10 Best Business Books That Will Develop Your Success Mindset
We had a lot of fun creating this reading list of best business books for our fabulous readers at Everyday Power Blog.
It was my 6th-grade teacher, Mr. Bryan Devine, who was the first to instill a love of reading in my psyche as a young child.
Fast forward a few decades, and we’ve built a culture at Red Stag Fulfillment that not only encourages, but requires consistent reading within our management team.
In the same way that our company aggressively pursues continuous improvement in our fulfillment operations, we equally value improvements for the individual.
Here are 10 best business books whose concepts reach far beyond the boardroom (and here are 10 more books on how to become a millionaire).
Business Books That Will Develop Your Success Mindset
Great by Choice, How to Manage Through Chaos outlines a scientific, data-driven approach to discovering and proving how some leaders thrive through—not on—chaos.
In the book, chaos is defined by instability—particularly in the first decade of this century when terrorists attacked, wars ensued, markets crashed, and technology powered forth with relentless advances we had to catch up to.
Some of us, including companies, didn’t just survive all this—we thrived on it.
My favorite concept explained in the book that we can all apply to tough situations is “bullets before cannonballs.”
It’s strikingly simple: “wise leaders take small steps before making giant leaps.”
Bullets are cheap, easy to make, and easy to shoot.
By testing out “bullets” or ideas in a low-risk way, you will lose less in desperate times.
You also get the chance to see what worked and what didn’t before you break out the big guns—or cannons.
Use this in business and life to leverage more out of tough situations, and know when it’s time to fire a big investment.
Quotes from this business book:
“When [what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be best in the world at and what drives your economic engine] come together, not only does your work move toward greatness but so does your life. For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is complicated to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then, you might gain that rare tranquility that comes from knowing that you’ve had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time here on this earth has been well spent and that it mattered.”
― James C. Collins
“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.”
― James C. Collins
“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”
― James C. Collins
This is a book that’s been touted as a life-changer because it does more than explain how the “new rich” are doing it.
This book takes you by the shoulders and shakes you—waking you up from your 9-to-5 nightmare—and shows you how you can live your financially stable dreams.
Quotes from this business book:
“Being busy is a form of laziness–lazy thinking and indiscriminate action” might be one of the best takeaways from this read.
Ferris explains that it’s about getting away from the busywork and maximizing your time and potential by focusing on the bigger picture.
I think we could all use this reminder in our daily business and personal lives.
“For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.”
― Timothy Ferriss
“But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.”
― Timothy Ferriss
“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
― Timothy Ferriss
Good to Great, Why Some Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t is the summation of a major scientific study incorporating 1,435 companies.
However, this book isn’t just analysis—it’s groundbreaking research that’s tearing down barriers and debunking myths.
What Collins figured out is that money can’t buy greatness.
Instead, it’s: “Disciplined Thought, Disciplined People, and Disciplined Action” that leads to not just successful, but truly great companies.
Collins explains that it’s not extraordinary moments, but down-to-earth pragmatics and commitment from everyone on the ladder that makes a company great.
So, get your head out of the clouds, because the answer to greatness is right here in front of you.
Quotes from this business book:
“Think of the transformation as a process of buildup followed by breakthrough, broken into three broad stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. Within each of these three stages, there are two key concepts, shown in the framework and described below. Wrapping around this entire framework is a concept we came to call the flywheel, which captures the gestalt of the entire process of going from good to great.”
― James C. Collins
“Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.”
― James C. Collins
“The good-to-great companies made a habit of putting their best people on their best opportunities, not their biggest problems. The comparison companies had a penchant for doing just the opposite, failing to grasp the fact that managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great. There is an important”
― James C. Collins
This book is an inspirational powerhouse.
Packed with sharp points and secrets to success, Think & Grow Rich helps you realize that you’ve actually had the power inside you all along.
So pick it up and read it; then reread it, because the principles of this book are timeless and sure to help you out of any rut.
“If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you like to win but think you can’t, it’s almost certain you won’t.”
Take this advice to heart, and then run with it.
Quotes from this business book:
The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.”
― Napoleon Hill
“You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.”
― Napoleon Hill
“Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do. More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them.”
― Napoleon Hill
More amazing business books
Set in the inviting tone of a story, rather than a manifesto, the Seven Laws of Higher Prosperity challenges you to examine the characters at hand to figure out which one you are, and why success may be eluding you.
