Best Self Help Books of All Time 2023 to read before you die. #4 is one the top self improvement books and you will love it for sure. Read on…

Best Self Help Books Of All Time To Read In 2023

Best Self Help Books of All Time – Quick Look

Best Overall: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

“A classic and one of the best self help books on personal development that goes beyond time and ages.”

Best for Interpersonal Skills: How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

“Obvious looking yet power packed lessons to change the way you communicate with people and impact their life”

Best for Balanced Personal and Professional Life: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

“One of the classic and the best personal development books of the 90s that you cannot miss to read”

Best for Positive Behavioral Changes in Life: Triggers: Sparking Positive Change and Making it Last by Marshall Goldsmith

“A powerful guide on how to embrace change for improving your life and make it sustainable”

Best for Breaking Addictions and Developing Great Habits: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change by Charles Duhigg

“A little difficult book but a really detailed guide to understanding how habits are formed, how they work and how to change them”

Best for Learning the Art of Happiness: The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

“An experiential journey with a series of real-life experiments with happiness over a period of 12 months”

Best for Financial Independence: Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach their Kids About Money that the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert Kiyosaki

“You’ll learn why rich people keep getting richer and why poor people keep getting poorer. An amazing book about financial freedom”

Best for Public Speaking and Communication: Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds – Carmine Gallo

“If you aspire to be a great public speaker, it’s a must for you. Lessons might sound obvious but anecdotes and examples in the book make them super effective.”

Best for Self Development: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams & Reaching Your Destiny by Robin Sharma

“Because of this book, I developed a keen interest to know more about how to unleash the greatest human potential and live a fulfilled life.”

Best for Salesmanship, and Success in Life: The Greatest Salesman of the World by Og Mandino

“Something profound that’s beyond just the philosophy of salesmanship, rather a way of life to be effective and successful.”

Best for Classic Motivation and Way of Life: Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Dr Spencer Johnson

“A beautiful story that shows you why it’s crucial to deal with the changes in life and how you can do it to live a happier life”

You can also watch this video for Best Self Help Books Of All Time In Hindi on YouTube, if you don’t feel like reading 🙂 

And if you like the video, do consider subscribing and sharing with others.

Read About Best Selling Self Help Books Of All Time

When I decided to develop a habit of reading some of the top rated and best selling self help books, I used to struggle to find good self help books to read. I used to ask people for their recommendations about the top 20, 10 or 5 self help books to read.

As a teen, I was always interested in reading the top self improvement books of all time, unlike my other teenager friends who just loved classic fiction books for teens. There is nothing bad in reading fiction. Everybody has their different taste in reading too. I always loved reading self help and personal development books.

As an author and speaker, whenever I go somewhere for talks, people ask me the same questions. That’s the reason I decided to prepare a list of some of the best and the top influential self help books that I loved reading and exploring.

These are the books which I personally felt are some of the greatest self help books of all time. (If you have other suggestions, do let me know in the comments)

Most of the books in this list are national and international best sellers. And some of them are even classic self help books of all times for all age groups. Authors of these books are Professors, Life Coaches, Successful Businessmen, and Consultants.

Helping yourself is the best thing you can do for yourself. You should know how to motivate yourself and stay motivated to do the impossible in life.

That’s why I feel one must read the best self improvement books to explore the deeper meaning of life and become a better version of oneself.

Here’s your chance to explore these amazing best selling self help books of all time and open yourself to infinite possibilities in this universe.

Top 11 Best Self Help Books Of All Times – Deep Dive

1. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

About Author

Dale Carnegie was an American writer and lecturer. He was the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills globally.

Some of his masterpiece self help books include “Art of Public Speaking”, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”, “Public Speaking for Success” and “How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking” other than “How to Win Friends & Influence People”.

About this Best Personal Development Book of All Time

It is one of the initial self help books that I read when I was developing my habit of reading some of the best personal development books.

During my college days, one of my professors suggested this book to read. When I heard about the title, it caught my interest. And I ordered it in next couple of days through Amazon. It’s one of the all-time Amazon best-selling books of all time.

