Who Will Cry When You Die\?: Life Lessons From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari pdfdrive com

43.
Build a Library of Heroic Books
Few things make me happier than meeting someone who has read my books or
listened to my audiotapes and hearing something like, “I was so moved and
inspired after going through your material that I went out and bought ten more
life improvement books and read them all. And you know what, they have
completely transformed me.”
I not only write books on life leadership, I am a dedicated student of them.
As I mentioned in an earlier lesson, I spend countless hours in large bookstores
combing the shelves for the latest treasure that will enlighten and educate me. I
also frequent used-book shops where I have picked up some of my most
valuable books for only a few dollars (as I write this paragraph, I have a
“preowned” copy of Maxwell Maltz’s classic Psycho-Cybernetics on my desk,
which stills bears the sticker price of $2.95. Also on my desk is a copy of
Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic, a truly priceless work, which was purchased by
my dad for $1.95).
While almost any reading will improve your mind, in a world where there is
too much to do, you must be selective in the books you read. And so, I suggest
you spend much of your time reading what Thoreau called “The Heroic
Books”—those books that contain “the noblest recorded thoughts of man.” Let
your mind drink deeply from the works of the great philosophers, such as
Epictetus and Confucius. Study the poems of the wisest poets, such as Alfred
Lord Tennyson, Emily Dickinson and John Keats, and the novels of Leo
Tolstoy, Hermann Hesse and the Brontës. Read the writings of Mahatma
Gandhi, Albert Einstein and Mother Teresa. Connecting with such works for
even a few minutes a day will keep you centered on what life is really about and
will ultimately profoundly affect your character. Asked in an interview what his
biggest regret in life was, talk show superstar Larry King replied, “I should have
been better rooted in the great books.”
Here are some of the “heroic” books that helped me change my own life
and gave me the wisdom and inspiration to live more deliberately and
completely. If you read all of them, and act on the lessons contained within their
pages, you cannot help but improve your circumstances profoundly.

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Letters from a Stoic, Seneca
The Message of a Master, John McDonald
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
University of Success, Og Mandino
The Magic of Believing, Claude Bristol
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Joseph Murphy
As a Man Thinketh, James Allen
Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill
Life Is Tremendous, Charlie Tremendous Jones
Through the wonders of technology, you can view a fuller listing of my
favorite books at our website located at www.robinsharma.com

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