What’s On Your Nightstand?
If you asked the uber successful which books influenced them, or which books they would like to have if stranded on a deserted island, you would discover that business books seldom made the cut. So if you would like to use highly accomplished people as your role models or mentors, and have your nightstand looking like theirs, it makes sense that you would read the kinds of books that they read, to better understand them and their motivations. We are what we read.
And if you asked those same people what it takes to become successful, continuous learning would rank highly on their lists. And the learning they are talking about is not necessarily formal learning like taking a course, it includes learning from books.
Over the past several years I have interviewed over 100 accomplished people, and asked them to name a book which had a profound impact on their life. And, more recently, I have been asking for desert island book. Brian Johnson, David Gray, Rodger Harding, Don Martelli and Dennie Theodore share their five desert island books.
If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences.
Brian Johnson
Current mood says I’d bring:
- The PhilosophersNotes Workbook – Imagine 1,000 of the best “Big Ideas” from 100 of the world’s greatest self-development books neatly organized into 100 separate 6-page mini-books put into a sexy workbook—turn to any page and get inspired with a Big Idea that can literally change your life. If I could only take one book, it’d be this one.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson’s collected essays – Emerson is my hero. He’s pretty much the great-great-grandfather of the self-development movement and his integration of eastern and western philosophy is amazing.
- “The How of Happiness” by Sonja Lyubomirsky – This is, in my opinion, the best, most comprehensive yet totally readable look at what we know scientifically works to boost our happiness (and why we should care). I didn’t have a “what one book would you recommend book” before this one.
- “A Joseph Campbell Companion” – I love Campbell. Gotta have some of his mojo with me on the island and if I could somehow bind everything he’s written in a big collected works book, I’d take that.
- “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success” by Deepak Chopra. This is one of the books that catalyzed a big change in my life so I’d bring it, too. Another asterisk here that if there was some way to put everything he’s written into a big book, I’d want that.
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