Motivational books, as the word generally believes, are not so holy reads in general. Most of the motivational books that I have read are either too flamboyant a journey of the author from nothing to nothingness or a story of the most successful people we already know in general life. What do the readers want from a motivational book? Have you ever tried to look at the facts? Why do you buy a motivational book? Certainly, the answer will reflect the words like below:
To get motivation or to get motivated or to know me or to do something great or to be the real me or blah blah blah.
However, does the motivational book you love the most and rate the highest really inspire you? What have you achieved after reading the works by Dale Carnegie? What have you done by reading the works of Bill Gates? I haven’t heard about another Bill Gates. I haven’t come to know about other Obama. I have never seen another Gandhi. And maybe that’s the reason that I am just disillusioned with the world of motivational books!
I don’t read the books which say they will motivate me. I read the books which say these are stories of the lives of those who have been successful in particular fields and I try to enjoy the story as per. Motivation does not come by reading books; it comes when you try to bring the learnings into realities by executing what you think and not by just keeping the thought-engines on. That will make you a ‘coral thinker’ who can do nothing but just think and sit idle. Would you like to be that?
Read the works which are the realities and the thoughts to be in action. If you are trying to memorise some quotable quotes from the works of the great people and think that citing them to your friends with para chapter details will make you look intellectual and fashionable, you are just reading! Learning part in your reading is absent and you really need to mend that to perfection!
Here are some books which I have read and these books teach me to make myself worthy to do some action. I hope these books will be helpful for you too:
Guide to Organisation Design by Naomi Stanford: This is the book for those who think they have to do something in the field of business – start-up, business idea, creating an empire, establishing a company and etc. This book will tell you how things are done and not how to think a particular idea over and over again! If you have an entrepreneur mindset, you have to be reading this book now or then! Get this book right now from Amazon:
Naomi’s Guide to Organisation Design on Amazon
For Those Who Must Lead by various authors (J Donald Philips and Laurence J Taylor and Michael E Kolivosky: I don’t know if you can still get this book because I won the rarest of the copies available – a hardbound 1974 exclusive Indian print edition. This book is just amazing as it opens a new world to the readers by telling them what is to be done and how. Yes, it does have that managerial tone to the writing because it also believes in action which one must be engaging himself in order to achieve something in life.
And there are many ones by Jiddu Krishnamurthy which I read in the leisure to know the things which are beyond our humane parlance in day-to-day lives.
by AM