Here are 100 books that My Happy Life fans have personally recommended if you like
My Happy Life.
Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
My purpose is to help leaders connect to and manage their energy. I help them bring coherence to how they lead and reach their full societal impact. For more than a decade, I have coached 300 of the most senior leaders at some of the largest and most recognizable companies in the world. My recommended to-read book list represents crucible moments in my life and my calling to learn about human energy. Representing different lenses, which are key to adding to a mix of ingredients, allows the reader to drink a potion that will exalt all your buckets (physical, mental, emotional & spiritual) of energy holistically.
Besides being one of the best psychologists in mankind's history, Viktor is a masterful storyteller. It's as if I was transported to Auschwitz at the time, where Viktor was imprisoned along with thousands of Jews; in a very compelling way, he leaves no hint of a doubt that it was thanks to his meaning in life that he was able to survive, and the minute that others let go of theirs, they let go of life itself.
In addition, Viktor also shares his logotherapy framework and how it was updated after his terrible experience. If you doubt the power of doing the work to search for your life’s meaning, this book is a must-read.
One of the outstanding classics to emerge from the Holocaust, Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's story of his struggle for survival in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Today, this remarkable tribute to hope offers us an avenue to finding greater meaning and purpose in our own lives.
As a professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, I’m conditioned to inquire into the meaning of life! But also, I was raised in many different countries and cultures—the UK, Iran, Fiji, Indonesia, Switzerland, the US, plus recent stints studying in China—so I’ve sampled a stewpot of worldviews. The result is that I have a passion for this topic. But I am no truth-telling guru myself (except that I know that dogs are GOOD). I can only speak about the meaning of life for me and hope it will make sense to others. These books have helped me construct that meaning.
If you think too much and you’re not religious, you may have bumped up against a question that troubled much of my existence: on the one hand, I want (and sometimes fail) to live a life I can call morally good, but on the other hand, I don’t have any sort of theories or transcendental claims to base my “morally good” on. It’s hard to say you believe in X when your answer to “Why do you believe in X?” is, “because it’s X!” Rorty (on my reading) reminds us we don’t need to be torn apart by the intrusion of intellectual skepticism into our desire to act in a moral manner. To borrow from Nike, just do it.
In this 1989 book Rorty argues that thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein have enabled societies to see themselves as historical contingencies, rather than as expressions of underlying, ahistorical human nature or as realizations of suprahistorical goals. This ironic perspective on the human condition is valuable on a private level, although it cannot advance the social or political goals of liberalism. In fact Rorty believes that it is literature not philosophy that can do this, by promoting a genuine sense of human solidarity. A truly liberal culture, acutely aware of its own historical contingency, would fuse the private, individual…
As a professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, I’m conditioned to inquire into the meaning of life! But also, I was raised in many different countries and cultures—the UK, Iran, Fiji, Indonesia, Switzerland, the US, plus recent stints studying in China—so I’ve sampled a stewpot of worldviews. The result is that I have a passion for this topic. But I am no truth-telling guru myself (except that I know that dogs are GOOD). I can only speak about the meaning of life for me and hope it will make sense to others. These books have helped me construct that meaning.
What is the meaning of life? We could take the question further by disposing of our blinkers and asking, what is the meaning of the other lives that may not look like ours? These lives consist of the millions of animals who die in the factory farms built to conceal their suffering and turn them into fungible objects, not lives. Safran’s book is an eye-opening exposition of how we have enslaved animals for food that we don’t even need in the 21st century—damaging ourselves and the environment in the process. One meaning of life: the value of letting other lives have meaning too.
To reduce risk of pandemics for ourselves, our gaze needs to turn to the health of animals. Discover Jonathan Safran Foer's eye-opening and life-changing account of the meat we eat.
'Should be compulsory reading. A genuine masterwork. Read this book. It will change you' Time Out
Eating Animals is the most original and urgent book on the subject of food written this century. It will change the way you think, and change the way you eat. For good.