This book captures the heart, intrigues the soul, and ignites the mind.
Inside the pages, you’ll be inspired by lessons on life and finance that will change your outlook, and hopefully your actions.
This book is a mixture of your spiritual guru and your wise, accountant friend telling you how to pull it together, in an inspirational way, of course.
If you enjoyed your socioeconomics classes, then you’re sure to enjoy The Science of Success.
Renowned businessman, Charles Koch, introduces and explains his principles of Market Based Management (MBM) to help readers develop a new way of thinking that will help them make good decisions in life and business.
Business books such as this one are always instant classics.
Based on the “Science of Human Action” (vision, virtue, knowledge, decision rights, and incentive), this is by no means a how-to book.
Koch instead takes his readers on an observational and philosophical journey to see what has fascinated him and shaped his mindset.
This is the guy whose mind you want to get into.
Quotes from this business book:
“Those who favor a “grand plan” over experimentation fail to understand the role that failed experiments play in creating progress in society. Failures quickly and efficiently signal what doesn’t work, minimizing waste and redirecting scarce resources to what does work. A market economy is an experimental discovery process, in which business failures are inevitable and any attempt to eliminate them only ensures even greater failures.”
― Charles G. Koch
“My lessons weren’t specific to business, but they were fundamental values—integrity, humility, responsibility, work ethic, entrepreneurship, a thirst for knowledge, the desire to make a contribution, and concern for others—that profoundly influenced the way I do business and live my life to this day.”
― Charles G. Koch
“To succeed, a business must not only develop profit and loss measures, but also determine their underlying drivers, in order to understand what is adding value, what is not, and why. This knowledge informs its vision and strategies, leads to innovations, creates opportunities to eliminate waste, and guides continuous improvement.”
― Charles G. Koch
Kiyosaki’s book provides a unique perspective that will help you think differently about your finances, and education itself.
You’ll walk away from this book still gripping the last pages, and clutching onto the new, but simple idea that: “The poor and middle class work for money.
The rich have money work for them.”
You’ll soon learn that it’s all about assets and letting your money work for you, instead of working for it.
You’ll also put it down cursing not just our education system, but our society, for putting the value on the now rather than the future.
Okay, I’m not giving any more away.
Pick up this best-seller and see for yourself.
Quotes from this business book:
“In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki
“Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki
“You’re only poor if you give up. The most important thing is that you did something. Most people only talk and dream of getting rich. You’ve done something.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki
A real guide, and the third in Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad” trilogy, this book aims to guide readers to financial freedom with active investing.
Once again using the stories of his main protagonists, Rich Dad and Poor Dad, Kiyosaki helps readers realize their full potential by understanding the basic rules for investing.
Not a guarantee, but definitely a guide to achieving financial freedom, this book helps us laymen understand how and why the rich are getting richer.
Quotes from this business book:
“He said it was better to work years at creating an asset rather than to spend your life working hard for money to create someone else’s asset.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki
“As Winston Churchill said, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki
“It’s not what we say out loud that determines our lives. It’s what we whisper to ourselves that has the most power.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki
Did you sleep through economics in school?
Or did it just go over your head?
Well, picking up this book is going to help fill in the gaps about the free market.
This book has been hailed as the saving grace for us laymen the world over, teaching us about the free market and how political actions influence it.
Spoiler alert: the one lesson is that economics is more than policy or action, but how its consequences affect us all.
This insightful read will help you not only better understand the free market, but our society and the actions we take as well.
Quotes from this business book:
“When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.”
― Henry Hazlitt
“Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. It is the proper sphere of government to create and enforce a framework of law that prohibits force and fraud. But it must refrain from specific economic interventions. Government’s main economic function is to encourage and preserve a free market. When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: “Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.” It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.”
― Henry Hazlitt
“This is perhaps as good a place as any to point out that what distinguishes many reformers from those who cannot accept their proposals is not their greater philanthropy, but their greater impatience. The question is not whether we wish to see everybody as well off as possible. Among men of good will such an aim can be taken for granted. The real question concerns the proper means of achieving it. And in trying to answer this we must never lose sight of a few elementary truisms. We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces.”
