Here are 68 books that The Science of Influence fans have personally recommended if you like
The Science of Influence.
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I’m Mindy Vail, and with over 25 years in education and change management, I’ve spent my career as a leadership consultant and keynote speaker. My passion for the book list I’ve put together comes from my work in guiding individuals and organizations through transformation and my dedication to helping others find their joy. Each book reflects my commitment to embracing change, nurturing leadership, and unlocking potential. My insights come from hands-on experience and a deep understanding of psychology, leadership, and personal growth, and I believe we are all ever-evolving in our journeys.
This one resonates with me because James Clear’s insights on the power of small, consistent changes align seamlessly with my approach to personal and professional growth. The book’s emphasis on how tiny adjustments can lead to significant, lasting transformation struck a powerful chord.
Clear’s focus on habit formation and mindset shifts reinforced my belief that incremental progress and intentional practices are essential for achieving meaningful change. Reading Atomic Habits inspires me to fully embrace the idea that even minor adjustments in behavior and thinking can have a profound impact on overall success and personal development. This has helped me in almost every aspect of my life.
The #1 New York Times bestseller. Over 4 million copies sold!
Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results
No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.
If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the…
I love humans. My clients and colleagues tell me that my profound love for humans is my superpower—that I make people feel safe and seen. I also understand that loving humans isn’t effortless. I wasn’t always in the loving-humans camp. While I was doing a doctorate at Harvard, I studied with the marvelous Robert Kegan, whose theory and methodology helped me see the fullness of the diverse people I got to interview. Ever since, I have been totally enthralled by what makes us unique—and also connected. If you are a human or have to deal with humans, your life will be much improved if you love them more!
This is the most informative look at behavioral economics that also made me laugh out loud—often embarrassing myself on airplanes because I was reading a non-fiction book that made me actually snort with laughter.
Ariely is a profoundly accomplished researcher himself, and he’s interested in all the quirks of humanity—not to explain them away or make us look more rational than we are—but to really expose us to ourselves. I saw myself more clearly and also with more compassion by the time I finished this book and I loved my fellow humans more.
Why do smart people make irrational decisions every day? The answers will surprise you. Predictably Irrational is an intriguing, witty and utterly original look at why we all make illogical decisions.
Why can a 50p aspirin do what a 5p aspirin can't? If an item is "free" it must be a bargain, right? Why is everything relative, even when it shouldn't be? How do our expectations influence our actual opinions and decisions?
In this astounding book, behavioural economist Dan Ariely cuts to the heart of our strange behaviour, demonstrating how irrationality often supplants rational thought and that the reason for…
I joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 2008 and by 2015 I was a Sergeant who had made all the same financial decisions most service members make…tattoos, alcohol, cars, chasing tail, etc., and had a negative net worth to show for it. Then I read Rich Dad Poor Dad and the light came on. I started buying houses, and by 2021 I exited the military as a financially free millionaire and spend my time helping service members and veterans learn how to build wealth. The military is one of the best places to set yourself up for success, and these books will help you get started on that journey!
Rich Dad Poor Dad is the book that changed the trajectory of my life forever.
It is a parable that explains the difference between the traditional way of thinking “Go to school, get a good job, work hard, retire” with the entrepreneur mentality, and the concepts of utilizing passive income to replace your job at an earlier age.
I love this book because it takes the normally boring subject of finance and investing and breaks it down in a fun and easy way to learn so that you will actually finish the book and have the ability to experience that light-switch moment!
Without a doubt this is the most commonly mentioned book that I hear referenced on podcasts as “the book that started it all”.
It's been nearly 25 years since Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad first made waves in the Personal Finance arena. It has since become the #1 Personal Finance book of all time... translated into dozens of languages and sold around the world.
Rich Dad Poor Dad is Robert's story of growing up with two dads his real father and the father of his best friend, his rich dad and the ways in which both men shaped his thoughts about money and investing. The book explodes the myth that you need to earn a high income to be rich and explains…
I'm a Professor of Finance who specialises in purposeful business and purposeful living. My work on the former shows how companies driven by purpose are ultimately more successful than those driven by profit alone. My interest in the latter stems partly from the former, but also from 20 years of teaching MBA students at MIT, Wharton, and London Business School. While my day job is to teach finance equations, often even more important to my students’ career success and life happiness is living with purpose. There are many self-proclaimed gurus on this topic who shoot from the hip, so I am particularly interested in books based on scientific research.
