25 Books That Will Change Your Life

Are you ready to change your life? Do you catch yourself wondering if there is a better way to live? Do you want more freedom, excitement, and adventure in your life?

In this blog, I’m sharing with you the 25 books that influenced me to #defythenorm and escape the rat race in exchange for a life of travel and adventure with my husband and 5 kids.

In 2015, we ditched conformity when we sold most of our belongings, moved our family of 7 into a 30′ class C motorhome, and began traveling full-time. I wanted a life filled with adventures in the outdoors and to enjoy parenthood.

We’ve been to almost 30 countries and spend most days hiking, rock climbing, surfing, skiing, and mountain biking. Best of all, 9 years later, we are still at it.

But I wasn’t always this brave. It’s been a mindful journey filled with intention, reflection, making hard decisions, and reading inspirational and positive mindset books along the way.

Before 2012, I always made responsible decisions. Well, maybe responsible is the wrong word, because if you ask me, this unconventional lifestyle that I’ve created to raise my five kids is very responsible. But up until then, I pretty much followed conventionalism and didn’t have any interest in rocking the boat or standing out too much.

Until about a decade ago, I lived in a blanket of fear. I was always scared. I’d worry when my kids had a cold. I’d worry when my child didn’t get equal or more playing time on the soccer field. I’d worry what other moms might think of me if my house wasn’t clean and organized. I’d worry about security and scarcity. I’d worry about saying the right thing.

And then, around 2012, I changed. I learned to let a lot of things go. I started trusting my intuition instead of the status quo. I followed my heart and in doing so, I’ve created an amazing life with my family.

You don’t have to travel the world, live in an RV, or adventure every day. But you do need to align your days with whatever it is that makes you feel fulfilled. Hopefully, these books will help you do just that.

That is why it is so important to let certain things go. To release them. To cut loose. People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards; sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don’t expect to get anything back, don’t expect recognition for your efforts, don’t expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are.”

Paulo Coehlo

My Backstory

Before 2012, I was a typical mom. I owned a big beautiful house with a pool but I was always busy driving to work, to someone’s sports practice, or running errands.

I remember stopping one day and looking around thinking Is This It? Is This The Goal? Is This My Dream?

Well, having a big family was certainly the dream, but I wanted to enjoy them. I wanted to have fun with them. I wanted them to be my friends. I wanted them to want to hang out with me. I wanted to have shared interests so we could enjoy life together.

So I jumped. I chose to chase a feeling of connection, excitement, adventure, and purpose. I created a life that I was excited to wake up to each day.

I use the words rad and stoked in my writing because they are the best words to describe how great it feels to live on the terms you want.

I’ve accumulated more memories with my kids than I could ever count. I hope I don’t die tomorrow, but if I did, I’d have no regrets. And best of all, we’re still at it.

If you ask me, change is good. It’s not easy, sometimes it hurts a lot. But it can also make the most beautiful memories and keep you excited to jump out of bed each day.

Not everyone is going to understand you if you change. Many people may judge you for it.

How dare you change the status quo and live a life of fulfillment?!

But when you choose to live a life on your terms, it won’t matter because you’ll be so happy to pursue bold dreams, embrace self-discovery, and seek awe on our incredible planet, that the judgment won’t matter.

However, life is a balance and we need people in our lives to be happy, so balancing your happiness with the happiness of those you love dearly is a challenge worth taking on and something these books have helped me with.

Top 25 Books to Change Your Life

These are my favorite 25 books that have changed my life the most. I’ve included the main lessons I took from each one that helped to put my dreams into motion. You might get something different from them and that’s good too.

1 | Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar

A great book for those who feel stuck in life and don’t see a positive outcome in the near future.

I am pretty sure this book started it all. I read this way back when I was amid diapers and toddler meltdowns, way before positive psychology became such a popular movement. As much as I loved being a mom, it felt like there would never be a light at the end of the tunnel.

I loved how Ben-Sharar’s principles are so simple: Look at your current life. What do you want to do more of and less of? What are you going to let go of to make that happen?

He says in his book, that we need very little money after we take care of food and shelter, for us to be happy. I know this is true. At one point my spending power was really big and I was content. I then went on to live three years as frugally as possible to do everything I wanted to do and I was so very happy.

2 | The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo

A great book for those who want permission to discover and pursue their purpose instead of just the status quo.

I was reluctant to add this book to the list since it (and The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris) tends to be on every life-changing list and clearly, I don’t like following the crowd.

