By Mick Trainor

Mark Twain – addicted to success.com

“the two most important days in your life is the day you are born and the day you find out why”

For some reason that excites me and scares the hell out of me at the same time. Finding out why you are here is a long and sometimes arduous task. For some that question is never raised so they settle into a nice little rut and do the same day-to-day routine receiving the results. I’m not for one second saying this is a bad thing and for them it’s the life they know and love. I frequently have days where i think it would be easier to just settle but then ask myself where’s the excitement in that?

For me finding out why im here and what I have to offer has allowed me to start researching things im interested in and put things in place to help make it happen, however nothing comes quickly as we all know. This path of self discovery has led me to reading more as a past time and have taken to multiple self-help books all from different authors offering their advise, for most of which is extremely helpful and at times contradicting of each other (in my opinion of course J) so what I decided to do is take what I consider the best bits of each and use that as a baseline.

For instance

Seven Spiritual Laws of Success – Deepak Chopra

I’ll start by saying this book is a short but very valuable read and one that kick started the journey im on. In this book i learnt that judgement of others is useless and says more about you than the person you’re judging and/or criticizing. 2: you need to learn to receive before you can truly appreciate giving. 3: money to the world is like blood to the body, keeping it saved away (clotting) only causes problems, you need to keep it circulating. In other words the more you give the more you receive.

The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle

This book is very in-depth and i wasn’t able to completely digest it but i will wait until i think i am ready and give it another go. The gist of the book for me is don’t allow past experiences dictate what you want to do today. Further more don’t wait until tomorrow to tackle a new challenge because tomorrow never actually comes. 2: there’s no point in holding grudges or replaying scenarios over and over again to which it “should have happened”. We cannot change what has happened and we can never be truly certain of what the future holds for us so why waste the time and energy. All we have is this moment, right here, right now its ours!

Mindset – The New Psychology of Success – Carol Dweck

Another fantastic read! This book talks about fixed mindsets vs growth mindsets. The book is 200+ pages long so this is a very basic/brief overview

Fixed Mindset – we are born with cards we are dealt and your fate is sealed.

Growth Mindset – theres nothing we cannot learn and no obstacle will stop us creating the life we want.

These 3 books alone have helped me immensely and there’s thousands more out there like them. As I said originally you may like and agree with parts and not others but only take from it what you need at the time and refer back to it when and if you want to.

Each and every one of us has the ability to do anything we set our minds too. A lot of the time the only thing standing in the way is ourselves. My hope is with a greater knowledge, open mind, a lot of encouragement and sharing of people’s life experiences, together we can help each other continue along the path to a prosperous and exciting life!

Helping others ultimately starts with you being able to help yourself.