How reading changed my life
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.” — Charlie Munger
I want to share my journey on reading and the notable books that made a positive paradigm shift in my mental models and how they connect on different topics.
I’ll talk about how I started reading, how reading formed my core values and habits. How I learned to live a better life from others, and how I live my life better. In the end I’ll include my 2 most thought provoking books and tips and making your reading count more.
For those who have read the books mentioned, I hope this can serve as a high level recap of the book; for those who haven’t I hope to go just deep enough to pique your interest in reading them. Tips on making the most out of your reading in the end as well.
Building Habits and a positive mindset
The first non-academic read I can recall was The Laws of attraction laying around in my home during high school. Similar to a more well-known cultish book The Secret, it’s introduced the idea to me that you can “turn your dreams into reality by leveraging the universe’s power by simply asking and believing”. A bit simplistic but still beneficial of a mindset looking back, though I had since calibrated to be more rationally optimistic.
Later on in college, someone whose social skills I admired told me How to Win Friends and Influence People is the only book you need to do well with people. I was so into it and memorized every rule in the book at some point.
- “Never complain, condemn or criticize”
- “Give honest and sincere appreciation”
- “Be lavish in your praise and hearty in your approbation
All great advice but I couldn’t help but feel insincere with this book’s approach. It wasn’t until I picked up 7 Habits of Highly Effective People did it click that these are merely tools to be liked more by others, what truly matters is how to develop the right characteristics of a successful person and the rest will follow. At the core, your character and true motive is what will be conveyed despite any techniques you learn.
There are people we trust absolutely because we know their character. Whether they’re eloquent or not, whether they have human relations technique or not, we trust them, we work successfully with them.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People
This is the first book that taught me we are not our problems and what it means to take responsibility.
Blaming everyone and everything for our challenges and problems might provide temporary relief from the pain, but it also chain us to these problems. Show me someone who is humble enough to accept and take responsibility for his or her circumstances and courageous enough to take whatever initiative is necessary to creatively work his or her way through or around these challenges, and I’ll show you the supreme power of choice.
From that point on I learned to take responsibility for my circumstances and pro-active approach in everything I want to do. It empowered me that I am the driver in control and fully in charge my destiny. This concept was later solidified even stronger by the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. which can be summed up in one sentence:
What happens to you might not be your fault, but is always your responsibility
There is simply too much crap going on in this world, that if you were going around blaming people, you’d fix or find creative solutions by the time you’re done complaining. It’s in your best interest to take more responsibility than not even when you don’t have to.
More concrete example of having full control of your response I learned from Men’s Search for Meaning is the idea “The last of human freedom”
The author Viktor Frankl used his experience surviving the concentration camp to write this book to help people find meaning in their lives despite their struggles or undesirable circumstances. When you’re stripped of your home, all your belongings, clothes, time, and dignity. When you watch your family and friends all die in front of your eyes, what else do you have left? Freedom to choose your response.
Between what happened to him, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response. It’s not what happen to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.
If Viktor can act with integrity, positivity and selflessly help others around him to defend his freedom to choose his response in such circumstances, what excuse do we have?
Other ideas in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that were forever imprinted in and still empowers me til this day are —
- Begin with the End in Mind — imagine yourself at a funeral and about to hear the spouse, colleague, friends, and children of the deceased speak about them. You walk up to the casket and see yourself inside, this is your funeral. What would you hope these people say? Use these answers as a guide on how to live your daily life today.
- Interdependence: The idea that we are all independent individuals and should only interact when it’s a win-win situation, this applies to business partners, friendships, and relationships. And all aspects of life — physically, emotionally, intellectually. Dependent people rely on others, independent people can take care of themselves, interdependent people not only are independently capable, they realize when they join forces with the right people, they can all achieve more than they can individually. In simple math terms: 1 + 1 > 2. This idea is best illustrated by the book Becoming from Michelle Obama — where both her and Barack are strongly capable individuals that came together to support each other and lift each other higher than they could have been separately. They set a very high standard on what an interdependent relationship can look like and achieve.
Habits
After reading about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, how do we create and maintain these habits? My first obsession with habits came from the book The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg. He explains how habits are formed (Cue -> Routine -> Reward), and how to replace bad habits with good ones. He also tells a convincing study on how habits can become subconscious — Eugene, a person with severe brain damage except his Basal Ganglia (where habits are formed) was able to still create and retain habits while he could not perform any normal life activities.
Also referencing the Basal Ganglia, is another one of my psychology favorite book Thinking Fast and Slow by Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman. The core thesis of the book is we have 2 systems in our brains. System 1 is the subconscious brain that reacts to things and process things without our active engagement; System 2 is the processing brain that can do math and think critically. The book is full of experiments that show how much we underestimate system 1(our subconscious) affects us in our daily lives.
