1. Mick Jagger and Reference Points
   Your standards decide your success. Mick Jagger didn't become great by comparing himself to average people. Raise your reference point. If you hang around mediocre, you'll become mediocre.

2. Business Is Relationships
   People don't do business with companies, they do business with people they trust. Be kind, be helpful, remember names. Relationships are the real currency.

3. Life Lessons from SpongeBob SquarePants
   Be enthusiastic like a kid. Love what you do, stay positive even on bad days, and find joy in simple work. Attitude is everything.

4. How to Be a Happier Human
   Happiness is not outside, it's inside. Stop chasing things. Gratitude, giving, and being present is what makes you truly happy.

5. Work Hard, Get Lucky
   Luck is not random. The harder you work, the luckier you get. Show up early, stay late, prepare more. Luck finds people who are ready.

6. Know Your Genius
   Everyone has a genius zone. Find what you're naturally great at, and double down on it. Stop trying to fix your weaknesses, amplify your strengths.

7. Listen Twice as Much as You Speak
   You have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Great leaders listen. When you truly listen, people trust you, and you learn faster.

8. Your Customers Buy with Their Hearts
   People don't buy products, they buy feelings. Make them feel valued, understood, and special. Logic makes them think, emotion makes them buy.

9. Learn to Say No
   You can't do everything. Every yes to a small thing is a no to your big dream. Protect your time. Say no to distractions so you can say yes to greatness.

10. Burn Your Boats
    Don't keep a backup plan that lets you quit. When you commit fully, you find a way to win. Burn the boats, there's no going back.

My biggest takeaway from 11-20: Greatness is about people, focus, and full commitment. Work hard, listen more, and stop keeping an escape route.

This resonates so well. Incrementally chipping away at massive challenge seems less scary than tackling it all at once head on.

I read the first 10 chapters of The Greatness Guide. Here's what I learned:

1. I'm No Guru
   Greatness is not about being perfect. It's about being honest, doing the work, and sharing what you learn along the way.

2. Harvey Keitel and Windows of Opportunity
   Opportunities don't last forever. When a window opens, you have to jump. Waiting for the perfect moment is how you miss it.

3. Nothing Fails Like Success
   Success can make you lazy. The moment you think you've made it, you stop growing. Stay hungry, even when you're winning.

4. Be a Rock Star at Work
   Don't just do your job, own it. Bring energy, passion and excellence to even the smallest task. People notice.

5. Your Days Define Your Life
   You don't build a great life in a year. You build it one day at a time. How you spend today is how you spend your life.

6. Drink Coffee with Gandhi
   Spend time with people who inspire you, even if it's just in your mind. Read their books, learn their habits. Your company decides your future.

7. Get Some Skin in the Game
   Don't be a spectator. Take risks. Commit. Put yourself out there. You can't win if you don't play.

8. Be Into Breezes
   Slow down and notice the small moments. Greatness is not just hustle, it's also enjoying the breeze, the coffee, the conversation.

9. Make Time to Think
   You are paid to think, not just to do. Schedule quiet time to plan, reflect and dream. No thinking = no growth.

10. Leadership Begins on the Extra Mile
    Leaders do more than expected. The extra mile is never crowded. Do one more thing, give one more effort, and you stand out.

My biggest takeaway: Greatness is not a talent, it's a daily choice.

sometimes we read book and nothing much happens after you are done reading. But then there are books that will push you out of your comfort zone. which book did this for you?

I read this a long ago, bought after seeing so much hype. My friends who've read this found as worth reading, but I felt kind of opposite. The advices felt like too obvious and repetitive. There were pages where the book made me feel like self improvement is a personal responsibility alone. Does the book promises more originality and transformation than it delivers? The whole idea of the book is "If you want to achieve something, break it into smaller tasks and then actually do them" which I completely agree with but don't think it justifies the hype.

Is there anyone here who thinks genuinely, changed their lives by applying the ideas in Atomic Habits, not just by reading it?

I turned my notes from Leaders Eat Last into five slides. Which of these ideas has held true where you work?

I completed my book in just 4 months. Anyone else who knows and read this book.

Summary, this book is for those people who have anxiety, and thinking too much.

One time thought is coming then chain of thought are created from one thought to another.

I feel like I’m a slow thinker, and a lot of the time I understand or think of things a few seconds later. It honestly annoys me, so I’d like to improve my thinking and reaction speed. I’d really appreciate any book recommendations.

