600 + of the top optimal
living books…ever.

We've got three Notes on Wayne Dyer (see The Power of Intention and Your Erroneous Zones) and in this Note we'll have fun learning about the power of "acting as if" (Dyer's got an awesome description of how to rock this!) along with the importance of committing your ideal to paper, disdaining all disbelief and asking "How can I serve?!"

We profiled Nathaniel Branden’s classic Six Pillars of Self-Esteem in Volume I and in this Note we explore some more Big Ideas from this brilliant mind. We’ll check out the importance of moving from defensiveness to eagerness, being present within the context of the bigger picture of past and future and why you may want to consider your ego as a friend if you have any hope of moving forward spiritually. Genius stuff.

The Rise of Superman. What an awesome title and vision. Steven Kotler is one of the world’s leading authorities on the science of flow. He created the Flow Genome Project that is all about “decoding the peak performance state of flow.” (<—Awesome.) In this book we take a peak at how we can get our greatness on. Big Ideas include a quick look at flow and how to hack it, achieving mastery sans misery, using fear as a compass and how to do the impossible.

Orison Swett Marden is a brilliant old-school writer who mixed a passionate optimism in our potential with an equally passionate commitment to integrity, grit, perseverance and all things good. I like him. In this book he shows us how to make our life a masterpiece by becoming the captain of our own ships, doing first-class work, and finding an hour a day to optimize as we achieving true success.

Want to know the strangest secret? Here it is: “We become what we think about.” That's it! Thank you, Earl Nightingale (and all other gret teachers who echo this wisdom!). In the Note we'll unpack Big Ideas from this uber-classic recording and learn how to optimize our thinking so we can actualize our potential.

Steve Chandler tells us “There is bad and there is good . . . And then there is crazy good." And, our path to living a crazy-good life is simple. It's all about CHOICES. As with all of Steve's books, this one is packed with wisdom. Big Ideas we cover include The 5% Solution, Systems vs. Dreams, Game vs. Shame, and making life an experiment.

Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney are two of the leading academic researchers who have been studying the efficacy of ketogenic diets for decades (a combined 50+ years between the two of them). Phinney actually coined the hyphenated word-phrase “keto-adapted” to describe the process that typically takes at least 2 weeks to go from burning primarily sugar for fuel to burning primarily fat for fuel. In addition to being brilliant, iconoclastic, contrarian scientists (my favorite kind), Volek and Phinney are also funny. In this book they walk us through the SCIENCE behind why a well-formulated (<- IMPORTANT distinction!) low-carbohydrate approach works. If that’s your thing, I think you’ll dig it. Big Ideas we explore include: Who invented low-carb? (hint: look back ~1 million years), the A to Z study (how's your insulin?), the metabolic whodunnit (solved: carbs), exercise (think: wellness tool not weight loss tool), and the battle to bliss (see ya there!).

Martin Seligman is essentially the father of the Positive Psychology movement and in this Note we explore how important it is for us to use our Signature Strengths consistently throughout our day-to-day lives. We've got tips on how to discover our Strengths and how to move from a job to a career to a calling as we live a life of meaning and purpose. Good times.

Jim Loehr is one of the world’s leading sports psychologists and peak performance experts. In this great book, he tells us how all champions are able to access their Ideal Performance States, why we want to lean into challenges, how to make waves throughout out day and the first rule of toughness.

Nir Eyal is a former lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. His first book was an international bestseller that’s influenced the product development of pretty much all of the leading tech companies on the planet. It was called Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. We have Nir to thank for helping make the technology we use better. And... As he says, “But there’s also a dark side. As philosopher Paul Virilio wrote, ‘When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck.’ In the case of user-friendly products and services, what makes some products engaging and easy to use can also make them distracting.” After finding HIMSELF hooked to many of the products created by designers inspired by *his* work, Eyal got himself UNHOOKED and, ultimately INDISTRACTABLE. In this great book, he gives us a practical look at *why* we’re so vulnerable to getting hooked in the first place and, most importantly, how to make ourselves Indistractable so we can control our attention and choose our lives.