Three Great Lessons I learned From Hundreds of Self-Help Books
I love to read. And one of the areas that I read about is self-help.
Why?
My main reason is that I believe we are all a work in progress. We should be constantly learning and adapting to the world around us. This is key to our survival and thriving.
There are three lessons that I would like to share with you that I have learned over the last 10+ years. You would think I could compile a long list BUT you would be wrong. If I had more than three, they would be minor level improvements.
The first lesson I learned from self-help books is the need for meditation. You will find that some of the most successful people are taut it as a game-changer for them. It is a chicken or the egg problem. Are they successful because they meditate or are they successful and then they meditate? I am sure you could find examples of both.
I do it but not as regularly as I should. I have an app Headspace that I have used over the last several years. The basic program has 10 meditations and I cycle through them. Those require me to sit down and relax.
My main meditation is done through breathing in through one of my nostrils for 15 seconds, holding it for 15 seconds, breathing out for 15 seconds out of the other nostril, and holding my breath for 15 seconds. The seconds are not precise and most often my breathing out is twice as long but I allow my body to dictate the right amount of time for each piece of the cycle.
This mediation is what I do several times a day for a few minutes. It is a game-changer because I can calm my nervousness and monkey mind very quickly.
The second lesson is the importance of sleep. I do not know if I need 7 hours or 8 hours but often I try to go to sleep by 10 and wake up by 5 to 6. My body does this automatically. Sometimes if I am stressed I might get up at 2 or 3 because I noticed my mind is working too actively and the quality of my sleep is not good. The key is to get good quality sleep so that you feel rested when you get up and refreshed.
The third lesson is journaling. It is a tool that some people use but not the majority. When I talk about journaling I am not necessarily talking about writing down that you went to the grocery store. What I consider journaling is to consider the challenges, opportunities, and lessons that the day presented and you extracted from it.
Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor who kept a journal with his meditation(lessons). It still survives today and lessons in it are worth gold. You should be extracting those types of lessons of the good and the bad events and hopefully, you will see them coming at you in slow motion in the future.
I have not been very good at journaling. I start and stop after a few days. In order to get the benefit of this idea, I created a 5-year journal. Each page is divided into 5 and I plan to capture my daily meditation. Next year I will review what I thought was the lesson from it and see if I apply it.
I am excited about my 5-year journal. I believe it will be a game-changer for me and I hope you consider purchasing it for yourself.
I believe that we don’t capture our lessons and we seldom force ourselves to review them. This journal will force you to go back to the same page after a year to review.
Those are the three big ones. One more I would add is how you start your day is vital to how you end the day. Having a morning routine where you get up rested, meditate, and journal your lessons will set you up for success.
My four cents…
The journal can be purchased from Amazon at