My favorite experiment is one where there is an honest coffee system (put 2 dollars in a box after you get yourself a cup) in an office with a painting in the background of the room. Every week they rotate different paintings between human portraits vs landscapes. While no one could remember there was even a painting in the room when asked, they found double the cash on the weeks of human portraits. The subconscious brain processed the portrait painting as someone watching thus everyone subconsciously behaved more honestly!
If something we don’t even recall existing can affect our behavior to that degree, what else can dramatically change us without us knowing? This book opened my eyes on how much the little things matter — how we arrange our room, the color of our belongings, our habits, even the people we surround ourselves with, every little thing matters!
When I try to imagine the power of little things, I am tempted to think.. there are no little things
Atomic Habits by James Clear goes deeper into the impact of little (atomic) things. It illustrates the compounding effect habits can have on us over long period of small improvements. “1% better everyday will make us 38 times better in a year.”
We often overestimate how much we can do in a day, underestimate how much we can do in a year
This book also introduced the idea of “Identity change”. If you want to quit smoking and someone offers you a cigarette, instead of saying “I’m trying to quit”, it’s a lot more effective to say “I’m not a smoker”. If you change who you think you are at your core, your actions are a lot easier to fall in line. Every decision is casting a vote into the kind of person you want to be. And all these little votes adds up and compounds into massive changes for our lives over time.
Connecting these 3 books together that changed the way I view habits:
- The Power Of Habits — The physiology of habits, how to form and break habits.
- Thinking Fast and Slow— The psychology of our subconscious minds, power of the little things we don’t notice and how much they affect us.
- Atomic Habits— The impact of habits over time, and the tools and techniques to fully realize your biggest potential.
Synthesized, my best way of creating successful habits is:
- Understand how habits works in our brain
- Understand how even the smallest thing you barely notice can have an outsized impact on our lives
- Understand how powerful small habits can be over long periods because of compounding effects
- Decide the type of person you want to be (identity change) and believe you will become that person (law of attraction), and take full responsibility and (extreme ownership) of your circumstances
- Create systems to keep yourself accountable. Execute with discipline without making excuses
In short, Understand -> Decide -> Execute
Self-help books helped me come up with a system and process to continuously innovate my mind. But the more self help you read, the more you encounter repeated ideas with different narratives. Albeit all great in their own way, there is huge diminishing returns. Although there are so many great self help books in the world, you’d benefit more from reading the best classics over and over than trying to find new gems. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Atomic Habits are my top choice.
Self helps are useful but harder to process, adding friction to the reading experience. I often read 3–4 books at the same time so I can rotate and not get stuck. My stack always includes a fiction book for when I want to light up the fireplace, make some hot chocolate, and read leisurely with terrible posture. Fiction allows my mind to relax and just enjoy the creative stories, inspiring ideas, and beautiful writing style.
Fiction
The Little Prince is a short 15 minute read, second most translated book in the world behind the bible. A book deep with metaphors in life on friendships and love disguised as a children’s book of a little prince journey coming to Earth and learning about all the strange adults and meeting friends who inspire him to reexamine himself and his relationships. The magic of this book is it will speak to your differently like a new book at different phases of your life. The stars in the sky when I’ve lost family members, the little rose and the rose garden when I had tough relationships, and the favorite quote from the fox that helps me see through a lot of the superficial things in the world:
It is only with the heart one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
My favorite easy and positive pick me up book is The Alchemist, a story of a young shepherd giving up his flock in search of hidden treasure. In the beginning of his journey, he is cheated and lost everything he had, yet he maintained a heart of gold and learned many important lessons along the way. Speaking to your heart, believing in the universe, and staying positive to find your own unique personal legend.
Listen to your heart, it knows all things because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there.
Your eyes show the strength of your soul.
The Great Gatsby is the classic American literature that paints a glorious image of the roaring 20s. I sparked noted The Great Gatsby in high school because I didn’t care about reading then. Little did I know how I was giving up such a chance to read a beautifully written book until I picked it up much later on in life. My favorite part was how Fitzgerald first revealed Gatsby and described his smile, I didn’t think it was possible to describe a physical trait with this much depth:
He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.
Honorable mention: Gentlemen in Moscow is a witty, heart warming, pleasant read with great character development. This particular quote spoke to my heart whenever I contemplate big life decisions.
Our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of supreme lucidity — a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of a bold new life that we had been meant to lead all along.
Fictions are great to relax and let loose your imagination. However, my favorite genres above self help and fiction is memoirs. It’s the best way to see how others have lived their lives — specially as the author tell his or her own story and extract their life lessons along with it.
Memoirs
Michelle Obama’s Becoming as mentioned above is a great memoir to start with specially the audiobook version. Nothing beats a great memoir with the author reading their own story to you. The authenticity and real emotion that carries through her voice makes it a great listen. Specially the way she simply said “I’ll show you” in face of racism and doubters.