― Henry Hazlitt
This book aims to create intelligent investors out of average investors by breaking down complicated jargon and providing actionable tips.
While Graham sprinkles the book with timeless inspiration, when it comes down to it, the book is about checking your emotions at the door to making sound decisions.
While this rule applies miraculously to investing, you might also find truths that you can apply elsewhere in your life.
Graham says that a disciplined approach will prevent consequential errors, and that’s sound advice I’ll take any day.
Quotes from this business book:
“An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.”
― Benjamin Graham
“In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”
― Benjamin Graham
“The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.”
― Benjamin Graham
Which business books have you read?
Books are a great source of inspiration.
They can also provide tips and strategies, and help you develop the necessary skills to be successful.
We hope the business books above will help you succeed as an entrepreneur.
We can learn a lot by reading books; so read them regularly.
Which business books have you read?
What other business books would you add to the list?
Tell us in the comment section below.
We would love to hear all about it.
The best books on Mindset and Success
If you've stepped inside a school recently, you've probably heard teachers talking about the importance of a 'growth mindset.' Here psychologist Carol Dweck , who pioneered research into this key concept, explains what it's all about and recommends books—other than her own—that shed light on it.
Could you describe the key conclusions of the research you wrote about in your book Mindset?
In my work I’ve discovered that people can have different mindsets about their talents and abilities, and that these mindsets make a big difference. Some people believe that their talents and abilities are fixed traits – they have a certain amount and that’s that. We call this a fixed mindset. But other people have a growth mindset. They believe that their talents and abilities can be developed through hard work, perseverance and mentoring.
We’ve found that when people have a fixed mindset they often shy away from challenges. For them, deficiencies are permanent and so they are afraid to reveal them. People with fixed mindsets are also not as resilient in the face of setbacks because, again, they see setbacks as impugning their underlying abilities. Challenge-seeking and resilience are key factors in success. As a result, people with fixed mindsets often don’t achieve as much in the long run.
People with a growth mindset don’t necessarily believe everyone is the same or that anyone can be Einstein, but they understand that everyone can develop their abilities and that even Einstein wasn’t Einstein until he put in decades of dedicated labour. These people see a challenge as something that helps you learn, and a setback as something that ultimately helps develop your ability. For this reason, people with a growth mindset often accomplish more in the long term.
Your work is based on a “meaning systems” approach to psychology. Please explain the theoretical context for your research and how it catalysed your interest in motivation.
Each mindset creates a whole psychological world or a “meaning system” for people. It’s called a “meaning system” because mindsets change the meaning of what happens to us. First, as I’ve suggested, the mindsets change the meaning of challenges. In a fixed mindset, a challenge is threatening because it can reveal deficiencies. In a growth mindset, a challenge is an opportunity to get better at something. Next, mindsets change the meaning of effort. Those with a growth mindset think if you have natural ability you shouldn’t need that much effort. Their belief is that things should come easily to people if they’re really smart. But those with a growth mindset understand that even geniuses have to work hard for their great discoveries and that effort, well-applied, will increase your abilities over time. Finally, mindsets change the meaning of failure. In a fixed mindset a failure is the worst thing that could happen. It discredits your ability, it’s something to run from, something to hide and even, we find in our research, to lie about. But in a growth mindset failure, while not welcome, is something you learn from. It was fascinating for me to discover that these meaning systems could have such a profound impact on people’s motivation. Once I did, I was hooked.
Your conclusions were based on careful scientific study over many years. Can you please give us an outline of the research that went into your conclusions?
I’ve conducted 40 years of rigorous research, including experiments in the laboratory and large studies in field settings. I’ve done work that looks analytically at people’s reactions to challenges and setbacks, for example students grappling with difficult school transitions and even Israelis and Palestinians addressing their conflicts. I’ve published over a hundred papers; most of them are based on multiple studies. So, all told, my students, colleagues and I have conducted hundreds of studies with many thousands of people. We also have a longstanding line of research on how well-intentioned feedback – such as praise for intelligence or talent – can create a fixed mindset and actually undermine people. That work has had many far-ranging implications that we’ve explored.
Your conclusions upended conventional wisdom about praise and many other aspects of parenting, coaching and human resource management. Why do you think Western society developed some maladaptive motivational patterns?
