 Every now and then, there's a book that really changes your life. But in my experience, the number one factor that determines whether it really changes your life is the timing that you read the book at. So I'm gonna share seven books everyone in their 20 should read, because this is a very important phase of your life and a very important time to not waste, but instead to seize the day. Hey guys, Alex Hyan here over at Modern Health Monk. Before we jump into this video, I've put together a free seven day self growth challenge. It's just you'll get an email or a video a day on how to improve your life and make it 1% better. So you can check it out. It's the first link right below this video. Book number one is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Now in your 20s, it is the best and most important time to dream as big as possible and take every risk imaginable. Now for me, when I was writing my first book, Master of the Day, I read about Santiago in The Alchemist going through Spain and Andalusia, and I just thought, wouldn't it be incredible if I wrote my first book when I was in Spain, tracing the footsteps of The Alchemist? So I did that. I did exactly that. But the reason you should read this book is because this is a book that will encourage you to find and follow your personal legend and risk everything to do it because it will lead you to so much fulfillment and so much happiness in your life and it will be worth it. The second book you should read in your 20s is called Mastery by Robert Green. The reason for this is that the road to building a career and a life is a road, right? It's literally a path of a progression. Like what do you see here? At one point I had no videos on the internet. It was just all blog articles. And so I decided to play with YouTube and just try it out and see if I liked it, see if it made me happy and see if it made you happy. And it worked. And it led to another thing. It led to this book and this book led to another book and that led to another book. And that led to more videos and more opportunities. And I did my doctorate. Now I have a medical practice and I'm running this. What do you see when you look at that? The answer is progression, right? I didn't start with any of those. I built them over seven years. But for many of us we think that if we just get to 30 or we get to where? Wherever, 35, 40, 50, 25, all my dreams are just gonna happen. But most people don't know that it starts by taking massive action on the best opportunity right now and that leads you to the next one and the next one and the next one. So through this process of progression will lead you to the life you really want. And mastery helps you figure out your life's task and how to stay committed to it. The third book is the psychology of money. One of those things that is hard in your 20s is that you aren't making any money. And in my opinion, you should be risking maximally to go after your dreams and your goals because worst case scenario, you end up back in your parents and who really cares anyway? Probably half of the people in their 20s are still living with their parents regardless. This book has a lot of interesting stories on what it takes to succeed with money. But one story really stuck with me which is the story of Bill Gates. So this chapter is all about risk and reward from investing in yourself. Now he talks about the story of Bill Gates who just so happened to be a one in a million student literally one in one million had access to a computer at their school or personally at that time. Bill Gates just so happened to be lucky enough to be one of them and he fell in love with computers. That was his passion and that's what ended up building Microsoft. That risk of being interested in that one thing that he was lucky enough to have exposure to led to him being one of the world's richest men that may never have existed without that timing, right? That was luck, but he sees the opportunity. On the other side of the coin of luck is risk where he talks about one of Bill Gates's friends and other classmates in high school who they said was as good as any, if not better than them was mountain climbing as a teenager and then ended up passing away, dying on a mountain as a teenager. Now that was about a one in a million risk that he took and he lost, he died. That guy could have been one of the initial partners in Microsoft and also be a billionaire but both of them took risks in terms of their life. Bill Gates took a risk that was luck meets opportunity and his friend took a risk that was luck meets opportunity and in life when you see people become successful everything is about some degree of risk but you only hear about the people who risk and they succeed. So I love this book in terms of the psychology of why people succeed. The fourth book is How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Wind Big by Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comics. Now the reason I love this book is that he has one of the most realistic looks at what I think it takes to succeed in life. Lots of successful people write books when they've succeeded. Now you never know if they're like, oh, they worked hard. Well, so did millions of other successful people that were not nearly that successful. So was it really the hard work or was it timing and luck, the business partner where they went to school, their dad, right? You never really know. What I found in this book was one principle which is that he says every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success and it reminds me of the story of Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad when he was talking to a journalist. And he said, you know, what do you wanna do? What's your dream? And she said, I wanna be a bestselling author. And he said, you know what's funny? I'm not a good writer, but you know what it says in my book, it says bestselling author. And she kind of went off like, I don't wanna learn the dirty money stuff. I don't wanna learn marketing and sales and all this nonsense. And he said, you know what's funny? You don't have a book and you wanna be a bestselling author but I am a bestselling author. And at least this idea that every skill you acquire increases the odds of you being successful, right? A piece of me writing my own books and them doing well is I took years to learn how to do this. That's hard work, right? Most people won't do that. Most authors won't do that. But that platform is the initial community of people who will find your work. So every skill you acquire will increase the chances of your success. The fifth book I would recommend is Shameless Self-Promotion, Milk the Pigeon by this guy named Alexander Hein. Now, the reason I wrote this book is because I don't see any books for 20-somethings or 30-somethings or 50-somethings that talk about these three things. I thought, what is the book I would wanna give to one of my kids just to make their 20s easier? And this book answers and proposes three main questions inherent to life. One, what the hell do I do with my life? Two, how do I find work I love? And three, how do I live a life worth living that is meaningful? All three of these, full of stories on how to answer that question in your own life, are in this book. So those three things I think are the three major buckets of life that I think 20-somethings are especially concerned with. And if you can do this, read this, you'll be a decade ahead of your friends, for sure. The sixth book is Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck. One of the reasons I love this book is that Martha is a coach. I think she's a therapist. And having coached and had therapy clients, hundreds, thousands of people, she's noticed the same major patterns, but one in particular is very relevant. She talks about how a lot of people tried to decide their careers and their life from the mind, but they ended up betraying their gut and their soul in the process. You know, Martha talks about how her dad was trying to get her to go into a certain profession and she never really was that successful and it never really flowed, it was always hard. And the second she started trusting her gut about what profession to go into and what work to do, everything blew up from there. And I find that observing other people and my own career, the same as being true. When you recognize from your gut feeling, what are my gifts, what are my passions, what are my interests? And then you layer on skills, right? Just being a good creative doesn't mean you'll succeed. Being an author doesn't mean you'll sell any copies. You have to learn these secondary skills that synergistically work together. But for her, this book is all about exercises to train you to recognize your gut feelings in your body, trusting the wisdom of the body over what your mind tells you. This is all society's BS, your parents, your teachers, but this will help you reconnect with what you truly want. The final book is by a therapist or a psychologist named Meg Jay, Dr. Meg Jay, why 30 is not the new 20. And the big idea from this book that I loved was this idea that 30 is not the new 20, meaning 20-somethings think that they have all this time in the world and to some degree it is true. But people live their entire 20s unconsciously, not doing work they like, not even thinking about work they like, just going for money or just going for leisure, dating unconsciously, oh, she's hot, he's hot, they're fun, they're fun, but never thinking about the kind of person they'd be happy with long-term. And then we think when we get to 30, magically we've solved this problem. I'm doing work I love and I'm making six figures, I'm dating my dream person that I could marry forever. And usually that doesn't happen because if you're not thinking consciously about your life now, why would you in 10 years? It doesn't magically happen. You need to really live life urgently with a sense of urgency. 20 is not the new 30. You can have the best years of your passion building in your 20s if you're consciously using that time and not doing it with BS, doing a BS finance job you don't like or just being a Bohemian backpacker not aligned with your goals. If you really view time as scarce, it always is. And your view of your 20s is a valuable period of time to figure key things out. Your 30s will be incredible and your life will be incredible, but it gets a lot harder to do as you get older. So, seven books you should read in your 20s. That's all I got for you guys. I have links to them below this video. Check it out.