It hardly took a couple of days to read cover to cover but it took a couple of months to implement what it talked about.

All the lessons in the book look familiar as if you already know it. We have heard those lessons but rarely pay any attention to them in our busy lives. When I started to become aware and work on them, it really changed my approach towards dealing with people.

Some of the lessons from the book ‘How to Win Friends & Influence People‘:

Talk about positive first

Whenever you have to give feedback, start by talking about positive points and then talk about the possible improvements. It looks very simple but it has a profound impact on your day to day conversations with people.

Admit your mistake

Whenever you make a mistake, admit it rather than covering it up by making stories. The person in front of you can easily catch it and you will lose your rapport.

We rarely accept our mistakes in our daily life, rather we blame it on circumstances or other people. But when we accept our mistakes with grace, it represents us as a responsible and authentic person.

How to be a great conversationalist?

Just become a good listener. I realized its importance when I personally used this technique.

Earlier, I used to think that in order to be a good communicator, you have to talk, talk and talk but I failed every time I tried doing that. But when I focused on listening to the people around me, they started recognizing me as a good conversationalist.

People would love to talk to me. And the only trick I use is to genuinely listen to them. I love listening to their stories. They think that they get solutions by talking to me. But in reality, I just listen to them and they reveal solutions on their own. I just help them uncover it.

That’s what makes this book one of the top 5 influential self help books in the personal development industry.

There are many such lessons in this book which you can use in your daily routine to make a difference. While reading this book, you might feel that you know all this already. But make sure to implement those small things in your life to grow as a person.

If you wish to become better at interpersonal skills, then this book is for you.

2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

About Author

Stephen R. Covey was an American educator, author, businessman, and keynote speaker. His most popular and all-time bestselling book is “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.

His other bestselling self help books include “First Things First, Principle-Centered Leadership”, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families”, “The 8th Habit”, and “The Leader In Me — How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness” and “One Child at a Time”.

About this Best Personal Development Book of All Time

I haven’t personally read this book but I had attended a session with my Professor during engineering. In that session, he discussed this book in detail.

This book has great things to learn from. It is one of the classic and the best personal development books of the 1990s. If you talk about personal development, you cannot miss this book.

Overall, the book has more of a philosophical approach rather than a precise step by step action plan. The motto of the book is to trigger your thought process so that you can start developing these habits. Chapters include exercises to practice these habits in daily life.

Below are the seven habits this book talks about:

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Principles of Personal Vision

During the day we do a lot of stuff and observe a lot happening around us. Some we can control and some not. This habit is about understanding your sphere of influence.

Identify things that you can control and put your energy into them, rather than freaking out all the time about the things that are out of your control.

It really helps in conserving your precious energy. You can invest that energy in more important tasks which add value to your life and are under your control.

I like this habit very much. Whenever I’m stressed out, I try to look back whether I’m trying to focus on things which are beyond my control. And most of the time, I find myself focusing on things which I can never control and that’s the reason I feel stressed out.

As soon as I shifted my focus to things I could deliberately control, my life seemed to be on track and under my control. It’s truly a bliss. (Get this book)

Habit 2: Begin With The End In Mind

Principles of Personal Leadership

Have you ever thought about your funeral? This chapter starts with this example. Things what you want your family and friends to say about you when you die?

It clearly compels you to think about the core values on which you should live your complete life. Similarly, you can work on everything in your life, be it small or big.

Thinking about what you want as a result, in the end, do the reverse engineering and work accordingly. And the first thing to do is to write your own Personal Mission Statement for life.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Principles of Personal Management

It is about prioritizing your short-term goals or tasks. Your tasks can be classified in either of the four categories:

• Urgent
• Not urgent
• Important
• Not Important

Your task can be important but not urgent or may be important as well as urgent. Prioritize your tasks and schedule them accordingly so that you experience the least stress and get maximum things done in less time. (Get this book)

Habit 4: Think Win/Win

Principles of Interpersonal Leadership

It’s about taking the best road available for both the parties involved. It doesn’t have to be a loss for one in order to be a win for the other.