They are nonsense and they often follow these steps in the creation of said book.

1. ESTP or ESTJ is young

   (mbti types)

2. Makes mistakes

3. Grows up and fixes them

along the way

Number 4:

1. Writes a book about it when they are older and wiser and includes lessons of "truths I learned from xyz" that make it sound like they have discovered a truth others haven't when all they did was learn how the world worked as they had more life experiences. The lessons they write are lessons that everyone learns learns throughout life.

So no, their books aren't actually helping. It's just their story.

So, here's the problem. I have a lot of self help books, audiobooks, PDFs, and Epubs. And I've actually read/listened to many of them. I even had the classical education to go with the reading. But my execution was terrible. I knew what I should do, but I just didn't do it. You can blame the PTSD or the 3 TBIs and loss of executive function or the person in the mirror, but I wanted to change the fact that the material just did not stick in my brain or that the behaviors I read about did not become automatic.

So I started experimenting. What if the problem wasn’t that I needed to read more? What if I needed to rehearse what I’d already learned? Take Marcus Aurelius. I don’t need to read Meditations for the tenth time to understand that I should separate what I control from what I don’t. I already knew that. The problem is remembering to live that way when life falls apart. Same with Frankl. Same with Aristotle. Same with Franklin, Jung, Nietzsche, Musashi, Bruce Lee and a bunch of others. Knowing isn’t the problem. Automatic execution is. The Medium is. Most of these books were written in a dry expository style. They’re designed to explain ideas. But what if the same ideas were rewritten using NLP, hypnotic patterns, repetition, and multiple audio layers, not merely to explain the ideas, but to repeatedly rehearse the patterns of thought behind them? Would this make the material stick better?

Take the Stoic idea that other people’s actions are outside your control. Reading it gives you the concept. But I wanted to rehearse the response: “When another person acts badly, I immediately separate their behavior from my response. Their behavior belongs to them. My judgment, my actions, and my character belong to me. I return my attention to what is mine to control.” That’s the difference I was experimenting with. The book teaches me the principle. The audio repeatedly rehearses actually using it.

Did I create the Great Books on Steroids? No. But I did make them more accessible. I did make them use hypnotic pacing, NLP language patterns, and psychological techniques that force your brain to model and rehearse these patterns of thought.

I started doing this with Marcus Aurelius, Frankl, Aristotle, Franklin, Jung, Nietzsche, Musashi, Bruce Lee and others. Eventually those experiments became something I call Mastery. Instead of summarizing a thinker or giving you another audiobook about him, I try to extract the useful mental models and turn them into something you repeatedly practice.

Full disclosure: I eventually turned these experiments into a commercial product. If you’re interested in seeing what I created, this is the Mastery collection:
https://www.genieus.art/rmastery.html

That small change in perspective is called inversion.

And it might be one of the most useful thinking tools you can apply to your career, money, relationships, business, or even everyday decisions.

Because sometimes the fastest way to find the right path isn't to search harder for success.

It's to identify the things that would almost guarantee failure—and stop doing them.

Sorry for the long post. I tried compressing it as much as possible. It couldn’t be made smaller than this. 

A few days ago I finished the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman. I stopped just after finishing the chapter contents - conclusions and notes remain as of now. 

I found the book very interesting and catchy most of the time. However, it becomes boring and slow at times. I wanted to talk about it with someone, but no one around me has read it. Therefore, I searched on Reddit to see what people are saying about it. It was to my surprise that I found an equal amount of praise and hate about the book (hate, I found, a little more, tbh). People claim it’s surely a cash grab, it’s more of economics than psychology, it’s outdated (published 15 years ago), a lot of the theories, experiments and their results mentioned failed to replicate their results. Some claims even mentioned that 50 percent of the book is completely wrong. 

At the time of reading it, I found everything coherent. Everything looked very reasonable to me - most probably because it was my first psychology read. It means that (if I have to say in terms of the book) I have got theory-induced blindness.

There are multiple requests and questions in my mind. I am afraid that all that reading is in vain.

1. If I have read many things wrong in the book, then what book should I read next, which is up to date? Like, I am looking for something which can have a title TFaS 2.0 - but it should correct (at least some of) misconceptions and wrong theories, at the same time help me dive deep into the subject, learn new concepts. Maybe a book with a completely new philosophy (or approach) that can shatter my newly formed beliefs about the human brain into pieces? 