That’s a very interesting question. I believe the self-esteem movement distorted our intuitions. They told us that if we praised people as lavishly and frequently as possible we would give them confidence, and if they had confidence then achievement would follow. People bought this hook, line and sinker and it became common sense. Our research showed that this was wrong, but it will take a long time to retrain conventional wisdom.
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Your question raises another interesting issue. Why is the fixed mindset so common if it doesn’t serve people well? I believe this is because a fixed mindset promises to make life clearer and simpler. If we could just measure our own traits, our own abilities, with some certainty we could know what to expect of ourselves, what we’ll be good at, what we’ll achieve. And if we’re able to label other people we also know what to expect from them. So the fixed mindset offers us the illusion of being able to predict and control our lives. Unfortunately it doesn’t work as well as it promises, and instead limits what we learn and what we might accomplish. Plus it leads us to limit other people with the fixed labels we apply to them.
Could one say that many people who succeed want to think their achievements are due to extraordinary innate qualities, instead of extraordinary effort or other factors?
Yes, it feels good to think that when we succeed it means we’re inherently talented. But it turns out to be a trap. In fact, our studies show that when we tell students they’re smart when they succeed, they relish it but it puts them into a fixed mindset. They immediately reject challenges – for fear of not looking smart – and they fall apart when they make mistakes. In my ideal world, people would be less proud of having some innate gift and much prouder of having developed their abilities to the fullest.
Is there a class component to the fixed mindset? We see effort as gritty and want to succeed without breaking a sweat.
This is a very Western view, the idea that effort is unseemly, that it does not reflect well on you if you have to perspire when someone else is walking along coolly and accomplishing. In many elite schools and universities there is something called “duck syndrome”. You know how ducks appear to float along the water effortlessly but may be paddling madly beneath the surface. Like ducks, many students may hide their effort, because for them effortless success is the true measure of ability.
But seeing effort as something shameful is a liability because effort is what takes our abilities to fruition. Since I wrote Mindset I got letters from people who were child prodigies. As youngsters they were told, “You’re so smart you’ll be this, you’ll be that,” but effort was never mentioned. In fact, they thought their claim to fame was that they didn’t need effort to reach greatness. They were mistaken, and as a result they never made much of their abilities. Ability alone does not take you to success. You actually have to work for it.
Let’s begin with a book that’s sold more than a million copies since it was first published in 1963. Please tell us about How Children Fail.
This was a revolutionary book. In it John Holt talks about why students turn off their minds, why even students from privileged backgrounds and schools become intellectually numb. Why do they fail? His answer is because they’re afraid. They’re afraid of disappointing people. They’re afraid of being wrong. Then he asks: Why does this happen? Because people and schools sit in judgement of them. The reason I love this book is that this fear of failing, disappointing and being wrong is at the core of the “fixed mindset”. I read this book in graduate school and it really helped set me on my path. It fed my desire to discover the psychology behind vulnerability and its opposite, resilience.
I read this book again many years later, and I realised that Holt had redefined intelligence itself. Intelligence for him was not about the kinds of abilities we measure or about school achievement. Intelligence for him was a set of attitudes, a way of approaching challenges. Intelligent people are those who grapple boldly with challenges, people who look at their mistakes and learn from them. He was equating intelligence with a growth mindset.
Failure was the focus of your first research as a psychologist. Why?
Failure is important to understand because success involves repeated setbacks. If you don’t know how to welcome failure, grapple with it and ultimately overcome it, you’re not going to develop your potential to the fullest. I became fascinated with failure because I confess I had more of a fixed mindset early on. I often wondered: Why are some people able to roll more easily with the punches and not see setbacks as a statement about their abilities? When I first started my research I saw these kids – we would give them problems they couldn’t solve and they would say things like “I love a challenge” or “Mistakes are our friends”. I knew that they had a wisdom I had yet to achieve. I wanted to understand their mindset and figure out how I could bottle it and distribute it to more people.
Stephen J Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man is next. Please tell us about it, the fallacies it exposes and how it applies to the psychology of success.
This extraordinary book came out as I was beginning to develop my mindset theories, and it placed the work I was doing in a larger social context. Gould describes how the passion to measure, label and categorise people swept through western culture, taking different forms from craniometry to IQ testing. It talks about the origins of this mania for measuring fixed traits and the many consequences of the hierarchies it created. I saw this firsthand. I was raised in the heyday of the IQ craze. My sixth grade teacher seated us around the room in IQ order and assigned all privileges on the basis of IQ. This book made me realise the effect it had on us and I saw that my work could play a role in bringing that era to a close.
