who trusts it to his own inexperience and romantic desires in investment if it's too good to be true then it's probably so all those financial guru people who are promising these ridiculous insane returns and such minimal risk that's being taken well that's probably too good to be true i also absolutely love the writing side of this book it's very story driven as opposed to other finance books that are usually much more dry so those were the five books but i do have a few honorable mentions the first one is a book called dandelion wine by ray bradbury you may know his more famous book which is called fahrenheit 451 this book is a fictionalized version of his childhood and actually has similar vibes to a million miles in a thousand years but i would say it's more abstract and it's more whimsical it deals with really hard topics like death and life and happiness and it's just a very unique spin to it i absolutely love this book number two zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance this is a very interesting read and this is squarely what i would call pseudo philosophy which is my favorite genre it's basically about this guy who goes on a motorcycle trip with his son um across country and essentially has a mental breakdown slowly and he just like talks about his motorcycle and he talks about all the thoughts in his brain while he's kind of like having a mental breakdown but i feel like when i describe it that way it doesn't sound like the most appealing book but it's definitely like not an introductory read but i really did enjoy this book and i learned a lot from it and third book can't not include it atomic habits by james clear and the biggest takeaway from this book for me is his quote you do not rise to the level of your goals you fall systems okay now that is it we have come to the end of this video i hope you enjoyed this video and maybe you would check out some of the books that i recommended here leave a comment about what you think about them also please leave a comment about what your favorite books are because i'm always looking for book recommendations alright i'll see you guys in the next live stream or video you