Episode · On Purpose with Jay Shetty · 2026-04-24
Books mentioned on 10 Books That Changed My Life
Today, Jay opens with an honest observation: most books don’t actually change your life. While many offer inspiration in the moment, they rarely shift how we truly think or live.
Jay Shetty recommended How to Decide by Annie Duke, Finding Your Element by Sir Ken Robinson and others, The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin, The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and others, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, The Bhagavad Gita by Jack Hawley, and Breath by James Nestor.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
-
How to Decide
Recommended“The first book on my list is How to Decide by Annie Duke. Here's the lesson. You are confusing the quality of your decisions with the quality of your outcomes, and it's destroying your judgment.”
Where to get it
-
Finding Your Element
Recommended“Book number two is Finding Your Element by Ken Robinson. Here's the lesson. You were not designed for one purpose. You were designed for an intersection, and you've probably been looking in the wrong place.”
Where to get it
-
The Organized Mind
Recommended“Book number three is The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin. Here's the lesson. Your brain was never designed to hold the life you're asking it to hold, and every ounce of mental clutter is costing you intelligence.”
Where to get it
-
The Courage to Be Disliked
Recommended“Book number four is The Courage to Be Disliked. Here's the lesson. You're not living your life. You're living your fear of other people's judgment, and it has cost you everything authentic about you.”
Where to get it
-
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Recommended“Book number five, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. The lesson, you have two brains and they're lying to each other. And the one you trust most is the one that's wrong most often.”
Where to get it
-
Flow
Recommended“Book number six is called Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Here is the lesson. Happiness is not a destination or an emotion, it's a state of absorption that you can engineer.”
Where to get it
-
The Lean Startup
Recommended“Book number seven is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Here is the lesson. You don't fail because you built the wrong thing. You fail because you built the perfect version of something nobody asked for.”
Where to get it
-
The Righteous Mind
Recommended“Book number eight is The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. You can tell I've read this one a few times. I've lost the cover. Here's the lesson. You don't use reason to form your beliefs. You use your beliefs to select your reasons, and everyone you disagree with is doing the same thing.”
Where to get it
-
The Bhagavad Gita
Recommended“Book number nine is the Bhagavad Gita. Here's the lesson. You have the right to the work, but never to the fruit of the work. And this single idea makes every other book on this list make sense.”
Where to get it
-
Breath
Recommended“Book number 10 is Breath by James Nestor. Here's the lesson. The most powerful tool you have for changing your mental state is not in your mind. It's the thing you've been doing wrong 40,000 times a day.”
Where to get it
