 When you go on YouTube, there are lots of videos about books that have changed your life, but my own experience has taught me one thing. The number one determinant of if a book changes your life is the timing that you read it and the timing that it hits you. So in this video, I thought I would share five books that have dramatically changed the direction of my life. Hey guys, it's Alex Hine over at Modern Health Monk. Before we jump in, I've put together a free goal setting worksheet that'll help you figure out how to have the best year ever of your life. It's the first link right below this video. Check it out and we'll jump back in. Now the first book is Martha Beck's Finding Your Own North Star. The reason this book dramatically changed my life was because especially in my early and mid-20s I complained often of feeling lost. I wasn't quite sure what my purpose was, I wasn't quite sure what work I loved, I wasn't quite sure really where to go or what to do or where to live even. And Martha Beck's book talks about these four phases of life and these are really what I think as four phases of reinventing yourself or they're four phases of rebuilding yourself. Now one phase in particular was very interesting which was the death and rebirth phase, the very first square zero, part one, the very beginning of rebuilding. There are phases in life where you are in a death phase of life. It's winter, you've just graduated college, you don't know where to go, you've just gone through a breakup or a divorce. You feel terrible and you're starting over. You've moved and you're entirely alone or you have no friends. And it's in those phases of life where you are rebuilding from zero in a certain way and you can feel very lost, you can feel very depressed, you could run back the last thing that was some measure of security, even if it wasn't right. But we've all felt that phase of being lost. Now Martha Beck, one thing I love about her book is that she talks about each thing is a phase and each phase has a specific mantra and a specific action step that will help you the most that is not true in the other phases of life. So, Martha Beck, finding your own North Star. Now the second book that changed my life is by Scott Adams. How to fail at almost everything and still win big. Now, if you are someone who's driven and you're reading lots of books on success, inevitably what that one person shares as to the secret of their success is maybe not really the secret of their success but is what they thought made them successful. And a lot of the time when we're successful we don't really wanna honestly look at why we were successful. When we fail we wanna look because we wanna be successful. But we all like to think if we succeeded that all of our actions, our hard work, our discipline was the big factor. And I just frankly don't agree that that's the truth. But one of the things Scott Adams says very humbly is that no individual business venture or creative venture you embark on will succeed no matter how much money, no matter how smart, no matter how driven you are, no matter the team, look at the failure rate of startups with trillions of funding overall through all of these startups. But what you can control is the number of skills that you acquire. And he says every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success. And it reminds me of a conversation Robert Kiyosaki, the rich dad, poor dad writer said that he had with a someone, woman that was interviewing him. He asked her what her dream was and she said, you know, I've always wanted to be a best selling author. And he said, you know, well I am once I can give you some advice if you want it. And he said, you need to acquire a secondary set of skills which are business and marketing skills for your book. And she kind of went off. She's like, I don't want to learn that. I'm a writer, I have no interest in the business side. That's why I'm writing. And he said, well, you know, it's funny. You may be a good writer, but you see on my book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, it's his best selling author. And isn't that what you wanted? And she sort of was disgruntled and unhappy about his comment, but his point was correct. That being a good writer, if you want to have a commercially successful book is only half or one third of being a successful author because you may have the best book in the world, but if no one knows it exists, no one's going to come and get it. So every skill you acquire increases your chances of having a successful venture. One of the reasons I love that book. Third book that changed my life was The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. The main reason I love The Alchemist and the main reason that it spoke to me, I was actually reading it when I was going on a vision quest. I was in a remote part of Algeria, Tamman Rasit, an Oasis town, before I was about to meet up with some of the Berber people, actually the Tuareg, a subgroup of the Berber nomads, really some of the last remaining nomads on earth. And we were traveling by camel caravan for three weeks in the desert. And I read this book, The Alchemist, before going into that vision quest. And it spoke to me so much because of the way that Paulo Coelho talks about people having to follow their personal legend. You have to follow your heart in the sense that there's a thing probably you've always wanted to do but you're too afraid to do it. And if you can get over that fear and follow your personal legend, it will lead you to such an incredible life that is fulfilling, that is big, that is life changing, that is the envy of other people because you were brave enough to fulfill that sort of destiny that most people were too afraid to fulfill. So if you can trust your personal legend, your life can become incredible. Fourth book that changed my life was Mastery by Robert Green. One of the things I love most about this book was that it talks about the histories of famous masters from Da Vinci to Hakuin, the Zen monk, to famous physicians, to athletes, to violinists, to Mozart. And he gives in all of these diverse biographies a similar story, which is interesting that these masters tended to have a very strong sense of vocation, that this was a kind of calling. And I think the word vocation originates in Christianity of people being called to God and called to really the priesthood. And the thing that blows me away about it is that he talks about there's a sequential pattern for mastery, the first part being listening to the calling. And I think this is where so many people go awry where of course doing work is hard, but where I see people go awry is that people do not trust the calling. They have that voice, they have that whisper, there's something they know that they could be doing, but the fear, the voice of their parents or of society or of their friends is louder than their own trust of this calling. And if you can trust that calling the same as the personal legend and then you can work towards mastery, his book is proof of concept that you put those two things together, those power couples, and you can become one of the greatest icons of history, but that these were not easy journeys, right? You have to trust that feeling. And finally, the fifth book that changed my life was called The Great Work of Your Life. Now this book is written by a guy who I think is a yoga teacher or works with one of the centers back in New England. And this book is all about building a life around your dharma. Your dharma is almost like your divine work, right? Again, vocation comes to mind. There's work that you feel born to do, drawn to do, something that's compelling and something that speaks to your soul. And he talks about one of the reasons why so many people are unhappy and unfulfilled and feeling spiritually bankrupt is that our work is not our dharma. And when work is dharma, it doesn't mean you're gonna become a billionaire. What it does mean is that your life is going to take on a whole nother level of richness and meaning that for so many people is just pain and misery, their work. So finding dharma, making your life revolve around dharma and amazing case histories from Robert Frost to priests to doctors to all kinds of people, how they found their dharma and how they lived it. So five books that have changed the course of my life that hit me right at the exact moment. I have the links to those books right below in this video. Check them out and I'll see you guys soon.