Gould also introduced me to my hero, Alfred Binet, who invented the IQ test. So why is he my hero? He developed the test to serve a truly positive social mission. He was asked by officials in the Paris public schools to create a way to identify students who weren’t profiting from the existing curriculum and to design new courses of study that could get these kids back on track. He didn’t create the test to categorise and limit children. Unfortunately, Americans thought they could use this test to measure fixed intelligence. Binet was enraged. He did not think his test measured intelligence at all, let alone fixed intelligence. But he could not stop the Americans, and we’re still grappling with the legacy of the misuse of his test.
Binet’s life was devoted to creating programmes that would increase children’s intelligence, and when he saw the fruits of these programmes he said: We have increased what constitutes the intelligence of the pupil, the capacity to learn and assimilate instruction. In other words, Binet had a true growth mindset. You can imagine how painful it was for him to see people take a tool he had developed in the service of a growth mindset and use it to propagate a fixed mindset. Both Gould and I agree that rather than measure and label people, as a society we must again focus on understanding how people really function, and how we can help them function better.
Gould’s book came under considerable criticism. Some said he set up straw men and attacked dead hypotheses. Do you feel those criticisms were fair?
I wish Gould had been arguing against dead hypotheses. Fixed mindset hypotheses are alive and well. People aren’t measuring skulls anymore, but they are still looking to tests to measure qualities they believe are innate and unchangeable.
Developing Talent in Young People is your next selection.
This book reports an in-depth study of 120 people across different fields – from music and art to science and sports – who reached the highest level of accomplishment. Bloom and his colleagues set out to understand how these people were able to develop their capacities so fully. Did they achieve because of some rare, innate qualities or did they achieve as a result of training and encouragement? Or both? His conclusions were surprising, to say the least.
What he found was that exceptional achievement seemed to come from training and perseverance, and not really from genetic endowment. In fact, he found very little relationship between early signs of aptitude and later success. Few of the great achievers studied were considered child prodigies. Very few, even by 12 years of age, showed signs that they would be the ones who went to the top.
So he asked: What commonality can you identify in their backgrounds? And he found that a key factor was the home environment. Their home environments developed a work ethic and focused on the importance of doing your best at whatever you do, across the board. Nowadays, we think we need to tell our kids that everything they do is great and that we need to make sure they aren’t struggling. But the homes that produced the really high achievers focused on work ethic and pride in doing your best. They were not pushing the child every minute or pushing them towards greatness, but they taught the child to set high standards and persevere.
The other critical thing was at least a decade of commitment to increasingly complex learning. Bloom identified stages of learning that become more and more demanding, and that take more and more commitment on the part of the individual and the people surrounding him or her. Early on it’s the parents and the mentors who support the child in approaching demanding tasks, but ultimately the individual has to assume that commitment.
Bloom also studied normal academic achievement and came to a radical conclusion. He said that after 40 years of intensive research on schools and learning he believed that “what any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn with appropriate prior and current conditions of learning”. He’s not including people with severe learning disabilities and he is acknowledging that there are people with extraordinary abilities. But other than a few percent at the top and bottom, he concluded from his research that what anyone can learn everyone can learn. That is a radical and thrilling idea. I don’t know if it’s true, but I really hope it is.
What does this book prescribe for how we should strive to coach, parent or manage personnel?
This book and subsequent work by researchers like Geoffrey Cohen shows that setting high standards and mentoring people to reach those standards is critical. My work suggests this needs to be done in the context of valuing the learning process and incremental improvement, not just pushing kids for the end product.
How do we change the meaning system behind parenting and coaching so that it’s not considered pushy to push?
Lavishly praising kids has almost become synonymous with good parenting, and in some cases good coaching. Parents believe that if they tell their kids they’re great they are equipping them with confidence and setting them up for the good life. My research shows that the wrong kind of praise – praise for intelligence – actually makes children fragile. I’ve done some work with professional sports coaches and one of them told me recently that his biggest shock in coaching was discovering how fragile professional athletes are. They’re vulnerable because their talent has been hyped. They feel they shouldn’t make mistakes and they shouldn’t need to struggle.