While I did read it and enjoy it, I can’t say it was a game changer, but it was a solid warm-up. It was certainly the first book that got me thinking about purpose and fulfilling my destiny. More importantly, it led me to a lot of other Coehlo books that did change my life, like the next one on this list that really pushed me deeper into this new life choice. 

3 | The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession by Paulo Coehlo

A great book for those who feel blah in their relationships and want to be inspired to think outside the box.

This is my all-time favorite book. You aren’t going to find this one on many life-changing books list but this one gave me insight into my marriage and how I wanted it to feel. I think it also helped me let go of past emotions I was carrying, as well as, societal standards I was still gripping onto. When I need inspiration, I look to some of my favorite quotes from the book to keep me on my chosen path.

According to the tradition of the steppes – which is known as the Tengri – in order to live fully, it is necessary to be in constant movement; When they passed through cities, the nomads would think: the poor people who live here, for them everything is always the same. The people in the cities probably looked at the nomads and thought: Poor things, they have nowhere to live. The nomads had no past, only the present, and that is why they were always happy, until the communist governors made them stop travelling and forced them to live on collective farms. From then on, little by little, they came to believe that the story society told them was true. Consequently they have lost all their strength.
No one nowadays can spend their whole life travelling.

The Zahir, Paulo Coelho

4 | Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

A great book for parents to read with their middle or high school kids and a simple way to teach kids to be more mindful.

I taught a homeschooling class to my 3 oldest kids when they were 14, 13, and 11 respectively. I called it “Out-of-the-Box” class because the goal was to look at life from a fresh perspective. We read different books together and one of those was Stargirl.

I loved how she owned her weirdness and that she got up early every morning to meditate and be in nature. Her self-awareness and kind nature spoke to me and inspired me to raise kids who were mindful like this.

Also, as a part of that “Out-of-the-box” class, they had to complete this book, How To Be An Explorer of the World which I’d highly recommend as a workbook to go along with all these life-changing books.

5 | Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts

A great book for those who are afflicted with a bad case of wanderlust.

I found this right about the same time that we moved into our RV and it triggered my wanderlust. When we first moved into the RV, the idea was to just cut expenses to take longer vacations, but once I read this, a whole new world of possibilities opened up for me, and I was certain that I would start traveling the world. Up until this, I had only ever been to Mexico and Costa Rica. Now, only four years later, I’ve been to 26 and counting.

The thing that makes Vagabonding so great isn’t the idea of travel for the sake of checking off bucket list worth destinations, it’s that travel should be a means of self-awareness and self-growth. That’s what I was drawn to. How could I create experiences that would help me understand who I was and not only make sense of the world but find a way to contribute to making the world better?

6 | Live a Thousand Years: Have the Time of Your Life by Giovanni Livera

A great book for those who want to find balance and happiness in all areas of life.

This one did what the Alchemist and The Zahir did but from a slightly different angle. Like Coehlo’s books, this one reinforces self-awareness, discovering purpose, and letting go of baggage through an entertaining story.

I think for a lot of people this book is easier to digest than many other self-help books and is a good starting point if you just want to be inspired to make the most of your life, but not necessarily completely restructure your entire life.

7 | Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

A great book for those who want to be inspired to chase more creativity in their life.

It’s always great when you can read a book about another person’s personal story of changing their life. It takes all these concepts and theories and shows that they are possible. Happiness and true alignment with your soul’s calling is possible.

I don’t think I saw myself as creative before I read this book, however, I remember reading it on a flight to Hawaii a few years back and it struck a cord on owning my weirdness and being okay with expressing who I was.

Being a blogger and getting to express my creativity through writing has changed who I am and how I feel about myself and life so much.  The thing with owning your weirdness is that to do that, you have to not be scared of being judged and that was exactly what I needed to hear to make the jump I knew I needed to.

8 | In Movement There Is Peace: Stumbling 500 Miles Along the Way to the Spirit by Elaine and Joseph Foster

A great book for those who love travel especially if you are thinking of traveling with your spouse.

I read this way before we started traveling. It caught my attention because I always felt more like myself when I was moving.

It’s about a couple hiking the Camino de Santiago and I feel in love with the idea of escaping my ordinary life and getting to wake up each day to a new challenge in a new setting. With this in mind, The Pilgrimage by Coehlo is also a great read.

9 | 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam

A great wake up call for those struggling with procrastination and lack of organization.