2. Is there any place where I can find a list of wrong arguments, statements and theories which failed to replicate written in the book? Something like any article or a detailed report or modified version of the book? 

3. I also want to know how Kahneman responded to the criticisms of the book? Has he written to answer those? 

4. I said above “At the time of reading it, I found everything coherent.” Does it mean that psychology isn’t for me (because I wasn’t able to notice that something is wrong)? Btw, I am not into formal studies of the subject, but I like reading about it.

5. If you have read it (which most probably you have, since you are still reading the post), is there anything which you understood to the extent that you are able to apply it in your daily life (especially in finance)? I personally liked the ‘intuitions vs formulas’ and I try to find applications of it in my life. Although I found none in my life, I am able to observe its applications in some areas: for example, interviewers giving scores on multiple parameters instead of an overall impression of the candidate. Besides this, I don’t have anything which I can recall immediately (I can, if I actively engage my system 2 in the task). I feel like I have learned nothing significant from the book, and the negative reviews made me feel much more sad about my decision to read the book. 

6. In future, I have to pick up any book, where can I find genuine criticism about it? Best website? Or Best youtube channel? Or best subreddit? Whatever is available.

It is short. Each chapter is 2 to 3 pages. No fluff. Every page has a line that reads like a slap you needed.

Six of them stayed with me.

Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. Galloway says emotional extremes are always lying to you. The win that feels life-changing will normalize within a week. The loss that feels catastrophic will fade within a month. Your brain is a drama engine and the first skill of a happy life is discounting its projections in both directions.

The definition of rich is having passive income greater than your burn rate. Not a big house. Not a title. Not a net worth number. Rich is when the money coming in without your effort exceeds the money going out. Everything before that point is just a job with better furniture. Most people with high incomes are high earners with high expenses, which is not wealth. It is a treadmill with a nicer view.

Sweating is the closest thing to a wonder drug. Galloway says if you could bottle the effects of intense exercise and sell it as a pill it would be the most prescribed medication in history. Reduces anxiety, depression, inflammation, cognitive decline, and all-cause mortality. Free. Available immediately. Most people do not take it because it is uncomfortable. His mental health is directly proportional to his exercise consistency. Mine is too. The weeks I skip training are the weeks everything else starts sliding.

You will be defined by the moments you show up for people when it is not convenient. Not when it is easy. Not when it is reciprocal. When it costs you something. The friend in the hospital at 6am. The call you take during a busy week because someone needs you. Character is revealed exclusively through inconvenient moments.

Professional success is the reward for the time you did not spend with your kids. This is the line that haunts the book. Galloway writes about missing his sons' early years because he was building companies. He won professionally during the period he lost personally. The career recovers from a slow year. The relationship with a child who grew up without you does not.

Love is not a feeling. It is a series of actions repeated so often they become invisible. The romantic version of love is a marketing campaign. Real love is driving carpool. Showing up to the thing you do not want to attend. Listening when you are tired. Choosing this person again on a boring Wednesday for the four thousandth time. Not because it is exciting. Because you decided to.

The book will not give you a system. It gives you a set of corrections from someone who built the spreadsheet, ran the numbers, and discovered that the variables he neglected were the ones that mattered most.

200 pages. Reads in a sitting. Hits hardest if you are in the early-career stretch where sacrifice feels noble and the costs feel theoretical. They are not theoretical. They are accumulating.

If you want to go deeper on what Galloway lays out in The Algebra of Happiness, BeFreed turns it into a personalized audio breakdown built around your specific learning goal. What makes it useful for a book like this is the insight extraction feature. It pulls out the core ideas around passive income versus burn rate, the compounding cost of absence, and love as repeated action and organizes them around the specific trade-offs you are currently making, so you are not just absorbing field notes from someone else's regret but stress-testing your own ledger before the costs become irreversible. For another lens on the same territory, Die With Zero by Bill Perkins is worth going through next. It takes Galloway's warning about optimizing for the wrong variables and builds an entire financial and life philosophy around it, arguing that the goal is not to accumulate as much as possible but to spend your time and money on experiences at the right life stage before the window closes, which means reading both together gives you Galloway's honest accounting of what late-stage regret actually looks like and Perkins's framework for making decisions now that your future self will not have to grieve.

if anyone is interested on more books that could help or improve their lives at r/selfimprovement_books we share insightful tips like this. We are people who aim to continuee sharing wisdom and lessons from books. If that sounds good to you consider joining us.