A few years back, a compelling magazine article came out about our research on praise. Panicked parents started forming support groups to help each other break the habit of bad praise and to help each other redefine good parenting as parenting that acknowledged, encouraged and praised kids for choosing hard tasks, working hard, overcoming obstacles and mastering new things. I tell parents to sit around the dinner table and ask, “Who’s had a fabulous struggle today?” “Who tried something really hard and learned something new?” What this does, over time, is create a new value system.
Being brilliant and perfect is not a good value system. Encouraging kids to take on challenges and work hard to achieve things is better. Teach kids that when they struggle and stretch out of their comfort zone to learn new things, that’s when their brain makes new connections, that’s when they become smarter. In a fixed mindset struggling makes you feel dumb, but in a growth mindset if you visualise your brain making all these new connections it has a dramatically different feeling.
4 Moneyball by Michael Lewis Read
Moneyball by Michael Lewis is next on your roster. This work of narrative nonfiction was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt. Why did you choose it?
My choice, I can assure you, had nothing to do with Brad Pitt. I chose Moneyball because it’s a wonderful book and because it influenced my own. Moneyball was published right before I wrote Mindset and it showed that the fixed mindset was alive and well in the world of sports. You would think that the relationship between training and skill would be utterly obvious in sports, but apparently it isn’t. Many of the baseball scouts described in the book really thought they could look at superficial physical features of baseball players and know who had the potential to be a superstar. It’s the sports version of craniometry.
The book is built around Billy Bean, who as a young man was identified by baseball scouts as the next megastar. However he was a dismal failure because of his fixed mindset. He thought everything should come naturally. He disdained practice and he got hung up about mistakes. Every time he struck out, which even the best players do most of the time, he had a temper tantrum. The book tells the story of how Billy Bean went from having a fixed mindset that doomed him as a baseball player, to having a growth mindset that made him one of the greatest general managers of all time.
So if mindset is malleable, how do we go about changing ourselves and others?
How do we go from a fixed mindset with all its fears to a growth mindset with all of its opportunities? One thing you can do is start listening to the voices in your head. Each mindset has a voice that says different things. With a fixed mindset, as you’re approaching something that’s really difficult the voice says: Watch out, maybe you’ll humiliate yourself, maybe you’ll show yourself that you’re not as smart as you think you are. But the growth mindset answers back: You’ve got to try this, you’ll never improve unless you try and everyone, after all, is a novice before they’re an expert.
As someone is struggling with a task and making mistakes, a fixed mindset voice says: See, I told you. You’re making a fool of yourself. Look at these mistakes. Obviously you’re not good at it. If you were, you wouldn’t be struggling. The growth mindset replies: It’s called learning, and learning happens over time through persistence. If you want to hold your head up high you’d better keep at it.
When someone with a fixed mindset sees someone who is really great at something, the voice says: That’s what talent looks like and you don’t have it. You’ll never be that person. In fact, studies show that people in a fixed mindset are not inspired by role models, they’re intimidated and demoralised by them. But the growth mindset voice must answer back: That’s what you could become. Learn more about how that person did it so you can do it too.
Another important thing is to understand the neuroscience behind the growth mindset – how your brain changes with learning and how you can actually shape your brain through your thoughts and actions.
That brings us to your last book, The Brain That Changes Itself. What does science teach about the heritability and measurability of mental capacity?
For me it was exciting to read this book because while my research shows a growth mindset is really good for you, this book shows that a growth mindset also has a strong basis in modern neuroscience. It illustrates, though fascinating case histories and descriptions of recent research, the amazing power of the brain to change and even to reorganise itself with practice and experience.
For over 400 years, science said that the brain and its anatomy were fixed, and even in the recent past the brain was viewed as a static organ. Scientists thought we were born with a certain brain and it more or less stayed that way until it declined with age – and if the brain was injured, too bad. In other words, people who had limitations would always have those limitations.
But in the last decades we have discovered neuroplasticity. This book describes how many brain circuits, even reflexes, are not hardwired the way we thought they were. It shows how a damaged brain can be reorganised. It presents research suggesting that if brain cells die they can sometimes be replaced. The book also gives many examples of people who had limitations and trained their way out of them – for example people who had had strokes decades before and used neuroplastic training to recover functions, or people who rewired their brains through their thoughts to alleviate obsessions or recover from traumas. Even more astonishingly, new research is showing that thinking and learning can even turn our genes on and off, further shaping the brain.
