Some of My Favourite Self Improvement Books

The Success Principles - The Success Principles by Jack Canfield is definitely one of the best self improvement books around, I like to call it the success bible.

It is a compilation of all the principles and laws of success you can ever think of, all rolled up in one book. What attracted me to this book was its title, "The Success Principles: How to get from where you are to where you want to be" I saw a lady reading it and the title of the book really drew me in, so I asked her a bit more about the book and she recommended that I got it.

I decided to buy the book and I planned on reading it on the plane and any spare time I had while on my vacation to Canada to see my brother.

I got absolutely lost in the book, and even though I was supposed to be on vacation enjoying myself, I spent most of my time reading this book. I learnt in it everything I needed to know to succeed in life and make my goals and dreams a reality.

This book is still very much a part of my life, I refer to it for inspiration and motivation and I even teach from it when doing personal development and self esteem seminars and workshops. It is a really great book that will have a lasting effect on you. Trust me when I say that your library of self improvement books isn't yet complete until this book gets in there.

Understanding Your Potential, Releasing your potential, Maximising Your Potential - These are self improvement books written by Dr Myles Munroe which I'll refer to as the potential series.

The books mentioned above that make up the potential series really changed my life, Dr Munroe is my favourite author, I have most of the books he has ever written and what sparked my love for Dr Munroe's books was when I pick up the book Understanding your Potential, after reading that book I just had to get the other two.

I discovered the power of potential; I began to understand what potential really is. Dr Munroe made me understand that potential was what I could do that I hadn't done yet, but the fact that I hadn't yet done it didn't mean I couldn't do it, that was the paradigm shift for me.

It made me realise that my dreams were within my reach, the seed of greatness was already in me, I just had to water it so that it could grow.

Many of us get excited at the thought of having potential, but don't actually realise that we can rise to that potential, we can actually fulfil these things that we desire to achieve, those things that other people see in us that we don't necessarily see in ourselves.

One of the statements he made in the book that really hit a nerve with me was when he said that the wealthiest place on earth was the grave yards because it is filled with unreleased potential, people that died never rising to the fullness of what they could do, people who died with their music never released, their books never written, their business that they never got round to starting, inventions that they never got round to making.

That thought scared me, I decided that my potential was going to be lived out and it wasn't going to be added to the wealth of the grave because that isn't where it belongs.

To a certain degree, I also started to feel like potential was cheap because its common, everybody has potential but what makes the difference is when you go from just having potential to actually fulfilling it, that's what makes you rare, that's what makes you stand out, and Dr Munroe in the potential series shows us how to do just that.

Dr Munroe also shows you how to go from having potential to fulfilling that potential.

Awaken the giant within - This book by Tony Robbins is one of the greatest self improvement books ever written, in fact, it deserves a place in the self improvement books hall of fame and I'm sure years from now will be one of those classic self help books people always talk about like Think and grow rich.

In Awaken the giant within Tony talks about the most powerful force for creating change in the life of an individual, the one single factor that will determine whether you will truly improve your life or stay where you are and that force is the power of decisions.

In Tony's own words "Decisions Decide Destiny" and when we think and meditate on that statement, it is so true. Every major accomplishment started with a decision, every major business started with a decision, not with resources, money, contacts etc, but a decision - deciding "I'm going to do this, I'm going to go for this" and then figuring out the "how" along the way.

Nothing changes until we make a decision to change, until we get to that point where we can no longer carry on or put up with the way things are.

Tony expounds on the power of decisions and how to channel the force of decisions in this book. By the time you finish reading it you'll be fired up to change your life, although it might take you a while to actually finish reading the book because it has tons of pages to get through. I wont scare you by telling you exactly how many pages there are in the book

Awaken the Giant within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Life

Automatic Millionaire - Another one of my favourite self improvement books is David Bach's Automatic Millionaire. Automatic Millionaire is one of the best and most helpful books I've ever read on how to manage your money properly and invest in such a way that you can retire rich. I discovered that getting rich isn't really about earning lots of money, you can earn lots of money and still end up broke if you don't manage the money very well, in fact, statistics show that the more people earn, the more they spend.

On the other hand, you can have someone who doesn't earn much but doesn't spend much either and manages the little that they earn. Such a person will likely end up possibly wealthier than the guy that made a lot of money but blew it all on lavish living.

David Bach in Automatic Million shows you how you can retire a millionaire, regardless of what your current pay packet is. What I love about this book is its practicality to the average person. The average person doesn't have thousands and millions to invest; they can probably just about spare an extra 50 to 100 bucks a month.

And that's what's great about this book, you learn how to start investing even with the little you have, you learn what to invest in and how to find the extra cash to start saving and investing (money that's usually hiding in your daily latte and muffin, which can add up to a significant amount at the end of the month), you even discover how to be disciplined at saving and investing without trying, the truth is, most of us are not very disciplined when it comes to saving, something always comes up that eats away at the money you were planning to save, I'm sure you've been there as well. David shows you how to overcome this and develop instant discipline for saving without really having to be disciplined... confused? Don't worry you'll understand what I mean when you read the book.

With David's principles you are not going to become a millionaire overnight but if you implement what he says, you will gradually start building yourself up towards financial freedom.

The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-step Plan to Live and Finish Rich