When our intention is to find a win-win solution, we tend to think from both perspectives and choose the best option for both.

It not only resolves the conflict but also helps in developing a long-lasting relationship. It works in personal life as well as business context.

Habit 5: Seek First To Understand, Then Be Understood

Principles of Empathic Communication

Have you ever been in a situation when you realized while talking to a friend that you were arguing on something and later you realized that both of you were talking the same thing and still you were arguing?

Often we invest our energy in making ourselves understood by other people that we forget to listen to what others are saying.

This habit is about being a good listener so that you can first understand what other is trying to convey.

Once you understand that, you can easily provide a solution or your point of view on that subject. This way it will be a healthy discussion and fruitful for both the parties involved. (Get this book)

Habit 6: Synergize

Principles of Creative Cooperation

Every person has different qualities and limitations. When working as a team, you need to understand that.

Identify the individual strengths and harness them for accomplishing a common goal. Because synergy means: 1+1 >>> 2

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal

You must have heard that story of two woodcutters. One of them spends whole day cutting wood using his ax and another one takes a break in between but still cuts more wood. Just because he sharpens his saw during the breaks.

Same applies to our life. This chapter talks about renewing your focus on a regular basis. 

I do it by following my ritual of meditation. It allows me to take a pause and think where am I heading. It provides me with an opportunity to spend some time with myself, renew myself and fill myself with a new level of enthusiasm. (Get this book)

You too can do it by taking a break during the day, by following a daily regime of exercise, going on a vacation, spending time with family and so on.

Anybody who is an avid reader of the best personal development books must have read this classic book and would appreciate it. Because it is also one of the top 5 influential self help books  of all time.

If you wish to learn how to live a balanced life, then this book is a must for you.

3. Triggers: Sparking Positive Change and Making it Last by Marshall Goldsmith

About the Author

Marshall Goldsmith is an America’s preeminent Executive Coach. He is a New York Times Best Selling Author of “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” and “Triggers” in the leadership and success category.

He has also co-authored “How Women Rise?” with Sally Helgesen. This book is a combination of Sally’s work on Women Leadership and Marshall’s principles from his international bestseller “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”. What Got You Here won the Harold Longman Award for the Best Business Book of the year.

About this Best Self Help Book of All Time

Triggers hit #1 on The Wall Street Journal’s best-seller list and was chosen by Amazon as the Best Business Book of the year in 2015.

I have the habit of checking out books section especially self help books at the airport whenever I travel. And I pick the ones which I like. This book is one of them. It immediately caught my attention because of the title and the unique cover design with a spark.

The subtitle said, “Sparking Positive Change and Making it Last”. Wow! Sounded interesting.

I bought this book and a couple of other ones too which I liked, without any delay.

This book beautifully talks about why some changes in our life last and some not. As the title of the book says “Triggers”, there are numerous triggers in our daily life which either push us in the right direction or pull us away from the desired path.

If you really want any change to sustain over a period of time,

find what triggers it and make it stronger so that your change becomes long lasting as well as fruitful.

There was a time when I was struggling to complete the book I was writing and I left it mid-way. During that time I read this book.

It compelled me to think about my triggers for writing my book (which eventually became an Amazon Best-Selling Book).

The point I’m trying to make is to show how important it is to focus on triggers or you may call them as reasons which drive your change in life.

Work on them to make your life better otherwise whatever new change you wish to bring in your life, be it striving for a better health, improving knowledge in the certain area or building a new business from scratch, you’ll fail to sustain that change.

Another good thing that I explored in this book is an exercise to ask yourself some daily questions about the changes you are working on. Questions are about your intention and level of conscious efforts you have put during the day. Click here to know more.

It is a great way to keep a check and make sure that you are on track.

Personally, I really loved reading this book and have benefited from it.

If you wish to change something in your life for better and have no clue how to go about it, then this book is a must for you.

4. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change by Charles Duhigg

About Author

Charles Duhigg (born 1974) is a Pulitzer-prize (2012) winning American journalist and a non-fiction author. He was also a reporter with The New York Times.