Originally published in 1937, this was the original self-improvement book. Carnegie described it as a “practical, working handbook on human relations”.
After reading it, you might think that none of his tips are earth-shatteringly surprising, but you may not have thought of them before reading the book. This is indeed the mark of a great book – something that makes lots of sense after you read it (and so you’re most likely to put it into practice) but you wouldn’t have guessed yourself; and certainly would not have framed it in as clear and convincing manner as Carnegie.
Millions of people around the world have - and continue to - improve their lives based on the teachings of Dale Carnegie. In How to Win Friends and Influence People Carnegie offers practical advice and techniques, in his exuberant and conversational style, for how to get out of a mental rut and make life more rewarding.
His advice has stood the test of time and will teach you how to: - make friends quickly and easily - increase your popularity - win people to your way of thinking - enable you to win new clients and customers - become a…
When I entered my fifties, I was very surprised to discover that I didn’t have my life all figured out. This was especially surprising since the nature of a good human life has been my research topic for decades. What I have learned, from philosophy and from my collaborations with psychologists, is that it’s always going to be a process. We have to figure out what matters and how to get it, we have to navigate value conflicts, and we have to accept that the answers will change as our circumstances change. The books I’ve recommended aren’t guides to life, but I think they’re great for understanding the process.
To achieve the things that matter to us, we have to know what they are.
We tend to think we know ourselves really well – certainly better than anyone else knows us. But in this book, psychologist Timothy Wilson presents fascinating evidence that we don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do.
In particular, we tend to rationalize our choices after the fact in ways that don’t actually reflect our deeper, emotional state.
This book opened my mind to the idea that we need to “look under the hood” to figure out what matters to us most.
"Know thyself," a precept as old as Socrates, is still good advice. But is introspection the best path to self-knowledge? What are we trying to discover, anyway? In an eye-opening tour of the unconscious, as contemporary psychological science has redefined it, Timothy D. Wilson introduces us to a hidden mental world of judgments, feelings, and motives that introspection may never show us.
This is not your psychoanalyst's unconscious. The adaptive unconscious that empirical psychology has revealed, and that Wilson describes, is much more than a repository of primitive drives and conflict-ridden memories. It is a set of pervasive, sophisticated mental…
Helping others and getting help has been an integral part of my life and career. Over 30 years in the mental health world allowed me to explore many books, individuals and the simple ones are the best. They get to the core of change quickly which is vital sometimes to keep people alive. Supporting others is my passion and the truth is reading has allowed me to continue without burnout and some of my reading list are my go to books when this feels like it maybe coming.
I love this book it recognises the dynamics we all play using the simple structure of the wind in the willows book to make and important point.
I read this every year without fail and if you have ever had a problem in your family about who is bossing you about and how to get through this as an adult then have a read.
'Toad', the famous character in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows is in a very depressed state and his good friends Rat, Mole and Badger, are 'worried that he might do something silly'... First they nursed him. Then they encouraged him. Then they told him to pull himself together... Finally, Badger could stand it no longer. That admirable animal, though long on exhortation, was short on patience. 'Now look here Toad, this can go on no longer', he said sternly. 'There is only one thing left. You must have counselling!' Robert de Board's engaging account of Toad's experience of…
Having studied statistics in the 1980s and realised that forecasting energy reserves wasn’t for me, I stumbled into a career in market research. A chance reading of a book on psychoanalysis opened my eyes to how little we all understand ourselves and I started to look for better ways to identify how consumers think. After developing techniques from psychoanalysis and behavioural science I started my own consultancy firm in 2005. Over the last seventeen years I’ve been lucky enough to advise some of the world’s biggest brands, make regular appearances in the media discussing consumer affairs and, with my book Consumer.ology, to upset some of the biggest market research companies.
Early in my career I was responsible for running the UK brand tracking and customer experience studies of a global brand. I was constantly battling to reconcile what the research told me with what the real data from the business showed was actually going on. This book, written by someone who was a senior editor at the Gallup market research company for years, helped me appreciate some of the reasons that survey results are inaccurate. It also reveals how opinion polls can be used to distort elections and manipulate people – scary stuff.
