Books On Personal Growth That Helped Me Find My Purpose
I read a lot the past 3 months and these 5 books on personal growth helped me get more clarity on what I want in life and how to get there.
In June this year I quit my full time job as an Event Project Manager after 6 years. I had no idea what was next, I just knew it was time to move on. Luckily I was financially able to quit my job without having a new job lined up. I started my journey of finding out what my purpose was in life and what job I would like to do next. On this journey I read a lot and these books have truly helped me in finding my purpose and building my new life.
Ikigai: The Japanse Secret to a Long and Happy Life
Ikigai was one of the first books on personal growth I read. This book is all about finding your purpose in life. It is that thing that makes you get up in the morning and excited about your day. When I started this book I had no clue what this was for me. I did not have an obvious talent from a young age or a big passion that I could exploit further. This book helped me to get clarity by making me think about 4 questions:
- What do you love to do?
- What are you good at?
- What do you feel the world needs?
- What can you be paid for?
The part where the answer to these four questions overlap is where you Ikigai can be found. For me this was super helpful and gave me more clarity in what I wanted to use my time in this world for.
Don’t feel like reading but still wish to learn more about personal growth? Then listen to a podcast on personal growth, these are my favourites.
The Mountain is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage into self-mastery
This book was quite confrontational. It gave me insight in the areas I thought were influenced by external factors and I could not change. But they were actually within reach for me to do something with. I was the only one who was able to change them. Brianna Wiest also talks about the thoughts in your head that keep you busy and how the way you think affects how you feel. How your limiting believes keep you from what you truly want. The book has a couple exercises that put you in charge of digging into your believes and patterns and put you in charge of changing things to your liking and transforming into the person you wish to become. Sounds easy, it’s not but it is doable. I learned I just have to truly feel the urge to change and put the effort into what I wish to change.
Eat That Frog!
Eat That Frog is a practical book that helped me find out what my goals are. It showed me how to reach them and get more productive in the road towards these goals. I was truly a procrastinator and this always made me feel unfulfilled at the end of the day. Brian Tracy states in the book that you need one thing: an action oriented mindset. Find out what it is you really want and which steps you have to take to get there. If you know what the steps are it is easier to get to the end result.
The exercise that helped me the most was to write 10 goals I want to reach this year. I wrote them down like they had already happened. For example: I earn $XXX. The next step was to look over the list and choose the goals that would have the biggest impact on my life. For this goal I set a deadline and made a plan with small steps that would eventually lead me to reaching my first goal.
8 Rules Of Love: How to Find it, Keep it and Let it Go
You mind think huh what is a book on love doing in this article about finding your purpose, but this book helped me to find out who I am, also within my relationship. This got a little blurry as I wanted to keep everyone around me happy and forgot what made me happy. Throughout this journey I got to know myself better and was able to find out what makes me happy in life. It changed my perspective on what I want and need to feel my best and put all my energy into the things that make me happy, including working on my goals and purpose.
The 6-Minute Diary
I tried out many different diaries, journals and this one stuck. It is easy to use with 3 minutes in the morning and 3 minutes in the evening. It brings my head in a positive mindset with the gratitude exercise and gives me a purpose for the day by thinking about what would make today a great day. Using this journal for 6 months now has changed my perspective and has given me more positive energy throughout the day.
I hope these books on personal growth help you as much as they helped me. Life is a journey and through these books I feel like I am in control of my own life.