There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story and using your authentic voice, and there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others
Another great audiobook memoir read by the author, if not the best is Trevor Noah’s Born A Crime. Being a comedian himself, and doing all the accents only he ought to be able to do, makes the horrifying story of him growing up being a black/white mixed during the apartheid so immersive and entertaining to listen to. Astonishing to learn about where he came from and to see where he ascended to today, and the process in between.
“We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.”
My favorite memoir of all time is Surely you’re joking, Mr.Feynman!. Feynman is Nobel prize winning physicist who help build the atomic bomb during the war. He’s not only incredible smart but is always curious and adventurous in learning and enjoying everything life has to offer. From picking up the drums and performing in Brazil’s carnival, learning how to paint then getting commissions from brothels for his paintings, to picking everyone’s top secret locks when they worked on the atomic bombs in Los Alamos, nothing was too serious for his playful attitude. His memoir is to me someone who made the most out of life, and what only true intelligent people can do — having the most fun doing it. This man lived a wild and free spirited life that I deeply aspire to, a huge inspiration for me in pursuing oil painting, photography, dancing…etc. He didn’t just talk about all fun, also how he dealt with the death of his wife in the middle of the manhattan project.
She’s dead. And how’s the project going?
The last and most unique memoir I will introduce is a Chinese classic Stories of the Sahara by San Mao. This is my favorite Chinese book and is translated to English. It’s a collection of short stories by San Mao, who moved to the Sahara desert because she was captivated by a photo in national geographic magazine. At the time when international travel was rare, her story details her courage and willingness to plunge into a brand new life. She moved with the man who eventually became her husband, the story tells what’s it like to get married in a foreign village with help from locals who have never seen a wedding before, getting her driver license while an entire jail of inmates cheered her on from across the street during her driving test, becoming the village doctor helping people give birth because of the lack of medical resources. Crazy and funny stories that to me shows what true romance looks like — action, building a future together with courage and humor despite all the challenges and culture shock.
I wanted a taste of many different lives, sophisticated or simple, highbrow or low. Only then would this journey be worthwhile.
Humans are really strange. When no one validates you, you often can’t perceive your own value.
Her last quote of hers reminded me of what the Roman Stoic Philosopher Marcus Aurelius said in his private notes/memoir Meditations.
It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.
Memoirs not only help me discover different ways of living an interesting life, it also shows me how people value the meaning of their lives and derive fulfillment that helps me reflect on my own.
“A reader lives a thousands lives before they die, and a non reader lives only one.
Spirituality — Life & Death
I was first introduced the world of spirituality and meditations by the book The Power of Now in 2015. This is the first time I heard of the concept of being, mindfulness, and being present.
You may not always be happy, but you can always be at peace. When negativity rises up, tell yourself, get up, get outta your mind. be present.
Which also affects other aspects of our lives when we cannot derive peace within ourselves and start from within.
If you cannot be at ease when you are alone, you will seek a relationship to cover up your unease. You can be sure that the unease will then reappear in some other form within the relationship, and you will probably hold your partner responsible for it.
This book also brought up key ideas about death. How I became a big believer in embracing death as a friend rather than being fearful of it. What can death teach us?
You will know the truth of yourself when death is approaching. Death is the stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to die before you die — and learn how to live.
Further on the lesson of Death, I’m inspired by the laws of opposites from Chinese philosophy classic Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu states that there is two side of every coin. There cannot be light without darkness, high without low, ying without yang, happiness without sadness. Similarly, there can be no life without death.
Embracing death is the best way to live, once we know how limited and unpredictable our lives are, we will try to live the best life we can in the fleeting time we have in this world. I also highly recommend these 2 bookson facing death. When Breath Becomes Air — memoir of a doctor who treated dying patients to facing his own cancer diagnosis and ponders makes life worth living. Being Mortal — a doctor’s study of what matters in the end through the lens of his own practice and hospice patients.
The one book that really opened the door of spirituality for me is Alan Watt’s Wisdom of Insecurity. I found this book just walking through the strand bookstore in New York city and thought the title interesting, sat on the floor and read one third of it before I brought it home. Watts was one of the first philosophers to bring eastern philosophy of Zen, Buddhism and merge them with western thought. In this deep book he brought philosophy, religion, psychology and science together to explain that human anxiety & insecurity is the byproduct of the cognitive revolution from evolution. And the act of trying to be secure is the sole cause of insecurity, like a dog chasing its tail. And there is no way of saving ourselves but to attempt to give the ego up to the here and now(or to a deity), whether it be through science, religion or spirituality, whatever fits your belief system
“Lasting happiness — can only be achieved by giving up the ego-self, which is a pure illusion anyway. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.”
Thought provoking
Perhaps the most important category for me, two of my favorite books.
