After reading over 200+ books on personal development, psychology, business and hours daily of youtube videos. Listening to Robert Greene’s audiobooks about laws of human nature, mastery, 48 laws of power, The 33 strategies of war and a ton of other guys like Jordan Peterson who is one of my favourite people to listen to feed my fascination on human behaviour. With all of the Tony Robbins, Gary Vee content, (I often felt alone until I found many of these people) not to mention YouTubers in my other favourite areas such as entrepreneurship and investing….. I now find myself much wiser, I wouldn’t say smart because that would be stupid, in fact, I have never felt smart, but I can think out of the box and I have positioned myself so I have a lot of free time to learn most of the day. I would say I was awakened a by Tony Robbins seminar when I was around 24 years old, but only truly awakened a few years ago when I started consuming the books in a heavy way, Tony Robbins “Awaken The Giant Within” was one of the first books I read after his seminar and it really does smash limiting beliefs and helps you let so of the past.
All of this learning has made me frustrated, silent, and it brings loneliness because people around do not understand a lot of things that have been explained in these books, especially psychology, you can start to see how people mentally trap themselves and believe in stuff that isn’t real. I’ve been stupid, I’m still stupid often, I’ve been the guy in a rut, I’ve been the guy jealous and disabled by my own limiting beliefs and lack of self-confidence. I have an 8-year-old son, I know that as human beings we have to go through the cycle of starting fresh again, if only we could live a few hundred years, our education is compounding like money, so for my child I have already started his investing and my latest son Vincent, had stocks in the first 2 weeks of being born.
Investing for him now gives him options for later, but granted not everyone has money, but that was just used as an example. I always imagined what if I was taught compounding at a young age, not that I would have listened, I see my son making mistake after mistake as I tell him what not to do and he does it and learns anyway, this is often because they need stories to back up why something shouldn’t be done, or they need to live it themselves. Not investing (money or education) in yourself isn’t a life-threatening problem right now, but it can be later, so its a challenge to explain that to even fully grown adults. I have had some life-threatening problems which I have kept at bay with very good dieting and exercise which was from educating myself because my beliefs were not limited to just turning up and doing what the doctors say, I’ve never accepted that I have always looked for more… Having the money gives me the time to focus on my health problems, which isn’t easy if you are working and run down.
I don’t like to preach to other people what they should or shouldn’t do with their child but when it comes to no brainers such as education, I think many parents haven’t gone down the self-development route themselves because its tainted with some reputation where a few losers laugh at you because it makes them feel uncomfortable, in fact, the more you earn and learn, the less of you there are, so you will be in a smaller minority and get laughed at.
As soon as my children have a good grasp of reading English, I will pick every self-development book that I can find, especially the ones I have already read, and the one I am trying to write, and for every single one, I will give him a test after and pay him for it, it will be a good way for him to work and accelerate his learning, imagine the effect on compound that 1000 GBP does for a child at a young age, education is exactly the same, but the problem is you don’t know what you don’t know.
I see many people struggling with life, bad habits, financial problems, but they don’t know there are books out there that can help, there are 10000’s of people that have dealt with your problems and written about it, once you know that and you know you can read/google everything, you don’t need courses unless you are strapped for time, all these books are very cheap and are ready to accelerate your children’s life. I read “The Millionaire Fastlane” around 3–5 months ago, I wish I had read that when it first came out, I could have probably been much further up the habit, but no doubt I would have hit another barrier back then, like lack of confidence or believing the book is for other people. And because you cannot google stuff you don’t know there is to know, picking up a book is the best way on going on a ride of knowledge.
Although I tend to learn a lot of self-development that involves business and high performance, health, clean living, fitness and being a good husband/parent is all an essential ingredient. We all have different versions of success, but giving your children the knowledge to self educate, remove limiting beliefs, understand other people and realise they do not need to access what the majority to accept, is all a path to where they will find their happiness, because happiness is the result we are all looking for, the rest is structure to make that happen. For me, I like to serve others to make me happy and serving my family with education is something that I strive to do, my children will be off to a running start before they have reached secondary school.
My future book is about Growth Mindset, I want to write this book to help set people free and get them on the snowball of self-development, it will save people years of time finding things they don’t know that exists, when I have gathered some resources online to teach my child, I noticed a whole new world out there of homeschooling while I was looking for that pre-made info, so it seems those parents are ahead of the traditional schools.
The biggest critique of the self-development world is if 100,000 books were sold on how to be a millionaire, why isn’t everyone a millionaire? The way I see it, we are all screwed in some way, we have to constantly tame that beast inside us, the books help us understand and deal with situations better, but the biggest hurdle for most people after education and removing limiting believes, is procrastination, because you can stay in your comfort zone and feel like you are taking action by reading more books or doing more courses, but in reality, you just need to figure out what you want to do and take action daily, make daily habits that build towards your goals, plan further ahead and chip away until you achieve your goals, most people keep talking about their plans or give up, people let themselves be controlled by problems, by reacting to disasters when they are forced to, opposed to being defensive ahead of time. I choose to look ahead at problems and beat myself up emotionally naturally, such as heavily relying on one income but knowing that it will go tits up one day… This is a whole new article or book to discuss this, but don’t be put off by other peoples failures.
I am adding a quick list off the top of the head for my son Anthony Flowers to read, just in case I am not around one day. It kills me to not add more to this list, but that’s enough to get the ball rolling.
Anthony Robbins — 1. Unlimited Power and 2. Awaken The Giant Within
Robert Greene — all of his books (3. Mastery, 4. 48 laws of power, 5. 33 strategies of war,
6. Art of seduction and 7. Laws of human nature)
Jack Canfield — 8. The Success principles
Carol Dweck —9. Mindset
Anthony Robbins — 10. Money Master The Game and 11. Unshakeable
12. Jordan B Peterson — 12 rules for life
13. Robert T Kiyosaki — Rich Dad Poor Dad
14. MJ Demarco — The Millionaire Fastlane
15. Napoleon Hill- Think and Grow Rich
16. Dale Carnegie — How to win friends and Influence people
And all of Gary Vee’s books (Jab Jab Jab Right Hook, Crushing It, The Thank you Economy)
