Books That Changed My Life For The Better

I find that reading is such an underrated thing that is being missed out on by people more and more as they are sucked into the world of short attention spans and everything being given to them in video form. I mean, I’m sometimes guilty of this. How many times has your favourite person on Instagram posted a long caption under a photo or long Facebook posted, you’ve seen the “Read More…”, hit it and then decided actually, I’ll come back to this later and never have? Or is that just me?

However, I’ve been fortunate enough through social media to discover some of the publications that the people I follow have written and released, which I’ve in turn invested the money and time in to read, both to support them and to better myself. With this blog, what I’ve decided to do is to share some of the books that have changed my life, giving a brief overview about what they are about and how they have changed my thoughts on the topics that they have brought up.

Can’t Hurt Me – David Goggins
What a man!

What a book!

There is a reason that David Goggins’ story and mindset has been showcased by TV hosts, podcast hosts and other outlets across social media, as well him being branded the World’s Toughest Man and he has the accolades to back it up. His story though doesn’t come without facing huge and significant challenges in his lifetime. And when I say huge, an example of one is just the picture of his old self on the cover.

This book is pure motivation. Taking you through his story and the challenges that he faced across the years, he details the methods used to both cope with these challenges, as extreme as they are, and overcome them successfully, showing the end results and how it allowed him go from strength to strength. At the end of each chapter, he distills everything said into an easy to digest couple of pages, giving tasks to the reader to help them tune their mindset.

No matter what your life passion is or whatever goals you set yourself, I would seriously recommend this book to anyone and everyone. Even though most of David’s ambitions and challenges have been on extreme end of the spectrum, all of the life lessons and mindset changes that are spoken about in the book are applicable to anything. When I finished the book, honestly, the amount of motivation and inspiration I had made me want to jump up and act upon all my hopes and dreams.

This is one seriously inspiring book!

Get it.

Read it.

Achieve it.

Either hit the link to the book on the left; link to the Kindle version on the right.

Finding Ultra – Rich Roll

How I came across the story of Rich Roll, his podcast and his book Finding Ultra was thanks to a David Goggins rabbit hole on YouTube and coming across the first podcast Rich did with David. I knew a decent amount about David Goggins at the time but not a lot about Rich Roll so decided to look further into his podcast and his backstory and this was where I was blown away.

It is this backstory that is the basis of Rich’s book and is a book that is utterly inspirational on so many fronts. Rich tells his story in an honest and open way about the challenges he faced in his life and how he managed to turn things around to be the man he is today, though he can often be quoted as saying that he is still going through that process. In his book, Rich talks about the following things, and it sure is a rollercoaster ride:

How from what seemed like an innocent position and on a good trajectory, he ended up in a lifestyle of addiction which about the dire situations he then had to face
How he brought himself out of this place, turned things around and now lives a more fulfilling life
How he converted from a “conventional” modern day diet to a plant based one
Not only details how he did it but advocates others to do so in a balanced way, giving a great beginners guide to start making the right changes
How he revolutionised his life to become one Men’s Fitness’ “25 Fittest Men in the World”

After reading this book, not only was I blown away by his story but it was very thought provoking about the way that I lived my life, the relationship with the vices that I had, took some inspiration to include in my training after seeing what Rich was able to achieve after so much and what some would deem so late in his life, and one of the the most important messages from the book, my diet.

One of the things that I loved about his book is how he puts across the argument for moving to, or closer to, a plant based diet. As someone who was all about meat, meat, and more meat in their diet and thought that anyone who was a vegetarian or vegan were somewhat bonkers and unhealthy, I completely flipped in opinion. The way that Rich puts across the relevant points surrounding the benefits of a plant based diet over that of a meat based one are by no means “forceful” and “crazy”, like some vegans have been branded when having this debate, but they are educated, evidence based and thought provoking.

This book needs to be read by one and all in my eyes. It is inspirational, thought provoking, mindset changing and educational. One way or another, you will take something from this book that I think will change you for life.

What are you waiting for? Get the book at the link on the right!

Born To Run – Christopher McDougall

Depending how you ended up on this blog, you may know that I’m a bit a of runner and through one method or another, whether it be a podcast, mentioned in a YouTube documentary on running (yes, that much of a fan) or coming up as a suggested book on Amazon, Born To Run kept crossing my path and I decided to finally purchase and invest some of my time into it.