He is the best selling author of two self help books on habits and productivity, titled “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life” and “Business and Smarter Faster Better”.

About this Best Self Help Book of All Time

This book has been on various New York Times bestseller lists.

It’s one of the best self-improvement books on Habits.

I came to know about this book from a close friend. This book is one of my all-time favorites.

One key thing that I have learned from this book…

…is how habits form the core of everything we do in our daily routine. A habit is nothing but the conditioning of your mind repeated over a period of time.

As a basic principle, any habit is a loop of cue/trigger, action/routine and reward/result. Because of the trigger, you perform certain actions which give you some results or reward.

If the result is favorable, you are more likely to repeat that routine based on the same trigger. But if the result is not favorable, you will refrain from performing that action again. And that’s how a habit or addiction is developed.

Listen to the author himself:

If you understand this principle, you can easily change old habits and establish new ones. This has helped me to develop some of the highly beneficial habits or you can say rituals in my daily routine.

Check out this amazing article on how to break bad habit step by step. Click here to read the article.

Here are the three key takeaways from this best self help book of all time:

• Habits work in 3-step loops: cue/trigger, routine/action, reward/result
• You can change your habits by changing the routine/action and Charles calls this the golden rule
• Willpower is the most important habit that can be strengthened over time using 3 things
  • Do something that requires a lot of discipline: Train yourself
  • Plan ahead for worst-case scenarios: Prepare yourself for the unexpected
  • Preserve your autonomy: Take ownership of the task you do

If you wish to develop new good habits or break old bad habits, then this personal development book is a must for you.

5. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

About Author

Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature.

She started her career in law and was clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when she realized she wanted to be a writer.

She’s the author of many self help books, including the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers The Four Tendencies, Better Than Before, and The Happiness Project.

About this Best Self Help Book of All Time

I stumbled upon this book while skimming through my office’s library. When I saw this book “The Happiness Project”, I asked myself, “Can there be a project around happiness?”. That sounded interesting and worth exploring.

Later on, I found out that it’s one of the best self help books on Happiness.

Throughout our life, we have been told to practice great virtue called “Happiness”. But I never thought somebody could even experiment around Happiness.

I immediately picked that book up and brought with me.

In the book, Gretchen talks about how she worked on different areas of her life every single month, throughout the year.

She shares her experience about what worked and what didn’t. The most wonderful thing about this book is, she tells about her own personal experience from day to day life. One can easily relate to that.

In this book, you’ll find 12 different ideas…

…around which Gretchen has experimented with Happiness in her life.

January: Boost Energy

February: Remember Love

March: Aim Higher

April: Lighten Up

May: Be Serious About Play

June: Make Time for Friends

July: Buy Some Happiness

August: Contemplate the Heavens

September: Pursue a Passion

October: Pay Attention

November: Keep a Contented Heart

December: Boot Camp Perfect

One learning which I keep from this book is “the perfect is the enemy of the good”. In all our lives, we strive to be perfect and in that chase, we often ignore the good.

Taking small positive steps will eventually lead to the accomplishment of higher goals. If you can do something good, just do it, don’t wait to make it perfect. Keep doing it and gradually you will become better at it.

Gretchen has beautifully expressed it through this book by showing how she practiced Happiness with small baby steps each month and at the end of the year, she had created a bigger impact in her life.

Visit Gretchen’s blog to explore more about the happiness project: https://gretchenrubin.com/

If you wish to be Happy in your day to day life and want to learn how you can do it, then this book is a must for you.

6. Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach their Kids About Money that the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert Kiyosaki

About Author

Robert T. Kiyosaki is an American businessman and author. Kiyosaki is the founder of the Rich Dad Company, a private financial education company that provides personal finance and business education to people through self help books and videos.

Kiyosaki is the author of more than 26 self help books, including the international best seller self-published personal finance Rich Dad Poor Dad series of books.

About this Best Self Help Book of All Time

I had heard a lot about this book but never got a chance to read. One day, one of my colleagues was talking about and praising this book. I ended up asking him whether he could lend me his book for a couple of days.

