Do you have your comfy reading chair ready? Sorry friends, it’s not trash beach novels that I recommending here!!! But I bet you will love these reads if you haven’t already heard about them.

I’m a self-help type of reader—however, I’m not gullible and can be quite critical of self help books at times. My criteria is based on what actionable steps can I take to better understand myself and my goals so that I can be the best version of myself. When you have everything counting on you and your business succeeding, you might find yourself willing to read anything that can help. And that’s exactly where I’ve found myself the past two years. These five books have literally changed parts of my life the past two years. So, I highly recommend them!

You can look up all these books yourself and read exerpts and summaries, so I’ll be brief in my comments. I read Getting Grit last year and it was fabulous. I first heard of Caroline Miller on a podcast that I listen to, Don’t Keep Your Day Job with Cathy Heller and you can listen to it by clicking here. Miller so impressed me and I wanted to read more. This book is packed with great stories and actionable steps you can actually take starting today. It gave so much meaning to my struggles, challenges, and goals.

The second book, Designing Your Life, was really the first one I read and it began my journey to figuring out how I could change careers from being an educator to a chair designer. Any of you who are interested in finding new things to do with your life from here forward, read this book!

Creating Your Best Life is also by Caroline Miller and I read it before Getting Grit. It’s fabulous and helped me to understand things I could do to be the very best version of myself. I’m still working on it! She’s got a fantastic story herself about recovering from bulimia and she talks about it in the book. And I know she’s writing a new book, not sure what it’s about, but I can’t wait to read it!!! Her writing is so easy to read.

Gretchen Rubin has come up with a framework to help us better understand what motivates us to do what needs to be done, and it’s all explained in The Four Tendencies book. Everyone should read this book because it not only helps us understand where we falter, but also hacks to help us and others get stuff done. This book helped me understand my oldest daughter and what motivates her, since she’s so different from me. LOVED it, and my assistant is currently reading it and getting good information that is helping her understand herself.

Finally, I read How Luck Happens spring break a year ago. I’m not a hocus-pocus kind of person and this book is not that either! It’s all about how to make your own luck happen, perfect for a cynic like me! It’s the science behind luck. Two authors co-wrote it together and it’s an easy read with all sorts of interesting anecdotes about famous people we all know and love and understanding how you can tip the scale of fortune in your favor…and I’m all about that!!!

And reading all these books in a great chair will even further inspire you! 🙂 If you want to print out this list, I’ve got it in a pdf and you can download it here. Happy reading, Friends!