Whether you're flirting with veganuary, trying to cut back on animal consumption, or a lifelong meat-eater, you need to read this book.…
Fiction has a way of capturing people, places, and phenomena that often elude source-bound historians. As I say in my book, you feel the weight of all the terrible things Colonel Kurtz has done in central Africa far more by his whispering “the horror, the horror” than I, as a historian, could possibly convey by listing them out and analyzing them. That feel–especially what contingency feels like–is something historians should seek out and try to pull into their craft of writing. Getting used to and using fiction to help historians see and feel the past is a worthwhile endeavor.
The idea to adapt Conrad’s Heart of Darkness came from my teaching of modern world history every semester. Later in that course, I would have students read Achebe’s novel as a foil or answer to Heart of Darkness. The Congolese in Heart are barely people: they have no names, and they are only really described by parts of their bodies.
This book presents the West African world–the communities, the customs, the emotions, the families–that colonialism destroys. While it is easy to be swept away by the story’s momentum in the last two dozen pages, take some time early in the novel to enjoy the world that Achebe lovingly paints. I think it is among the most human expressions of fiction you can read.
I am a Regents Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona. Ever since I was a child growing up in the South Bronx, I have been interested in why people are so driven to believe they are right and good, and why there is so much prejudice in the world. This has led to me to a lifelong exploration of the basic motivations that guide people’s actions, and how these motivations influence how people view themselves and others, and the goals they pursue.
This is to me is the best book ever written for understanding what human beings are, how we are similar to and different from other animal species, how we develop from helpless newborns to fully functioning adults, and what we are striving for in our lives. Most nonfiction books make a point and then repeat it over and over with examples and anecdotes. In contrast, The Birth and Death of Meaning begins with evolution and progresses logically from its first page to its last. When you finish this book, you will have a much better understanding of yourself, the people in your life, historical and current events, and problems ranging from anxiety and depression to interpersonal conflict to prejudice.
As a wealth advisor for over 37 years, I find many people reach retirement lacking clarity and confidence. Traditional financial advice often focuses on things that are unknowable, uncontrollable, and frankly don’t matter that much. While sound technical investment, estate, and tax planning are critical, the soul’s need for meaning and purpose are as important as sound financial plans. The path to true financial peace may be simpler than you think. These books can help you focus on the fewer, more critical things so that you can thrive in retirement and free yourself from financial media which is not in business to support your vision of a meaningful life.
I read this book (a second time) as I was approaching my 50th birthday.
It totally changed the way I viewed the “second half” of my life. While this book is geared to a Christian audience, it offers great encouragement on ways you can “go to the locker room” at halftime and strategically plan the second half so that it is the best half!
Your midlife doesn't have to be a crisis. In fact, the second half of your life can be better than the first. Let bestselling author Bob Buford show you how.
What do you want to do with the rest of your life?
In Halftime, Buford provides encouragement and insight to propel your life on a new course to true significance--and the best years of your life. Buford focuses on this important time of transition to the second half of your life, giving you the tools you need to:
Take stock of your successes and accomplishments thus far
Redefine significance and…
I’ve been told I’m a visionary, but labels are of little significance to me. What I know for sure is that I’m a storyteller of the visionary variety, who has won numerous awards in that genre. Dating back to cave dwellers, myth-tellers, and folk minstrels, visionary authors have been consciously or unconsciously laying paths and building bridges between paradigms for eons. Such bridges are constructed of new language, perilous journeys, and transformative visions. My particular stories connect the path of perceived human limitations to true, unlimited potential. My characters are quirky, endearing, and often funny. They are each of us stumbling through an infinite, low-lying thicket for higher purpose. Until one day, we look up.
Okay, you got me. This is not a book of fiction, although cynics may disagree. It’s a book of quantum possibility based on hard science and evolved visionary theory.
Like all of my stories, Biocentrism places consciousness at the center of its premise, presenting an important new human/world/cosmic view of well, everything. Like its author, Robert Lanza, I believe that consciousness is the essential fabric of mind, soul, and matter. Everything arises from it. Nothing is conceived without it.