If you haven’t heard about this book yet, you have missed a lot. It is one of the best classic self help books on personal freedom and self development, hence, it is also considered as one of the top 5 influential self help books.

This book was so captivating…

…that I finished reading it on a weekend. The core idea which this book talks about is how rich people keep becoming richer and how poor people keep becoming poorer or stay the same. The only secret is to build assets rather than to spend money on liabilities.

One of the myths which people have is that building an asset always requires money. But that’s not true. Find out your passion and build something valuable around that, it can be an asset which can generate money for you.

One such asset that I created is my Amazon Best-Selling Book, Rewire for Massive Success. It didn’t cost me much in terms of money. It just required some of my time and efforts. As I’m passionate about the Personal Development and Self Help niche, I loved writing this book.

Similarly, I’m working on various assets which don’t require money but my passion and efforts. (Reach out to me if you want to know more)

If you want to know in detail about this book, you can see below video which has a complete summary of the book.  But, personally, I recommend this book to read especially to readers who are in their 20s.

It will open your mind to think of various possibilities. It’s not just about money, it’s about using your true potential to create something of value.

If you wish to be financially free and wish to learn new ways to do that, this book is a must for you.

7. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

About Author

Napoleon Hill was an American self-help author. He is known best for his book “Think and Grow Rich” which is among the top 10 best selling self-help books of all time. Most of his books were promoted as expounding principles to achieve “success”.

About this Best Self Help Book of All Time

This book is considered as the classic self help and one of the best personal development books ever on personal success and financial independence. There are thousands of people in the world who vouch for this epic book. This is an actionable guide not just become rich but also to become a better person in life.

It was published by Napoleon Hill in 1937. It’s said that Napoleon wrote this book after interviewing 500 successful people of his time. It took him more than 20 years to do all the research. And if you will search for top 5 influential self help books, you will certainly find this book in the list.

His journey started after he interviewed Andrew Carnegie, the richest person of that time just after John D. Rockefeller.

Andrew Carnegie asked him to interview the most successful people in the world and write a book that can help the young generation to become successful.

Although I have not read this book personally, I have gone through its summary online. It’s believed that most of the modern day success books draw one or the other principles from this book.

You can watch this video to get a hang of this book.

A word of caution: It is not a quick rich guide.

This book talks about 13 principles which one can use to become successful. An amazing thing about this book is that it clearly shows that getting rich is not about having money.

Being rich is about the rich mindset and being resourceful.

One interesting thing I would love to share about it. While researching about this book, I came to know about another book written by Napoleon Hill “How to raise your own salary”. It has the exact interview conversation between Andrew Carnegie and Napoleon Hill. In this interview,

In this interview, Andrew Carnegie shared all his secrets of becoming successful in any endeavor of life. It is surprising that people don’t know about this book. Maybe because of the misleading title of the book.

Even if you don’t intend to buy this book, I still insist you on to at least check it out and see the reviews (especially on amazon.com).

You’ll be amazed to see what people think about this wonderful book. It was shocking to me too. I was so fascinated that I have already ordered a copy of this book. (I’ll share my views once I read it)

If you wish to make your mindset richer and prepare it to be successful in life, then “Think and Grow Rich” Book is a must for you.

8. Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds – Carmine Gallo

About Author

Carmine Gallo is an American author, columnist, keynote speaker, and former journalist and news anchor. Now currently based in Pleasanton, California, he is President of Gallo Communications Group and works as a communications coach and speaker.

Gallo has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Success Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek and on CNBC. Gallo has also given lectures to MBA students at Stanford, UCLA, and UC Berkeley.

About this Best Self Help Book of All Time

This was another pick from the airport and my favorite too. I have personally used some of the ideas from this book in my speaking engagements.

Carmine has studied the best TED speakers around the globe to find secrets to successful public speaking.