I wasn’t disappointed. This book for me was some sort of revelation in so many ways. For such a short book (just 282 pages), it is able to cover quite a few topics concerning what some just deem as putting one foot in front of the other. Little did you know, it is so much more than that and it had significantly change, for most of the world, from the form of when we first stood up on two legs to the modern day version that we know and love. Well, some of us…

Using the story of the author’s (Christopher) plight with injuries due to his beloved sport, he embarks on a journey that takes him on a path not only remedy his ailments but encompasses:

How modern society ended up being in running shoes we are today and what sparked it
Why these shoes could actually be bad for us, using studies to back up this with evidence
Our journey as a species to homo sapiens, looking into why we actually stood up and how our hunting evolved
The interesting story of the Tarahumara
An epic ultra marathon, bringing an eclectic bunch together

In so many ways, this book opened my eyes torso many things about my favourite sport. It reinvigorated my passion for running and inspired me to make a few changes based on what I read, both with my training and style. After toying with the idea of going “back to barefoot” running, this book is ultimately what persuaded me to fully commit to transferring over to barefoot running and realise that as homo sapiens, we are literally designed to do this thanks to evolution. This was something that I felt so passionately about sharing, I wrote a blog about this.

If running is your thing then I would definitely say you should read this book to open your eyes to some aspects of running that you may never have thought about. But I would also recommend this book to someone who isn’t into running. Not only does it give you some history about our species but the insight into the author’s story and the contributing factors may be something that could unlock your running issues.

It’s time to get back in tune with the way we were built to run. Once you’ve read this book, you’ll never look at running the same again!

Just hit the link on the left, get the book and change your running forever!

KING – Elliot Hulse with Chris Baynard

YouTube; what a weird and wonderful place on the internet. A place in which many a person has invested hour after hour into watching videos to procrastinate, listen to music or used it for something actually useful, and I am definitely guilty of all of the above. In amongst the no doubt hundreds of hours that I have wasted on YouTube, there are a few benefits that I have gained from it and one of those is the discovery of Elliott Hulse and his two channels, which I watched mainly between the period of 2010 and 2015. The videos that these channels produced gave a lot to my young self, with Strength Camp providing plenty of invaluable tips concerning training, whilst Yo Elliott! provided guidance on a habitual and spiritual level, and how to deal with certain life situations commonly experienced.

It was in 2015 where Elliott and one of his partners, Chris Baynard, decided to publish a book called KING: The IV Layer Approach To Becoming The Strongest Version of Yourself.

This is a holistic book that covers, as you would expect from the title, four ways on making sure that you are the strongest version of yourself, comprising of the following areas:

Neuromuscular Strength – This is the probably the thing that Elliott and Chris are known for when it comes to their YouTube content, giving an in-depth chapter into all these training from periodicity to training principles to correction of imbalances.
Physiological Strength – This takes deeper dive into physical health but through the means of diet and the various rhythms of nature.
Energetic Strength – This section takes a deep dive into the psyche, mental wellbeing and the work of Carl Jung on the archetypes of a person.
Life Mastery – Ways on establishing your vision and core values, and then embarking on the path you set yourself to follow your dream.

The topics discussed in the book are spoken about to a thorough enough level for someone to start implementing the teachings into their life. However, one of the great things about it is that it invites the reader to be able to further research the topics, giving references to the studies and books used to write the book as well as talking about the professors and authors who championed pieces of work in each area.

This book, though may be difficult to find a copy due to it being a limited edition print, is a great book for someone no matter what their ambitions may be. Giving a holistic approach to becoming the strongest version of yourself, it allows you work on things in all areas of your life to make sure you are the happiest, healthiest and a more grounded person as well as physically strong, that’s in control with their life. If you can find a copy, I would implore to give this book a read!

Though there are plenty of other books that I have read across the years, these four books are what I see as the stand out ones that I feel have actually changed my life, though may sound like an exaggeration, as they have changed the way I see things, the way I think about things and have in some way changed an aspect of my life, such as diet, training and habits. Because of that reason, I would implore you to pick any combination of them to invest in which in turn would mean investing in yourself.

That finishes up another blog from me. Something slightly different to the travel stories however, I enjoyed writing this one as much as reading the books mentioned. I want to use this platform to also share what has shaped my life and the accompanying lifestyle it has brought about, which is what inspired this one. Hopefully you enjoyed it and took something away from it.

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