In our interventions, we teach people that the brain is like a muscle that can grow with exercise. This book demonstrates that what we teach is not just true on a metaphorical level. The brain can in fact literally change with exercise.
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Brainology, a programme you created, teaches kids how to make their minds work better. Do you have any data on its effects?
There are several ongoing studies and several completed studies showing that growth mindset interventions can raise students’ grades, achievement test scores and most important their motivation to learn. Teachers report marked changes in their students. They pay more attention in class, want more challenging work, study more, persist longer on hard tasks, turn in their homework on time, seek and learn from feedback. We are very excited about these findings.
Is it ever too late to change your mindset? What does neuroscience and your research suggest about that question?
No, it’s never too late to change your mindset. Our research and that of others has produced striking changes in mindsets in adulthood. Research has even shown that when you teach adults in their sixties through eighties a growth mindset about their memory, their memory performance improves. There are so many important avenues to explore.
10 Books to Help You Master Your Entrepreneurial Mindset
As entrepreneurs, we’re creatives, innovators, and problem solvers. We leverage our know-how and talents to create value for others. But, sometimes, the challenges we face in our businesses don’t actually have anything to do with the products or services we offer. Instead, it’s our brain that needs some work and that begins with mastering our entrepreneurial mindset.
You may have the best idea on the planet, but if your brain is flooded with doubt or fear, turning your business into a success is going to be an uphill battle.
Running a successful business takes accountability, confidence, decisiveness, resilience, and a little humility. Depending on the type of person you are, not all of these things are going to come naturally. Like any other business skill you learn, you may need to work on these on an ongoing basis to ensure your mind is ready for the success you crave.
As someone who is all too familiar with some of the challenges that go along with having an entrepreneurial mindset, reading business books has always been my go-to. Finding authors who speak to the demands of being an entrepreneur and how to overcome some of the areas I need to work on has been tremendously helpful.
To help you through the struggle of mastering your entrepreneurial mindset, I’ve put together a list of ten books that should be added to your reading list.
10 Books to Help You Master Your Entrepreneurial Mindset
Wouldn’t it be amazing if everyone would actually TALK about things when they’re a mess?
For some reason, we’re all too often married to the idea that we must keep up a front that everything is fine — even when it really isn’t. We convince ourselves that nobody else is dealing with the same things we are or that we are an imposter and have no business doing what we do. Those are just big fat lies our brain tells us.
We can try and ignore those inner voices, but until we face them head on and create strategies to deal with them we’re likely to repeat the same patterns time and again.
R.E.S.E.T. Your Mindset shares the stories of real women who have done their own work to reset and explores how we can conquer our own common mindset issues.
(Full disclosure — I am featured in this book and share my own mindset issues I had to overcome.)
How we think about ourselves and our own talents and abilities matters. The stories we create about what we can and can’t do can, in fact, stifle our growth and limit our thinking about what’s possible.
Dr. Carol S. Dweck conducted decades of research on this concept, and what she found was that people who have a fixed mindset and think they’re only capable of limited things are less likely to flourish. Conversely, people who have a growth mindset and believe skills can be developed will likely see greater success.
Dweck also found that people can use this growth mindset to foster accomplishments in those they influence.
This book pushes you to question your own thinking about what you’re capable of. We all have our list of things we think we can’t do — but what if we’re wrong?
Most of us have an internal monologue that starts when we’re feeling doubt. We tell ourselves we aren’t good enough, we don’t deserve what we have, and we’re only successful because of luck or good timing.
What’s so incredible about these thought patterns is they don’t discriminate, and women in ALL careers often feel like imposters. The problem is viewing feedback as criticism and proof that we’re less than. We overcompensate by trying to be perfect, or we hide and don’t share our opinions.
These mindset issues can be so stifling that they undermine our ability to shine as our true selves.
In this book, Young shares anecdotes and advice to get to the root of the imposter syndrome so that we can recognize it when it happens and create new thought patterns that are more productive.
Issues with money mindset are a special kind of beast. We all need money — and want more of it — and how we were raised to view money can have a deep impact on us into adulthood.
