The 3 Best Personal Development Books for Losing Weight
Every once in a while you read a couple books, or a book, and it really does change the way you live forever.
I realized that that is the most cliché thing you’ve ever heard, but as a guy who reads about two books a week, I can tell you – there really are some books that are lasting, timeless success principles.
Today, I want to share with you three personal development books that can not only help you become more successful, but also you can apply them to losing weight or getting fitter as multipliers.
The 3 Best Personal Development Books for Losing Weight
3 Best Personal Development Books For Losing Weight
The first book made not only a very big difference in the way I live, but also the way I approach success in my health (relationships, finances, and more too).
This one is by Earle Nightingale, and there are three in particular:
Lead the field is the one I would primary recommend since it’s the most concise and the most well-organized.
Lead the field is compromised of twelve primary ideas to help you become more successful and/or the best in the world at what you do.
Chances are, you don’t really care about being the best in the world at something, but if you want those timeless success principles that go right along with weight loss too, that’s the essence.
The essence of my entire message here is simple: if you approach yourself with the perspective of “let me figure out the core success habits,” dieting becomes a lot easier.
A lot of the people I see that go through my programs or email me fail repeatedly because we get stuck changing the diet, the book, the tactic, the guru, without changing who we are.
For example, If I’m not disciplined, there’s no book in the world that’s going to be able to help me get fitter if I can’t even stick with a plan.
The reason why I loved Lead the Field so much, is because he talks about this story of the CEO of a steel factory who had a productivity meeting with someone who told him, “I can improve your productivity quite a lot, virtually overnight.”
The Ivy Productivity and Results System
Here’s how the story goes:
He says, “here’s what I want you to do.”
Tonight, before you come to work tomorrow, you’re going to list out the five things that result in the biggest bottom line in your business, that you personally have to do.
What are the five tasks that you have to do that produce the best results?
Then you’re going to number them from 1-5 on that piece of paper, and you’re going to essentially label them and order them from most important and difficult, to least important.
So you start with the most difficult one, and then the least difficult one last.
As the day goes on, you go through that list, but if you can’t find yourself completing the entire list every single day, then you need to remove one item from the list so that you can ensure you make it through it.
If you have five things listed for the day and you have eight hours to work, and you only go through three, then drop it down to four items.
If it’s dealing with your weight loss plan or your fitness, what are the five biggest things that result in the outcome you want?
It could be cooking, the gym, meditating and two other things.
So you write down the hardest first – let’s say exercise, since it takes the longest time here.
Maybe number two is cooking.
So those are the core things you write down every single day, and that becomes your own page productivity plan.
Book #2: The Dip, by Seth Godin
One thing that people don’t tell you about going after goals is that everybody goes into the dip at some point.
The dip is the middle, ugly, frustrating phase where maybe you’ve gotten a little bit of results, and then you’re just crashing and stuck and frustrated.
It’s messy, results are up and down, you gain weight and then you lose weight, your book is flowing, then it’s not flowing, maybe you saved a lot of money, and then a medical emergency happened.
It’s that middle phase of going after a goal, like you have 50 pounds to lose, you’re somewhere in the middle and you’re just thinking, “ugh” as you plug along and figure it out.
The dip is really a book – first, to expect the dip, because it almost always happens – and number two, to understand that there is a point after going after some goals where it makes sense to quit.
There is a point after going after a goal where it sometimes makes sense to change your strategy on the way.
The dip really impacted me because it reminds you that everyone struggles to go after goals, and that the dip is natural.
The second thing was that you should really consistently be thinking of when to quit and keep going (in the sense of changing strategies).
Are you getting the results you want or need to get to where you are? You could just be in the dip, or maybe it’s time to switch gears.
Book #3: The Greatest Salesman in the World
The third book is by Og Mandino – The Greatest Salesman in the World
Now, don’t be fooled, it has nothing to do with business or selling, but it’s framed as an allegory.
I don’t fully know Og’s story, but the true story about him is one wintry morning after exiting the military, doing door to door insurance sales, he decided he was going to kill himself.
As he a last ditch effort to ward off this depression, he found himself in the library reading books on motivation, success, and spirituality.
Later, he synthesized many of those lessons into what are essentially daily affirmations.
In this book in particular, each chapter is essentially one affirmation, and you use that affirmation every single day for an entire monthlong period.
The reason why I love it is because when you repeat the affirmations, they put you in this inspired, energized state for the entire day, which I found really helped me get through that ugly phase in life.
Here’s an example:
“Since the beginning of time, never has there been another with my mind, my heart, my eyes, my ears, my hands, my hair, mouth, none that came before, none that lived today, and none that come tomorrow can walk and talk and move and think exactly like me. All men are my brothers, yet I am different from each. I am a unique creature.”
There are all these affirmations related to persisting until you succeed, to never quit, to ask for spiritual support, and so on. I found it really fascinating.
Most of all, I found them to be really mentally and emotionally helpful when you’re feeling discouraged when you’re going through the goal-achievement process.
So not only are they practical and physical, they’re also going into the realm of the spiritual.
What Other Books Would You Add To This List?
Are there any other books you would add to this list?
If so, what are they?
Tell me below.
-Alex
