When I was a young boy I was a huge reader. I learned to read a bit early and I remember wanting to read everything I could get my hands on. Dr. Seuss, dictionaries, encyclopedias, you name it. This carried on until junior high and the advent of puberty. This is when most of us in our culture learn to stifle our imagination and uniqueness and trade it for acceptance into the herd.

People do it every day. They talk to themselves. They see themselves as they’d like to be. They don’t have the courage you have, to just run with it. -Tyler Durden

This situation seems to me like a bit of a double edged sword. There is definitely safety in the heard. If you stray too far from the herd you risk being “labeled” something undesirable. My lord, nobody wants that. You have to learn to do the “social dance” in order to function effectively in the world. It is important for us to learn the many, many lessons about how to get along in this human situation that can only be learned in social settings. Even our blood family just another kind of social institution.

The problem is that a large percentage of us trade a little bit too much of our individuality and curiosity and start conforming to a model of life that doesn’t really promote health or personal happiness. The movie Fight Club really hits a nerve the protaganist says, “We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.” We get so afraid to go against the grain that we might live the rest of our days without ever returning to that childlike state.

Child-LIKE but not child-ISH. Being child-ISH would just pertain to farts and toys and other tomfoolery. The word child-LIKE alludes to the way a child is imaginative, open-minded, and free of assumptions and prejudgments. A child has an honest-to-god genuine curiosity about the world and wants to solve any mystery they become aware of.

Lets Face it, life does not get easier as you get older. It doesn’t get easier when you have to support yourself away from the nest. It doesn’t get easier when you get married or when you are responsible for raising children. These can be amazingly positive events, but they do complicate things. There are also life events that are hard to find the bright side of. Some things happen to us or to the people around us that carry the power to completely derail your trajectory in life and leave you unhinged.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. -Viktor Frankl

Life doesn’t get easier when you get blindsided by a divorce or lose your job out of the blue. Life most certainly doesn’t get easier after you lose a young child to cancer or if one of your parents commits suicide when you need them the most. Lets face it, shit happens, and we have to deal with it. How you deal with it and the story you tell yourself in your head every day determines the quality of your life. That voice in our head is actually the only thing you can have any TRUE control over.

I love the example set by Viktor Frankl, the Jewish psychiatrist who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp. His message was that regardless of the physical, intellectual, or psychological abuse he was subjected to in the camp, no one could cause him to think something he didn’t want to think. The same is true for us whether we want to believe it or not. When the shit hits the fan it is the hardest, but also of the utmost importance to maintain control of “that voice.” We need to be thinking in a way that is going to lead us down the path of learning and growth.

I went through a series of life changing events in a relatively short period of time and the way I looked at myself and reality had to be shaken up like an etch-a-sketch. It was right at this time that rather than slipping into depression and complacency I picked up a book that changed everything for me. Then I picked up another and another. I rekindled my love for reading and my curiosity and enthusiasm for learning new things. I now only seek out books that have the power to completely change a person’s life.

These 4 Books completely changed the way I think… and they’ll do it for you.

Seriously, just pick one of these and read it. It doesn’t matter which one you pick. They’re all amazing in no particular order, but after you pick one, you’ll be looking to quickly pick a second one. I wish I would have read books of this caliber ten years ago and that’s why I want to share them. These books have the power to change the way you think about yourself and the world WITHOUT having to go through a traumatic life event.

Consider each one of these a way to undo some bad programming and upgrade your operating system:

The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton

Through the research of Dr. Lipton and other leading-edge scientists, stunning new discoveries have been made about the interaction between your mind and body and the processes by which cells receive information. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology, that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our thoughts.

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

Don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform your life to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. Be Impeccable With Your Words, Don’t Take Anything Personally, Don’t Make Assumptions, and Always Do Your Best!

The Art of Living by Bob Proctor

This book just came out in Dec 2015 and I am already blown away by how profound it has been. The topics span what our creative faculties are and how to use them, why we need to unlearn most of the false beliefs we’ve been indoctrinated with our whole lives, and how our intellects have the ability not only to put us ahead in life, but also to be our biggest detriment. Erase negative thought patterns and retrain the brain for success.

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill and his philosophy of success and effectiveness in the world is the first book that condensed the wisdom of the great thinkers and billionaires of the early 1900s. His mentors were men like Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. This book is highly recommended by every single successful person whom I have studied. Simply put, we become what we think about. So we need to be disciplined and direct.

We are so amazingly lucky to live in a day where we can literally come online and have any book imaginable shipped to our house in many times less than 48 hours. We need to sit for a minute and reflect on the fact that we live in a time where information and wealth is more abundant than it has ever been before. I am grateful from the bottom of my soul for the fact that I am alive at this very moment. Every trial and tribulation that I have been through on this journey pales in comparison to what amazing things are possible to achieve.

I am so thankful that I can now pass the knowledge I learned from these books, and many more like them on to my children and grandchildren. If none of these books even slightly peak your interest, please look around and find something that tickles your fancy. Let today be the day you start reading again. I heard someone say the other day that in the age of information, ignorance is a choice. That is a damn fact that you simply can’t deny.