The best books to help you make an abundant living doing work you love

I’ll start with the way my own journey began: with practical, nuts and bolts ‘physical’ style actions.

For this I recommend Cal Newport’s first book, one of my top three non-fiction titles of all time. 

I got so much from Cal’s book that it’s difficult to sum up in a short review, but his advice helped me establish work behaviours and routines that led to the completion of two fiction titles (my debut novels) and another non-fiction title (my third) during the worst of the COVID pandemic.

I recommend you look at all of Cal’s work but begin with Deep Work. You won’t be sorry. 

Although I write within the genre of ‘Self-help’ and ‘Personal Growth’, as a reader, I am put off by titles that are too wishy-washy, saccharine, or worse, untested. 

Remember the saying, ‘Don’t walk in the footsteps of the masters, seek what they sought’? This is an important reminder for us to find and test our own truths rather than blindly follow others.  

For this reason, I recommend any work by Robert Greene, but particularly Mastery. 

Greene is a master at cutting through the hyperbole and getting to the core of what drives human behaviour and improved productivity without the weird bells and whistles.

His well thought-out ideas are based on evidence, road tested, backed-up by interesting case studies and applicable to our lives. 

As my journey in personal growth continued, there came a time when I realised that the hard physical, practical approach was just one area I had to master if I was to steer my life to the heights I dreamed for myself.

This is when I thought about meaning and the more intangible areas of success, such as motivation, desire, deeply held beliefs, and limiting thoughts.

It is easy to stumble into the strange and esoteric within this area of literature, therefore I cannot recommend Simon Sinek’s book highly enough. 

It is a no-nonsense sensible work that will help you find your ‘meaning’ (your why?) in life. Once you have found this, it’s much easier to find the ‘how’ that will lead to your success.

When pursuing any goal, an inspiring work life, loving relationships, radiant health, abundant free-flowing wealth, whatever it may be, at some stage you may face a hard truth: that much (if not all) of your success and failure is determined by what goes on between your ears.

Honestly, I wish I had picked up Dr. Dweck’s book twenty years earlier. I’m convinced, had I done so, I would have given Roger Federer a run for his money on centre court at Wimbledon some time.

Mindset is a book that my wife (a school headteacher) and I both agree should be mandatory reading for every parent, teenager, or person wanting to release themselves from the tyranny of self-doubt. 

And, of course, well written, researched and tried and tested.

This is a book I read almost thirty years ago after struggling with confidence following a street attack in my teens. I still dip in and out of it today, albeit for very different guidance.

It may seem strange to some that I have picked books that put so much emphasis on ‘mind-work’ to help one achieve the goal of not only enjoying work so much they leap out of bed in the morning to it, but that also provides an abundant living. Yet, my years of successes and failures have taught me that the mind is the missing link in doing so.

I love the work I do and the life that it affords, and I would love for that to be your experience, too.

Enjoy my picks.