Antifragile
Despite the controversial writing style, Taleb pioneered so many classic ideas such as Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and Antifragile that are frequently referenced by many of the top thought leaders around the world. Core concept is fragility has a spectrum between (fragile | robust | antifragile). Fragile things break upon stressors like glass falling to the ground; robust things stay strong despite impact, like a rock thrown to the ground; antifragile things evolve and become stronger when faced with shock, like the human body that grows stronger muscles when you stress it, immune system that becomes stronger with exposure to germs.
It provides a new paradigm on thinking about randomness and risk in our lives. How to design our life to benefit from unexpected events and volatility, and use them to be exposed to more options and higher returns.
“Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. “Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos; you want to use them, not hide from them.
You want to be the fire that wishes for the wind.
Exhalation
The absolute best sci-fi book in my opinion, made up of a collection of short stories from Ted Chiang. If you could travel back in time to help fix your deepest regret, what would happen? What if you could buy a device to talk to yourself from a different parallel universe? Underneath each creative plot, it makes you ponder deep ideas of philosophy. It made me reexamine all ideas of mine — the relationship between the past, present and future, parallel universes, existentialism, religion, free will and determinism.
Four things in life that do not come back, the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life and the neglected opportunities.
Make your reading count more
I’d love to talk about ways to not only read well, but make it count.
Take notes
It’s impossible to retain everything you read. There are books I know I’ve read or listened to but could not tell you a coherent narrative about it. I used to take notes actively when I first started reading, taking photos of images and quotes I like and saving it into a note document. As I read more, I became more casual with it, at the very least I always highlight passages that I like and go back after finishing a book to copy them down into a digital note taking app like Evernote, Paper or Notion. Helps me retain better by adding a short paragraph of my own words to describe the core ideas. It makes it so much easier to go back and review an old classic, or write an essay about “how reading changed your life”.
Read with friends, organize/join a book club
I’ve started a book club in New York City that’s been running for 4 years. Started an in person mandarin book club in Taiwan during the pandemic. More recently started hosting book clubs online with my podcast community. These range from 3–8 people in person, 15 people over VC, to 3000+ people on clubhouse. One thing they all do is keep yourself accountable, learn different perspectives of the same book, and learn other great books or ideas stemming from the discussion originated from the chosen book. If you were gonna read anyway, might as well make it more fun and connect with more people while doing it! Or reversely, if you’re new to reading and want to make it stick, try joining a book club and leverage the power of community to bring you along.
Put the book down
One obstacle people often tell me with reading is they get stuck with a book and stopped reading. Put the damn book down and read another, there are so many great books to be read. Society tells us we ought to finish what we started and read cover to cover. However, too many books repeat the same idea over and add countless examples to reinforce their point. Many books would make a great article, and many articles would make a great tweet. If you understand the idea well enough, or get bored, there is no shame in putting it down and find something more interesting.
Even if the book is great, timing matters too, we all vibe with a different book when we go through different phases in our lives. Just because you’re putting it down now, doesn’t mean you can’t pick it up later. I got stuck reading Sapiens, Thinking Fast and Slow, and Antifragile. I put them all down and picked them up later at a more fitting time and they changed my life just as much, and unblocked me at the moment from enjoying reading. I often have a rotation of 3–4 books of different genre I’m reading/listening to at the same time so I never get stuck, the goal is to always enjoy reading. It’s much more important to enjoy reading than read the right stuff; if you’re new to reading, read whatever junk that makes you happy until you love and make a habit out of reading, then you’ll naturally come across the good stuff in your reading journey. It’s better to eat some junk food from time to time than starve yourself to death.
Conclusion
Thank you for going through my reading journey with me, from self help to fiction to memoirs and my favorite thought provoking books. I hope this gave you ideas or inspirations on how and what you want to read next!
For your convenience, every book mentioned here is listed below:
- The Laws of Attraction
- The Secret
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- Extreme Ownership
- Men’s Search for Meaning
- The Power of Habits
- Thinking Fast and Slow
- Atomic Habits
- The Little Prince
- The Alchemist
- The Great Gatsby
- A Gentlemen in Moscow
- Becoming
- Born a Crime
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr.Feynman!
- Stories of the Sahara
- Meditations
- The Power of Now
- Tao Te Ching
- When Breadth Becomes Air
- Being Mortal
- The Wisdom Of Insecurity
- Antifragile
- Exhalation
Other books I wish I could have mentioned but wanted to keep this writing concise:
- Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
- Essentialism
- What I Talk about when I Talk about Running
- Sapiens
- Siddartha
- The Courage to be Disliked
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck
- Coach Wooden — Wisdom on and off the court
- Lessons of History
- Red Rising
- On Writing — Stephen King
Thank you Justin Kong, Lois Li, Stepan Parunashvili for reviewing and providing invaluable feedback on this essay!
