Books that have changed your life

Today we talk about books that have changed your life.

A book that comes to you at the right time can change your life, it's like a person… like an idea. Today we are going to talk about this, about books that have changed your life.

It is like seeing life with other glasses. Once the book is finished you say: "I have some new glasses." We cannot see life without a specific paradigm: every time one looks at a situation, an experience, a person ... one is looking at it with specific glasses. If you wear blue glasses you see everything in blue, if you wear pink glasses you see everything in pink. There are books that change the color of your glasses.

Let's see which have been the favorite books of some outstanding people:

1) Let's start by knowing which is the recommended book of Jose Luis Montes, a former corporate executive who is currently lecturing on personal development:

«There are many books that have changed my life and I could make a long list. Surely some of them are already widely read ... but I am going to recommend one that is not so well known and that seems absolutely necessary to me to read.

There is a Buddhist monk who has lived for 30 years in the Himalayas, in a monastery in Nepal… he is French and his name is Mattieu Ricard. This man was a doctor of molecular biology until he discovered Buddhism and became a monk.

Mattieu Ricard is one of the greatest Western experts on Buddhism and happiness. It is scientifically accepted as "The happiest man in the world". Scientists, who have ways of measuring happiness by brain waves and by chemical processes in the body, have investigated Mattieu along with thousands of other people. They have come to the conclusion that Mattieu Ricard is the happiest man in the world (scientifically proven).

He has written several books but there is one that I especially like: it's called In defense of happiness (published by Urano in Spain). It is a very accessible book, very easy to read and even fun, because Mattieu has a great sense of humor. It is a book worth reading and consulting from time to time. "

2) The next person to recommend us a book that changed his life is Rafael Santandreu, psychologist, writer and trainer of doctors and psychologists:

«The book that has changed my life the most is School of living de Epictetus. It is a book that collects the thoughts of this philosopher of the first century AD, who was one of the exponents of the Stoic school.

I choose it because Epictetus is the great-great-grandfather of modern psychology… Actually, much more important than Freud.

An apocryphal story is told about Epictetus that attempts to summarize his thought. Epictetus was a slave for many years of his life. On one occasion his owner hit him because he had done something wrong. It hit him over and over again. Epictetus would not have the mouth ... until at the end, due to the violence of the blows, Epictetus said: "Lord, see that you are going to break the stick with which you hit me."

The story is surely not real, but it expresses the idea so important to today's psychology that we are not affected by what happens to us but by what we think about what happens to us. This has many practical implications, but the main one is that we are the owners of our emotional life. Through our thoughts we can change our life. "

3) Juan Carlos Cubeiro, a great book writer and with a blog From which you can learn a lot, he recommends the following books:

«I would recommend a more Renaissance, more humanistic book ... companies now need more humanism than ever and that is why I choose El Quijote, a book with very funny moments. There are 2 things that should NOT be done with Don Quixote: one is to read it very young (which unfortunately happens ... it must be read) and the other is to read it at once. Don Quixote is to be read in pieces and tasted.

It is the story of a supposed madman who deals with more than 300 people throughout the 2 volumes and who changes the lives of everyone he deals with.

Regarding business issues, Juan Carlos Cubeiro recommends:

* Live without a boss de Sergio Fernandez

* In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman.

* Nice to meet me de Borja Vilaseca.

Other books that he recommends outside the scope of the company are:

* Utopia by Tomás Moro. A very entertaining classic book.

* In Praise of Insanity by Erasmus of Rotterdam.

* The manual of the Christian prince, also by Erasmus of Rotterdam.

* Shakespeare and leadership development scored by Juan Carlos Cubeiro when we have the information. In Latin culture Shakespeare is very unknown and this book seeks, through 18 accessible films, to see what Shakespeare teaches us in aspects such as anger management, not abusing power, ... In the end, when Shakespeare is studied well, one he realizes that shakespeare goes far beyond being a person, it is really an educational project.

* Richard III of Shakespeare. It is the story of someone who starts to flee forward, gets drunk with power and in the end cannot stop (an aspect that can be extrapolated to the business and political world). »

4) Now it's Borja Vilaseca's turn, creator of a Master in Personal Development at the University of Barcelona:

«The first book that marked me a lot was The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. It is about how sometimes some of the decisions we make make us rise a ladder in the world but at the cost of losing ourselves, of losing our essential values.

Another book that I would like to highlight is The first and last freedom from Jiddu Krishnamurti, a great Hindu philosopher and sage who gave talks. Many of these talks became edited books. He speaks of the greatest revolution that human beings can experience is through the development of their consciousness.

I also really like novels that unmask social conditioning and in this sense I would like to highlight authors like Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley, Richard Yates, Chuck Palahniuk.

I also like western psychology and philosophy. Within this scope, the author who has changed my life is the Colombian who died in 2004 Gerardo Schmedling:

He was a Colombian philosopher who dedicated himself to researching the causes of human suffering. Like the great sages, he did not write anything but there are transcripts of the talks he gave. If I have to highlight some of these talks, I would choose 2: Aceptology and Alchemy of thought, the latter is about how you can transform your life by changing your thinking and, therefore, your belief system. "

Finally, leave you a tip that can change your life: Ask the people you know which book they liked the most. Notice that one of the problems that we find most in the books is that they have a high uncertainty index. You go to a bookstore and say which one do I buy? If you know people who you know are good readers or who have a speech that you like, ask them: Hey, what book have you read lately and is it good?«. You'll save yourself a fortune on books.

Radio program transcript Positive thinking with Sergio Fernández, Jaume Segales, Juan Carlos Cubeiro, Borja Vilaseca, José Luis Montes and Rafael Santandreu.