This one was a wake-up call to stop wasting time. I’ve never really been one to sit around or be unproductive but it reminded me to be very aware of exactly how I use each one of my 168 hours a week.

I always encourage students in my courses or my coaching clients to take a look at how they spend each hour. It’s changed my time from wasting too much time cleaning and reorganizing stuff to setting aside time to plan trips, write blogs, and build a new business. 

10 | You Are A Badass: How To Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living An Awesome Life by Jen Sincero

A great book for those experience worthiness blocks.

This one was the nail in the coffin. It completely sealed my path to freedom. It was the last piece of confidence I needed to abandon the security of a house and sell almost everything I had worked so hard to own including all the cute wall decorations and fancy pillows that made up my perfectly decorated home to go be me and make the type of memories with my family that most people only see in movies.

I am grateful that Jen wrote this book and that I didn’t shy away from it when its bold yellow cover stared into my soul saying You Need This.

11 | The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure by James Redfield

A great book for those who like self growth but also want to read an enjoyable fiction story.

You will never look at leaves rustling in the breeze the same again. This is a great book for building your self-awareness as well as awareness of the life force that surrounds all of us.

The biggest lesson from this book that I use every day is the energy exchange in conversation. You’ll have to read it to understand what I’m talking about, but basically, it’s about finding a balance of energy when you interact with people.

Go ahead and voice your opinions, brag about yourself, talk about what matters to you for half the conversation, then, spend half the time listening and trying to understand what the other is saying. This can be quite a challenge!

12 | Motivational Manifesto by Brendon Burchard

A great book for entrepreneurs, leaders, and highly driven people to help encourage them to step into their personal power.

I don’t know if any other book does a better job of bringing self-responsibility and self-accountability to the forefront of your being. I mean, think about the power those two things can change. Imagine every second of the day we acted from our truest self by removing fear, hurt, anger, and resentment and were able to achieve our desires by being fully accountable to our purpose and fully present in the moment.

Pro Tip: Try Brendon Burchard’s High-Performance Planner to help you change your life faster.

13 | The Rock Warrior’s Way: Mental Training for Climbers by Arno Ilgner

A great book for adventurer athletes to help better understand risk assessment and personal reponsibility.

You don’t need to be a rock climber to appreciate this book. Sure, some of the climbing lingo might be confusing but that is not the point of the book.

This is another great lesson of self-awareness and self-accountability. he takes the analogy of risk assessment when climbing and transfers it to how we act in life.

What is keeping you from making that move both on the wall and in your life’s purpose? Why are you not slowing down and calculating your next move? What are you in a hurry for? What fulfillment will come from finishing the climb or getting that promotion for you? Is it about the destination or the journey?

I always recommend this book to my clients because it is just so darn good. Now, if the climbing lingo bothers you, his book was based on the teachings of Dan Millman’s book Way of the Peaceful Warrior which is also one of my top 25 books and included below.

I find that I can take Ilgner’s lessons to my life way better than I can to my climbing, but a lot of that has to do with not committing the time to my climbing as I do to the time I spend focusing on being a present mom, writer, and person.

14 | Who Moved My Cheese?: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and Your Life by Spencer Johnson

A great book for those who have trouble with change or are reliant on routine in order to feel grounded.

If you haven’t read this, just stop and download it right now. This should be a requirement for all high schoolers to graduate high school.

This book is a fast read and quite entertaining. Change is inevitable, you can’t stop it. And when we live life in fear of change or devaluing its necessity, we handcuff ourselves. To break free of these shackles, we must embrace change.

15 | You Are A Badass At Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero

A great book for those with money mindset blocks.

Don’t let the title deceive you. This book is about so much more than wealth. This book is a lesson in manifestation and taking a hard look at the lies you tell yourself.

I was reading this book when we were living on a forest road in Oregon and we were just about to empty our bank accounts (again). Two days later, we were rear-ended (everyone was safe thankfully) and we ended up with an insurance payout that allowed us time and space to figure out what we wanted next in life. Coincidence??? I don’t think so.

While I am far from mastering manifestation, I re-read parts of this book often to help me when I feel low, when I need to make hard decisions, and sometimes just when I don’t want to lose my momentum.

See the entire list of our favorite books here.

16 | School of Greatness A Real-World Guide to Living Bigger, Loving Deeper, and Leaving a Legacy by Lewis Howes

A great book for high achievers to look beyond just the money and mroe into love, contribution, and legacy.