Jen Sincero went from being broke to traveling the world in just a few years, and it all started with tackling the fears that kept financial success out of her reach.
To start to master your money mindset, you have to figure out what’s holding you back, so you can kick those fears and doubts to the curb. Learning how to relate to money in a new way, and understanding how we can shape our own reality when it comes to money means we now have the ability to create wealth.
By understanding your limiting beliefs about money, you can begin to shift your mindset to one of prosperity and success.
If there’s one buzzword we all know from the world of entrepreneurs, it’s “hustle.”
Everyone is expected to go-go-go 24/7, with the road to burnout being paved with good intentions.
That’s why you need to read Chillpreneur. It’s time to sit back, take a deep breath, and start letting go of the perfectionism that keeps us burning the candle at both ends.
Denise Duffield-Thomas is a money mindset coach known for her reassuring and practical advice. In this book, she encourages people to work less and earn more by finding a business model that is suited to your unique personality.
It’s time to ditch the hustle that keeps us tied to our desks, and learn how to create financial independence in a way that leaves time for you to live the rest of your life to the fullest.
We all have our limits. Or at least, we think we do — especially when it comes to what we think we’re capable of achieving.
Most entrepreneurs are probably familiar with this feeling — we shy away from doing something in our business because we think we don’t have the ability to make it happen (aka we’ve hit our “upper limit”), and that belief stops us from thinking bigger.
By looking for patterns in your behavior and belief system, you can challenge your entire way of living to get yourself to the next level in business and life.
The Big Leap explores ways to push past your limiting beliefs, create new habits, and let go of your fears so you can be authentically great.
I know, I know, Tina Fey isn’t primarily known for being an entrepreneur — but hear me out.
This book is certainly a hilarious memoir, but what spoke to me was hearing a powerful woman candidly discuss that she has sometimes felt like an imposter.
That’s a feeling many entrepreneurs know all too well.
Couple that imposter syndrome with the ever-present label of strong, confident women being “bossy,” and this book highlights the highs and lows of overcoming the mindset issues that can plague women in any profession.
In Bossypants, Tina explores her life through humorous and relatable stories and shares how she moved through life’s hurdles with her signature humor and “get it done” attitude.
Known as the creator and producer of some of the biggest hit shows on TV in the past decade, Shonda Rhimes was at the top of her game. But as an introvert, handling the endless PR grind was overwhelming.
The truth was, Shonda was afraid. That fear was the driving force to her saying no to most things, but that all changed when she made a decision to start saying yes to everything for one whole year.
This memoir shares what her life looked like before the Year of Yes and how that decision to start saying yes changed everything, By deciding to embrace the things that scared her, she was left feeling empowered and more in touch with herself than ever before.
The honest and raw nature of this book shows us that changing our mindset can change the way we see and interact with the world.
This book, in particular, was huge in helping me conquer mindset issues and helping me take action in my own life.
We all have people in our lives who have pushed us to be better than our excuses. But what happens when we stop relying on other people to give us that push, and instead, learn how to have the confidence to push ourselves?
The Five Second Rule focuses on the idea that by creating new habits, we can learn how to do a multitude of things in just five seconds. All you need to know is how to make yourself do it.
By understanding how to embrace these “push moments,” we set ourselves up to be more productive, have better collaborations, conquer our fears and doubts, and ditch our worry so we can feel happier in our day-to-day lives.
Many of the lessons we learn in life come from falling down and getting back up again. Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and going back and revisiting these times of hurt is a key to mastering our mindset about failure.
The premise of Rising Strong is exactly that — looking at stories from a vast range of people from all backgrounds and professions and finding the common theme of how they’ve overcome their circumstances and learned to lean into feeling uncomfortable so they can rise strong.
It’s during times of struggle that our mindset can take the biggest hit, so the process of overcoming struggles while coming from a place of truth allows us to evolve. By digging deeper into our emotions and understanding our own stories, we give ourselves the space to learn who we are and change our mindset from negative to positive.
While not all these books will appeal to every single person, they each have something unique to offer when it comes to mastering the entrepreneurial mindset. Whether you need to conquer fear, start saying yes to more things, or change your habits, just one step towards changing your mindset can have a big impact on your business AND your personal life.