Whether you’ve got your New Year’s resolutions for 2019 all figured out or you’re still thinking about the changes you want to make, this list of business and personal development books is a great place to start. We’ve chosen a wide range – from books that give your practical business tips, books that focus on mindset and some that are more spiritual.
This top 14 list has been compiled by The Simplifiers team members who each recommended two books that made an impact on our work lives. While these books might not have been published in 2018, they were chosen and read by us throughout the year and given 5-stars all around!
Mary
It’s All Under Control: A Journey of Letting Go, Hanging On, and Finding a Peace You Almost Forgot was Possible by Jennifer Dukes Lee
Jennifer thought she struggled with control. As long as everything went exactly the way she wanted it to, she was totally flexible. But then she discovered what happens when you try to wrap your arms around everything, thinking it’s all on you: You get burned out on hustle.
This book is for every woman who is hanging on tight and trying to get each day right―yet finding that life often feels out of control and chaotic.
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
Written by the bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, this book has made a big splash.
Gilbert discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives while keeping a balance between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism.
Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic is a must read.
Minder
The Universe Has Your Back: How to Feel Safe and Trust Your Life No Matter What by Gabrielle Bernstein
Bernstein’s stories and universal lessons provide a framework for releasing the blocks to what everyone most longs for: happiness, security and clear direction. These lessons can help us relinquish the need to control in order to relax into a sense of certainty and freedom – to stop chasing life and truly live.
A great read if you’re interested in the power of a positive mindset, manifestation, and the law of attraction. We also shared a blog post about this book’s impact HERE.
Talk Like Ted: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of The World’s Top Minds by Carmine Gallo
Want to give your presentations a professional boost? Gallo has broken down the top TED talks and interviewed the most popular TED presenters as well as the top researchers in the fields of psychology communications to get their cutting-edge insights and to reveal the secrets of all successful presentations.
Janine
You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero
This how-to guide serves up hilariously inspiring stories, transformational insights, easy exercises and the occasional swear word in bite-sized chapters.It takes you on a wild joy ride to your own transformation and helps you create the money, relationships, careers and general all around awesomeness you so desire.
By the end, you’lll understand why you are how you are, how to love what you can’t change, how to change what you Don’t love, and how to kick some serious butt.
This was also recommended by Desiree Martinez when she featured in THIS episode of The Simpifiers Podcast.
Rise Sister Rise: A Guide to Unleashing the Wise, Wild Woman Within by Rebecca Campbell
This author was recommended by Carly Pollack as someone who should be a future guest on The Simplifiers Podcast.
Campbell’s book is full of tools, contemplative questions, rituals and exercises. It will inspire you to listen to your intuition and act on it, to gather the courage to be seen and heard, and to know your worth.
Many women have spent their lives trying to succeed by ‘making it’ in a man’s world. But things are changing – more and more women are realizing that this way of being is no longer sustainable.
Rise Sister Rise is a manual for healing the insecurities, the fears and the limiting inherited patterns that stop women trusting their innate power and wisdom, and being the person they came here to be.
Lyden
The Dip: The extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick) by Seth Godin
Every new project (or career or relationship) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point – really hard, really not fun.
Winners quit fast, quit often and quit without guilt – until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons. You’ll never be number one at anything without picking your shots very carefully. This entertaining book helps you learn how to do just that and will forever alter the way you think about success.
Grit: Why passion and resilience are the secrets to success by Angela Duckworth
Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that—not talent or luck—makes all the difference.
Pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows anyone striving to succeed that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence. Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research, Angela explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success.
Kristin
High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way by Brendon Burchard
This book shares a science-backed, heart-centered plan to living a better quality of life. After extensive original research and a decade as the world’s highest-paid performance coach, Brendon Burchard finally reveals the 6 most effective habits for reaching long-term success.
Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis
In this book, Rachel exposes the twenty lies and misconceptions that too often hold us back from living joyfully and productively, lies we’ve told ourselves so often we don’t even hear them anymore.
With painful honesty and fearless humor, Rachel unpacks and examines the falsehoods that once left her feeling overwhelmed and unworthy, and reveals the specific practical strategies that helped her move past them.
SuZen
The 12 Week Year Field Guide: Get More Done In 12 Weeks Than Others Do in 12 Months by Brian P. Moran
The 12 Week Year is a how-to book that creates focus and clarity on what matters most and a sense of urgency to do it now. In the end more of the important stuff gets done and the impact on results is profound no matter which area of your life you’re applying it to
Clockwork by Mike Michalowtiz
If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you started your business so you could be your own boss, make the money you deserve, and live life on your own terms. In reality, you’re bogged down in the daily grind, constantly putting out fires, answering an endless stream of questions, and continually hunting for cash.
Michalowicz offers a straightforward step-by-step path drawing on more than six years of research and real life examples to explain his simple approach to making your business ultra-efficient.
Mark
Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too by Gary Vaynerchuck
This book offers new lessons and inspiration drawn from the experiences of dozens of influencers and entrepreneurs who rejected the predictable corporate path. It’s a guide to building your own path to professional and financial success – a blueprint to living life on your own terms!
Mark also recommends the audio version which has lots of the female entrepreneurs featured in the book actually reading out their stories.
Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action by Simon Sinek
Sinek has analysed leaders like Martin Luther King Jr and Steve Jobs and discovers that they all think in the same way – they all started with why. In this book, he explains the framework needed for businesses to move past knowing what they do to how they do it, and then to ask the more important question-WHY?
Start 2019 STRONG!
I’d like to invite you to my 1-day retreat in Austin, Texas on Friday, January 4th, 2019.
Consider this as your annual strategic business retreat to gain clarity and simplify your approach, so you can stop the maddening race in the hamster wheel, slow down and actually achieve your business goals in the new year.
In this interactive, all-day workshop, we will:
- review how 2018 went for you
- vision cast what you truly want to achieve in 2019
- whip out the art supplies and create a vision board
- help you create your road map for the journey ahead
Connect with other like minded business owners, enjoy a tasty lunch, and take part in this business retreat to help kick your year off on the right foot.
Only a few tickets remain… buy yours today and I look forward to meeting you and giving you a great big hug in Austin on Friday, January 4th, 2019!
Start 2019 STRONG… the simple way.
Make 2019 your best year ever with advice, guidance and tips from the expert guests who feature in The Simplifiers Podcast. Find all out episodes HERE