Like Tim Ferris’s book The 4-Hour Workweek, the School of Greatness inspired me to find a way. If I know my passions and what I want my life to look and feel like, I absolutely can go make it happen, but it’s going to take work and dedication.

It’s another book that made me understand the power of owning your weirdness and putting it out to the world in a way that can support you financially and fulfill you personally.

17 | The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman

A great book for those ready to go deeper in their spiritual journey.

It took me almost 2 decades to really understand the message in this book. I first read it when my oldest son was born in 1999 but at the time, I was a by-product of the system and didn’t have enough life experiences and metacognition to understand like I do now. If you want to be in the world, but not of the world, this is a great book.

18 | Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon

A great book about thinking like an entrepreneur.

A lot of what holds us back in life is that we put obscene pressure on ourselves to be original while also fitting in. The fact is, were all thieves copying one another and we are all Picasso by putting our own twist on what someone else has already done.

This book inspired me to look to others for inspiration and then make it original by adding “me” to the equation.

19 | Subtle Art of Not Giving A  F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson

A great book on breaking the self worth crisis that causes people to see themselves as victims and instead, to step into personal responsibility to be a creator of your own happiness.

By the time this book fell in my lap, I had already changed in the sense of living unconventionally and travel, but this one just made all the others fall into place at least in my mind. I know a lot of people don’t agree with everything in this book or maybe it’s just too in your face, but here’s what it does for me.

The future remains unknown, uncertain of heavens, hells, or paradises beyond. Faith, not fact, guides us. Present in this singular moment, in this breath, resides our reality. Embrace it fully, with kindness, passion, and intent. Yet, paramount is the game-changing purpose, weaving moments into life’s work, inspiring us to rise, strive, and toast with loved ones, grateful for giving our utmost. This, nothing more. This, nothing less.

20 | The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté

A great book for understanding trauma but also a must-read for parents who want to provide healthy attachment for their children.

I only discovered this book a few years ago so it wasn’t a book that inspired me to chase my dreams, however, I wish my husband and I had read it when we first started traveling because the childhood trauma my husband has had to overcome through our travels has been quite challenging.

21 | Surfing and Health by Doc Paskowitz

A great book on achieving true health.

I watched the documentary Surfwise years ago, way before I considered actually living like the Paskowitz family. I was intrigued by the idea of the simple life and also craved a level of wellness and enjoyment of life that Doc portrayed in the movie. So I ordered Surfing and Health and sure enough two weeks later it arrived in the mail with a handwritten note on the inside cover from him. I thoroughly enjoyed the teachings in his book and a lot of what I write in my books and blogs about health, nutrition, and waking up excited to start each day was inspired by this book.

22 | The $100 Start Up: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau

An inspirational book for anyone dreaming of starting a new career or becoming an entrepreneur.

I read this book right around the time we moved into our RV and it was the perfect motivation to get me to start this website and become a writer.

23 | Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

A great book on self-discipline and creating wealth.

This book was one of my first introductions to manifestation. While I remember some of the book being a bit boring, many of the quotes in the book I look to for motivation and inspiration when I’m feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, or helpless.

24 | The Map of Consciousness Explained: A Proven Energy Scale to Actualize Your Ultimate Potential by David Hawkins

A great book on understanding how we are more spirit than body and how to use that knowledge to live a meaningful life.

The best guidance you can get when it comes time to change is YOU and the concept of a consciousness leveling system gave me a lot of clarity in what I can do to improve myself. If you are unfamiliar with Hawkins’ book, he explains how individual, as well as the world’s, consciousness can be measured. And how leveling up is exponential and that one person at a higher level can offset hundreds or even thousands of people living in a low conscious vibration.

25 | Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing The Uncommon by Joe Dispenza

A great book on how to heal the body and to manifest the life you dream of.

This is my favorite because it completely changed my perception of health and healing. I was already disciplined in my meditation practice and chakra healing before reading this and then this took it to the next level. If you want to feel empowered in your ability to heal and live a healthy life, start with this book! It will change your life!

A few good runners-up include:

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book) by Don Miguel Ruiz. This book has all the things we know we should do, but are often so hard to stick with.

Rising Strong by Brené Brown.This book helped me to better observe my expectations and emotional triggers.

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I hope these 25 books will change your life too. If you are ready to live your life to the fullest and accomplish your wildest dreams, join our free group coaching platform, Be The Hero Academy, and start creating a life that excites you.

Did I miss your favorite book? Share it in the comments section below!

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