“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”
Abraham Maslow
I grew up with entrepreneurs for parents and they instilled in me a love for personal growth! Failures are a chance to grow… successes are a chance to grow. Someone is treating you bad and deserves a slap in the face… but wait, chance to grow. Most people in life that we would consider admirable have spent countless hours in investing in themselves!
Most people never reach success because they are satisfied with mediocre. I am not! And you shouldn’t be either! Whether it is mental health, physical fitness, spiritual growth, or business smarts, we should always be learning and applying our skills and knowledge.
“Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone.”
Shannon L. Alder
So let’s take some time to invest in ourselves!
I dont get any benefit from recommending the resources in this post. I am just passionate about God’s children living in joy and abundance, so enjoy! Here are just a couple of my favourite personal growth books to get you started! (My favourite book of all time is at the end!)
Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend.
Healthy relationships and a healthy lifestyle in general can almost always boil down to healthy boundaries. This book helps you take control of your life by learning how and when to say no to something and set up boundaries in your life that help you and your relationships thrive. I struggled with boundaries for a long time and I still have space to grow but it have been so empowering and loving to myself and others to be confident in who I am and where my lines are drawn.
“We can’t manipulate people into swallowing our boundaries by sugarcoating them. Boundaries are a “litmus test” for the quality of our relationships. Those people in our lives who can respect our boundaries will love our wills, our opinions, our separateness. Those who can’t respect our boundaries are telling us that they don’t love our nos. They only love our yeses, our compliance. “I only like it when you do what I want.”
Dr. Henry Cloud, Boundaries
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
A very popular choice for growing in financial literacy. For myself, the biggest benefit of this book was just a mindset shift to how business and finance in general work! This book is entertaining, filled with descriptive stories and pictures to help build the concepts better.
“In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.”
Robert T. Kiyosaki
The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth by John Maxwell
John Maxwell is a personal growth genius. This is one of the books that my parents learned from as they built their business and is full of wisdom for success in life as a whole, not just business.
“Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.”
John C. Maxwell
Cleaning Up the Mental Mess Podcast by Dr. Caroline Leaf
Anything by Dr. leaf is fascinating as she breaks down the way that our brains and minds work on a scientific and psychological level so we can know ourselves better and can grow. She talks a lot about neuroplasticity which is the brain’s ability to adapt and make new paths of thoughts and habits. Our brains are designed with the flexibility to unlearn destructive habits, and to learn healthy ones in their place! We are never stuck with our destructive tendencies. She has many books out that I have yet to read, but her podcast is very interesting.
“Thoughts are real, physical things that occupy mental real estate. Moment by moment, every day, you are changing the structure of your brain through your thinking. When we hope, it is an activity of the mind that changes the structure of our brain in a positive and normal direction.”
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Beautiful Outlaw by John Eldredge
This book is my top favourite of all time. I will read and re-read it for the rest of my life. It breaks down the religious fog around Jesus and shows His personality. He is playful, intense, disruptive, and so beautiful. I was crying halfway through the first chapter. It will give you a whole new perspective on who God is.
“He is the playfulness of creation, scandal and utter goodness, the generosity of the ocean and the ferocity of a thunderstorm; he is cunning as a snake and gentle as a whisper; the gladness of sunshine and the humility of a thirty-mile walk by foot on a dirt road.”
John Eldredge, Beautiful Outlaw
Have fun learning and growing! God bless and have a g’day y’all!
-Nicci