One of the key things I have learned…

…from this book is, “Tell your story”. And when you tell your story, keep these three things in mind:

• Ethos: Build credibility about you and your content
• Logos: Present your arguments or opinions based on the facts
• Pathos: Establish an emotional connection with the audience

If you want to make your presentation memorable for the audience, share extreme emotional moments in your story or some outstanding statistics about the topic you are discussing. You don’t have to fill your presentation with too much of these, just a few of them would do the job. Otherwise, it will lose its essence.

Another great idea shared in the book which is very effective is “try not to cover more than 3 topics in your presentation”.

These can be 3 key ideas, 3 examples, 3 instances, 3 characters, or whatever.

Moral of the story is that using more than 3 topics in a presentation makes it difficult for the audience to relate and understand, even remember what you have talked about. So, always remember this principle of three.

This book will also help you understand something new. You must have noticed that duration of all the TED talks is of about 18 minutes. But do you know why? This book science the heck out of it.

Listen to the author himself:

If you wish to improve your public speaking skills, then this book is a must for you without any second thought.

9. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams & Reaching Your Destiny by Robin Sharma

About Author

Robin Sharma is a Canadian writer and motivational speaker known for his The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari book series. Sharma worked as a litigation lawyer until age 25, when he self-published MegaLiving, a book on stress management and spirituality.

Sharma has published many other best seller self help books and founded the training company Sharma Leadership International.

About this Best Self Help Book of All Time

It was the first book on self-improvement and personal development that I read religiously. I was awestruck after reading it.

I became Robin Sharma’s big fan.

Many people might have different opinions about the book, but for me, it’s one of the best self help and motivational books that pushed me to explore my passion.

This book is a self help fable of a lawyer (fictional character), who sold his mansion and Ferrari to study and explore the seven virtues of the Sages of Sivana in the Himalayas.

As I was already into the practice of meditation and spiritual understanding of life, I could relate to a lot of things mentioned in this book. It drew me so much towards understanding the meaning my life holds for me.

Because of this book, I developed a keen interest to know more about how to unleash the greatest human potential and live a fulfilled life. I love the way how he explains the intricacies of life in a very simple and impactful way.

One of the quotes in the book says, “Everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality”.

This is so much true. I have realized it at different points in my own life. After realizing it, I give special care to what I think because now I know, whatever I think in my mind has the potential to become true.

Therefore, it is my responsibility to think carefully to create something valuable not just for me but for others too.

Another aspect covered in this self help book that I found impactful is the power of rituals, your daily rituals. You might call it your daily regime. How successful, happy or fulfilled you feel is directly proportional to your dose of daily rituals.

I too have a ritual of daily meditation and waking up early. It gives me another level of confidence and satisfaction every single day. You can develop your own rituals as per your values and goals in life.

If you wish to explore the deeper meaning of life and become a better version of yourself, then this self help book is a must for you.

10. The Greatest Salesman of the World by Og Mandino

About Author

Og Mandino was an American author. He wrote the bestselling book The Greatest Salesman in the World. His books have sold over 50 million copies and have been translated into over twenty-five different languages.

He was the president of Success Unlimited magazine until 1976 and is an inductee of the National Speakers Association’s Hall of Fame.

About this Best Self Help Book of All Time

I was actually looking for something on sales when I found this book. I bought it just because the title said, “The Greatest Salesman of the world”.

But this book is not entirely about sales.

It is beyond salesmanship.

This book shows you the way of living life as a great human being not just for yourself but for the entire world.

This book changed my view towards sales. The words like sales and salesman have been overused so much that people don’t believe them anymore.

The moment someone hears about a salesman, he or she just tries to cut corners. It is just because of the image we have formed about sales in our mind over the period of time.

This self help book is a fable of a very rich trader who shares 10 secrets of a successful life to a young man considered as his son by the trader. These secrets are preserved as scrolls which this rich man gives to this young man as a tradition to pass it on to the next generation before dying.

Have a look at these scrolls:

Scroll 1: Today I begin a new life.

Scroll 2: I will greet this day with love in my heart.

Scroll 3: I will persist until I succeed.

Scroll 4: I am nature’s greatest miracle.

Scroll 5: I will live this day as if it is my last.

