13 Self-Leadership Books that Changed My Life (Part 1)

Catherine A. Wood  00:01

Hello, hello. Welcome back to the prosperous Empath cat here today, I’m super excited to share with you some of the books that have completely unlocked new perspectives, new levels of growth, completely transformed experiences in my relationships, with my finances, and just really the books that have made the biggest difference for me in business and life over the past decade. And something I really appreciate about personal development books and leadership books and self help books is that some people can be really empowered by them, and some people can become disempowered by them. And here’s what I mean by that. In my experience, sometimes we can intellectualize ourselves out of changing our lives by knowing too much. And I mean knowing too much in air quotes. Sometimes, when we have an intellectual understanding of how we or other people are getting in their own way, we can use that to justify why we are the way we are, or justify why other people are the way they are, and that self righteousness and self indignation is so harmful. So something I’ve really appreciated about my own journey over the past decade is that the more I’ve become self steeped in my own learning journey, my own deeper spiritual growth and and self actualization, the more I realize just how much I don’t know and just how much I’m committed to not making assumptions about other people or jumping to conclusions about what’s possible for me or other people. So if you are someone who uses personal development books as a reason or an excuse to justify why and where you are, the way and the place that you’re in, you know, consider not listening to this episode because I don’t want to provide more fuel to that fire. But if you’re willing to check your own assumptions and start questioning some of the bounds of what’s possible for you and the other people in your life, then listen on. Because these books are pure fire. I love them deeply. I am known to send them and recommend them to clients and colleagues and often just people I meet in my daily life all the time, because I I truly believe that book recommendations are gifts from the heart. So some of the books that I’m choosing to share today, there’s, let’s see, I think I’m going to share 13. And honestly, as I started drafting this list, I realized just how many more have also made huge differences. So I may record a part two with some additional recommendations, but the ones I’ve chosen for this episode are absolutely profound. Now, some of them, I imagine, some of them you’ve heard of before. I imagine some of them you’ve heard of before, and I know a lot of them you likely have not heard of, because these have been really personalized recommendations to me that that I don’t hear a lot of people talking about, and I think a lot of them are just super profound. So I would love to hear from you after tuning into today’s episode, send me a note in Instagram, or come join my private online community and send me a message. That’s certainly the place I’m hanging out more these days, and if you want to come join us, we’ll drop the link to that in the show notes. But with that being said, the books I’m sharing today fall into one of three categories. Many of the recommendations are books that we’ve read in our unbounded mastermind over the past five years that have unlocked huge breakthroughs for our members and me and I just love these books. So all the books fall into these three themes, the theme of relationship, money, mindset and overcoming resistance. And I think these themes are gosh, so relevant and important for empathpreneurs because. Our capacity to receive, to feel deserving of more love, abundance, support, partnership, collaboration, ease, alignment is indicative of the internal work that we have to do in order to transform our external reality. So so many of these themes are interconnected, and I think that’s why in my work, I so often talk about love as much as I talk about money with clients, because it’s often one in the same conversation in our capacity to receive more, grow more, allow welcome more in one area of life, expands our capacity to do the same in other areas of life. So we are all interconnected. That’s why there’s truly no topic that’s off limits when you’re working with a coach. Okay, so with that, let’s dive in. I’m so excited to share these books with you, and I’m gonna breeze through this list. We will drop all of the links to the books in the show notes. You’re welcome to go find them there and purchase them on Amazon or download them via audible or whatever other means you use to read books, the ones that I think are really important to have a physical copy of. I’ll also try to make note of because I don’t know about you, but for me, sometimes I’m really reliable to take on exercises in personal help books, and sometimes I’m really not. And I just want you to know that there are some exercises in some of these books that will be game changers for you, and if you’re not willing to do the exercises, then honestly, I don’t think it’s worth reading some of these books at this point, better to come back to them later when you’re willing to implement what You learn. Okay, so with that, the first book, when I came to the world of personal development, I came to it by way of a breakdown in my romantic relationship. I had just gotten out of therapy and realized that this partner that I had been with for a couple years was not meant for me. And then I got to this place where I was like, Okay, now what? And that is exactly where coaching entered my world, pretty serendipitously, the book that helped me realize through therapy that I was not meant to be with this partner is called too good to leave, too bad to stay, a step by step guide to help you to decide whether to stay in or get out of your relationship. Now, I cannot tell you how many conversations I have quite had with clients over the past decade, supporting them in getting to a place of choice in their romantic relationships, really getting to a place of deciding whether their partner is or is not for them, and some of the heartbreaking work about self growth is that sometimes we outgrow the people in our own lives, and we can make space for them to grow alongside of us, and some are willing and some are not. And I think that this book is a really practical Gosh, topic by topic analysis of deciding whether our relationships are meant for us or not. And so if you’re in this place of wondering, you know, should I stay or should I go? I cannot recommend this book enough. I will tell you that the day I finished reading this book was the day I also had a therapy appointment, and it’s also the day that I ended a long term relationship and never looked back, and thank God I did, because that separation made space for finding the love of my life and my husband and my the soon to be father of my child. Oh, gosh, I’m tearing up as I say that, but truly, I love that book. Okay, so number two, once you’ve gotten to this place of letting go of what’s not meant for you in love, you may want to call in the one, and that is the second book on my list. So number two is called, calling in the one seven weeks to attract the love of your life. Now I love this book, and I read this book during my very first year of becoming trained as a coach. Now I hate the title. You know, it’s super cliche, but what I really appreciate about this book is that it is seven weeks of daily self reflection life. Lessons and practices to apply to your own life, how to make more energetic, physical, spiritual and emotional space for a partner to come into your life. And the book is it’s super practical, it’s super relevant, and it also has a lot of beautiful