Drawing on over a decade's experience at the Gallup Poll and a distinguished academic career in survey research, David W. Moore—praised as a "scholarly crusader" by the New York Times—reveals that pollsters don't report public opinion, they manufacture it. In this highly critical book, he describes the questionable tactics pollsters use to create poll-driven news stories-including force-feeding respondents, slanting the wording of questions, and ignoring public ignorance on even the most arcane issues. More than proof that the numbers do lie, The Opinion Makers clearly and convincingly spells out how urgent it is…
I built a 7-figure business buying foreclosures in multiple states and with my book you’ll discover how to duplicate my success and drastically reduce your learning curve. I've flipped hundreds of houses buying directly from homeowners in foreclosure and at auctions in Arizona, Illinois, and Wisconsin. I was guest #1 on the popular BiggerPockets podcast as well as a featured contributor to the website. I've also been featured in numerous real estate articles for USA Today, Reuters, and the Arizona Republic. And I'm the founder of FixandFlipHub.com, a real estate education company that has helped hundreds of real estate entrepreneurs start and scale their businesses.
Are you consistently inconsistent? In other words, do you have a sincere desire to start real estate investing, or scale your current business, but are constantly veering off-course because life keeps getting in the way? Me too. In this book you’ll learn the importance of making small, daily decisions that will, over time, result in exponential growth in your personal and financial life.
Do you want success? More success than you have now? And even more success than you ever imagined possible? That is what this book is about. Achieving it. No gimmicks. No hyperbole. Finally, just the truth on what it takes to earn success As the central curator of the success media industry for over 25 years, author Darren Hardy has heard it all, seen it all, and tried most of it. This book reveals the core principles that drive success. The Compound Effect contains the essence of what every superachiever needs to know, practice, and master to obtain extraordinary success.…
Leaving the Rat Race behind was not easy and it took 15 years but it is so worth it. Unfortunately, many people are just like me in that they don’t even know they are trapped in the Rat Race running faster and faster. I want to highlight the Rat Race and What it takes to get out as life is so much better when you are not trapped.
I needed to find a book that got down to the process of becoming an investor. Gary does an excellent job of breaking down the components of becoming a good real estate investor. In addition to the blocking and tackling Gary included a bonus section that I simple loved because I was hungry for stories of success. At the end of Gary’s book, Gary included a list of investors who successfully completed the journey. Those pages kept me engaged as the first few years of real estate investing are slow and those stories got me through.
"This book is not just a bargain, it's a steal. It's filled with practical, workable advice for anyone wanting to build wealth."-Mike Summey, co-author of the bestselling The Weekend Millionaire's Secrets to Investing in Real Estate
Anyone who seeks financial wealth must first learn the fundamental truths and models that drive it. The Millionaire Real Estate Investor represents the collected wisdom and experience of over 100 millionaire investors from all walks of life who pursued financial wealth and achieved the life-changing freedom it delivers. This book--in straightforward, no nonsense, easy-to-read style--reveals their proven strategies.
Real estate investing has truly changed my life, not only my financial life, but also how I spend my time. I firmly believe that ownership and control of our time is the ultimate goal and that money is just the tool that we can use to get there; money is not the actual goal. I often say, “Rich people sell their time and wealthy people own their time.” As a real estate investor, broker, coach, and teacher, I have a passion for sharing my experience and knowledge, but doing so in a realistic way and helping others get on a path that is truly achievable.
Land is its own unique asset class with its own set of challenges, but Cheryl has put together a very easy to read and understand path to learning the basics of land ownership.
While the book is a quick read and doesn’t get too deep, it is a great starter resource for anyone who is considering the purchasing of land. I also like how Cheryl’s writing style is straightforward and concise, with not much fluff or filler.
This book can serve as a great base and jumping off point if you’re looking to dive deeper into this unique, but profitable asset class.
Buying and selling land can be a complicated endeavor. There are dozens of details that must be researched with many choices to make prior to closing on a transaction. Failing to properly perform due diligence can mean leaving money on the table, or worse: buying a property that cannot be used.
This book provides the necessary information for becoming successful in maneuvering through this thing we call "land." Learn what you need to know and where to find the information. Over time, this will become your go-to and carry-with-you reference for land transactions.