Scroll 6: Today I will be master of my emotions.

Scroll 7: I will laugh at the world.

Scroll 8: Today I will multiply my value a hundredfold.

Scroll 9: I will act now.

Scroll 10: Salesman’s prayer

Each scroll is meant to be practiced for about 30 days. In the book, all these scrolls are discussed in the form of a story where the rich trader talks to the young man.

My favorite scroll is “I will greet this day with love in my heart”. I even wrote it on my personal whiteboard for quite a long time. And it helped me to take on daily challenges with a smile on my face.

It’s a short read of around 110 pages and I’m sure you’ll love this book. I really loved the way story is told in this book to deliver the key message.

You can watch a quick book summary here.

If you wish to learn something beyond the conventional meaning of sales, then this book is a must for you.

11. Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Dr Spencer Johnson

About Author

Spencer Johnson (November 24, 1938 – July 3, 2017) was an American physician and author, known for the ValueTales series of children’s books, and for his 1998 motivational book Who Moved My Cheese?, which recurred on the New York Times Bestseller list, on the Publishers Weekly Hardcover nonfiction list. Johnson was chairman of Spencer Johnson Partners.

Johnson also wrote the book “Yes” or “No”: The Guide to Better Decisions (1992). He co-authored the One Minute Manager series of books with management writer Ken Blanchard, though each author has added their own books to the series.

About this Best Self Help Book of All Time

The core message of this book is, “Take responsibility for your life and put consistent efforts to cope positively with change”.

It has been written beautifully in the form of a story. This is a story of two mice named Sniff & Scurry and two humans who are of a size of mice named Hem & Haw. Cheese has been used as an analogy to opportunities in life which keep on changing with time.

It shares how mice take responsibility to adapt according to the upcoming changes in life. They anticipate and prepare themselves for any possible change. But the humans stay in their comfort zone and resist change. This attitude hurts them badly.

We can easily relate to these characters in our life as well. When we are stuck in our comfort zone, we stop growing.

Life is an ever-changing truth.

Challenges, situations, and circumstances keep on changing. If we don’t anticipate the coming change and don’t prepare ourselves, we fail to even survive at personal as well as professional level.

Hem, in the story, realizes his mistake. Learning from the mice, he goes on to explore new places for more cheese and finally gets one. He learns the lessons for life.

Lessons from the book:

• Change Happens They Keep Moving The Cheese
• Anticipate Change Get Ready For The Cheese To Move
• Monitor Change Smell The Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old
• Adapt To Change Quickly The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese
• Change Move With The Cheese
• Enjoy Change! Savor The Adventure And Enjoy The Taste Of New Cheese!
• Be Ready To Change Quickly And Enjoy It Again They Keep Moving The Cheese.

It’s a short read and you can finish it in a couple of hours. It’s written in a very interesting way. I really enjoyed reading this book.

You can watch a quick book summary here.

If you think you are stuck and are not growing, then this book is a must for you to read.

Wrapping Up

I really hope that you enjoyed going through reviews and summaries of these amazing self help books. Some of them are even counted among the top 5 influential self help books.

Though all these books deserve to be listed as some of the best self help books of all time and are worth reading, however, my personal favorites are “How to Win Friends & Influence People” and “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” because I have personally got benefited from these books.

Are you surprised with some of the suggestions in the list of best self help books of all time? 🙂

Which of these best self help books stand out for you? Let me know by leaving a comment.

I wish I could add my own Amazon Best-Selling Book Rewire for Massive Success here. I get a new meaning whenever I read it and I love browsing through it every now and then 😉 But it hasn’t sold millions of copies yet, so maybe in future 🙂

You can also refer to the top 100 best self help books of all time on Amazon here.

Do you have a book in mind that should have been included in this list of Best Self Help Books of all time? This is not an exhaustive list. And I believe there can be more amazing best self help books to read on personal development and self improvement.

Please feel free to share your suggestions and views in the comment section. It will make the list of Best Self Help Books of all time richer and beneficial for the fellow readers.

I look forward to listening to you!

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