awareness and self reflection and meditation and visualization and feng shui practices. So this is one that you need to do the exercises. Please do not read this book and not apply what you learned. And then let that be one more justification for why you’re not deserving of love, or while you can’t find your partner, I call BS on that. This book is really powerful when you’re willing to do the own work, do your own work, to become the version of yourself that’s ready to attract an energetically aligned partner. Some of my favorite exercises in this book include thing like Feng shuiing your space and making more physical space for a partner to come into your life by way of making room in your closet, making room in a dresser, making sure you have two nightstand tables, like really simple things that start to reprogram your subconscious. Love this book. Okay, number three, so switching themes. This book falls into the realm of overcoming resistance. It’s one that was, gosh. I don’t even know where I first heard of it, but I think many people talk about this book a lot. I think it is the number one book for overcoming resistance. It’s called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. And there’s a distinction in this book that I share, probably with every client I work with at some point or another, and it is so profound, and we are always learning and seeing deeper levels of this distinction in our own lives, as we continue to do our own work and disentangle from the ways in which we self sabotage and hold ourselves back from making our dreams a Reality. So here’s the distinction. Pressfield says that resistance is one in the same thing as fear that essentially, they’re the same. And the greater resistance we have to something, the more afraid we are of some future possibility, or dream or business idea, or, gosh, a manifestation, the greater the resistance and fear, the greater indicator it is of just how much possibility there is on the other side of overcoming that fear or resistance. So many of us, and particularly empathpreneurs, who are deep feelers, we often experience fear and resistance, and then we have a negative connotation with it. We make it mean that it’s bad or wrong or it’s not meant for us, or we need to, you know, run the other way, when in reality, the the greater the resistance and fear, the greater sign it is that there’s something amazing on the other side of overcoming that resistance, and the only way is through. The only way is to lean in and to learn how to transform our relationship with fear and resistance, to learn how to leverage that fear and resistance as a means to lean in and carry on love the book, okay, number four. So this is the first money mindset book on my list, and it’s also really practical. So we’re going to start with the practical, and then we’re going to share some of the mindset books. Now, I think sometimes you need to have the basics in place with your business finances in order to really leverage and scale the mindset components. So the book is called Profit First, transform your business from a cash eating monster to a money making machine. I cannot speak highly enough about this book. We read this book in our first year of our unbounded mastermind, back in 2019 and this book unlocked so much transformation in the finances of all the members in our mastermind, because it ensures that you transform the functionality of your business finances to ensure that you make a profit, and not only that you make a profit, but that you take your profit first and then learn how to spend within your means in a really practical, implementable fashion. Now this book a. Is one that please don’t buy the book, unless you’re going to apply what you learn, unless you are willing to transform your business finances and start allowing your finances to work for you. Then, then don’t read the book. Pick it up and read it later. But if you’re ready to really change your orientation towards how you make money, earn money, save money and spend money. I cannot recommend this book enough. I have been applying Profit First consistently since first reading this book alongside my mastermind masterminders, and I just love it. Book number five, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, mastering the inner game of wealth, by T Harv Eker. This is one of my favorite money mindset books. It’s not one that I hear people talking about a lot. And one of the distinctions I love most in this book, and there’s so many, is that it really starts to help you see how you allow yourself to be victimized by wealth, whether it’s your own or other people’s, and how you can really transform your relationship to money and have a proactive creator relationship with money. So many people, myself included, I hear talk about wealth as an evil thing, like those with money are bad or evil, and we make all these judgments around people with money, not realizing that it is those very judgments that limit our capacity to amass more wealth and truly prosper. So if you notice that you have a negative orientation towards people with money or money itself, or you think it’s bad or evil, and you allow yourself to become Gosh, critical, judgmental, victimized by money. Then, then this book is for you. This is the perfect book to start with and really opening yourself up to have an empowering relationship with money. You can’t accrue more money if you don’t see the inherent good in what money can do for you and for the world, all right, number six, The Millionaire Next Door, the surprising secrets of America’s wealthy. Oh my gosh, I love this book. I share about this book often on the podcast, and what I really like about it is, given my background as an economist. This book is written by finance professionals and researchers who did a study in the United States about the characteristics of millionaires, and some of the characteristics are really surprising and really speak to the idea that most millionaires live in plain sight of us and we don’t even know it, because they don’t act as if they’re millionaires. And I know a lot of millionaires who fall into that category, it’s like they have wealth and they don’t feel the need to flaunt it. And it is that capacity to, gosh, live within your means, really know who you are, and live and spend within a within to spend a lifestyle that’s aligned with your values, that will also allow you to amass wealth over time. So this this book, was really a a myth buster for me, and it helped me to really just approach wealth differently, and it also really firmed up some values and perspectives that I’ve always had around money that I had never just put into such clear and quantifiable terms, because this book is filled with statistics, facts and figures about all the millionaires in the US. So it’s super interesting. And there’s a more updated version of this book that was written by the author, in partnership with his daughter that’s called the next Millionaire Next Door, and that’s a great one as well. I And with that, I’m going to pause today. I don’t want to say this. And with that, we’re going to pause today’s episodes. Here, I’ve shared with you some of the first six books that have unlocked new levels of abundance love and receiving in my life. And I hope that you go pick up one of these books next week. I hope you go and buy or download or go borrow from the library one of these books in the next week, and then tune in again next week, and I’ll share the other six. Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode again. I’d love to hear from you. If you have heard of one of these books, or you’re really looking forward to reading one, let me know. It would make me so happy to hear from you. I hope you have a beautiful week, and thanks for listening. Bye.