The characters in my stories are always guided toward the higher aspects of their awareness in order to create new realities. Waking up to the understanding of a consciousness-centric existence changes not only us, but everything we know. Everything we thought we knew. And most importantly, forms the basis of everything we do from this point forward.
Biocentrism, as well as Lanza’s other books, provide a scientific foundation for what…
Robert Lanza is one of the most respected scientists in the world--a US News & World Report cover story called him a "genius" and a "renegade thinker," even likening him to Einstein. Lanza has teamed with Bob Berman, the most widely read astronomer in the world, to produce Biocentrism, a revolutionary new view of the universe. Every now and then a simple yet radical idea shakes the very foundations of knowledge. The startling discovery that the world was not flat challenged and ultimately changed the way people perceived themselves and their relationship with the world. For most humans of the…
I love building businesses. I’ve built several businesses, ranging from a one person consultancy to a venture-backed tech company to an 8-figure marketing agency to a managed HR marketplace to a virtual memorial services company. The only thing I love more than building businesses is building and helping create new entrepreneurs. These books have helped me tremendously in my journey and I hope they help you as well!
Oprah is my hero. I can think of no more impressive entrepreneur, from what she started with to what she built and the impact she has had on the world. For many people, understanding one’s purpose and direction is the first step towards becoming a successful entrepreneur and a happy and fulfilled human being. This book will help you begin to do the hard work to get there.
Everyone has a purpose. And, according to Oprah Winfrey, 'Your real job in life is to figure out as soon as possible what that is, who you are meant to be, and begin to honour your calling in the best way possible.'
That journey starts right here.
In her book, The Path Made Clear, Oprah shares what she sees as a guide for activating your deepest vision of yourself, offering the framework for creating not just a life of success, but one of significance. The book's ten chapters are organized to help you recognize the important milestones along the road…
I have loved astronomy since high school when I built my first telescope. I subsequently have been lucky enough to become a professional astronomer. I studied physics and astronomy at Utrecht University. After obtaining my PhD, I was postdoc at Lick Observatory in California, and after that became professor of astronomy, first in Brussels and later in Amsterdam. I have always loved teaching as well as my research on the physics and formation and evolution of neutron stars and black holes in binary systems, on which I, together with my Danish colleague Thomas Tauris, published the first textbook, which came out in 2023 in the USA.
This is one of the books I love most. It is a delightful small book in which Nobel Laureate Frances Crick, who together with James Watson discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, addresses the questions: “What is Life?” and “How did it originate?”
This takes him to the origin and evolution of the Universe and to how life may have originated from the world of atoms and molecules, either here on Earth or, in his view more likely: long before the Solar System and Earth formed, in other places in our Galaxy. His idea is that from its place of origin, long ago near another star, it spread to other planetary systems, in the form of spores of bacteria.
His speculations in this book are scientifically well founded and ingenious. Crick is a wonderfully clear writer and this book, with its brilliant explanations and ideas, is a beauty, which I…
Addresses the ultimate scientific question of the nature of life, using the hypothetical scenario that life originated on earth when a rocket carrying primitive spores was sent to earth by a higher civilization
I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 40 years and now pass on that knowledge to mentees and university students. The key to success in business is being able to attract and then learn from mentors, who, in my opinion, always should provide their knowledge, wisdom, and connections free of charge. As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to go down ‘The Dark Side’, especially if the pursuit of money and power becomes overwhelming. Many famous billionaires are not especially nice people. But there are many nice businesspeople out there and I aspire to be one of those, hence my pursuit of a daily advancement in esoteric, hermetic, and other knowledge.
For those interested in the hidden mysteries of science and nature and trying to work out the meaning of life, this is essential reading. It goes from the creation to the end of the world, explaining the various mysteries along the way, all of which are not actually secret, but in plain sight, if you know where and how to look.
The complete history of the world, from the beginning of time to the present day, based on the beliefs and writings of the secret societies.
Jonathan Black examines the end of the world and the coming of the Antichrist - or is he already here? How will he make himself known and what will become of the world when he does? - and the end of Time.
Having studied theology and learnt from initiates of all the great secret societies of the world, Jonathan Black has learned that it is possible to reach an altered state of…
