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.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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How to Decide
How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices by Annie Duke is a practical guide designed to help readers improve their decision-making processes by separating the quality of a choice from the randomness of its eventual outcome.
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
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Finding Your Element
Finding Your Element by Sir Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica is a self-help and career guide designed to help readers discover their true passions and personal strengths.
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
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The Organized Mind
The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin is a popular science book that explores cognitive psychology and neuroplasticity, offering practical strategies to manage information overload and decision fatigue.
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
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The Courage to Be Disliked
The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga is a popular self-help book that applies Adlerian psychology to help individuals overcome self-doubt, past trauma, and the paralyzing fear of others' judgment.
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
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Thinking, Fast and Slow
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a seminal psychology book that explores the dual systems of the human mind: the fast, intuitive system and the slow, logical system.
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
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Flow
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a seminal work of positive psychology that examines the state of optimal experience, arguing that happiness is not a passive destination but an engineered state of deep, active absorption where personal skills perfectly match incoming challenges.
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
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The Lean Startup
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is a foundational business guide that advocates for validated learning and rapid experimentation over traditional business planning.
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
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The Righteous Mind
The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt is a popular psychology book that investigates the moral foundations of politics and religion, arguing that human beings use intuition first and reasoning second to justify their beliefs.
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
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The Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita by Jack Hawley is a foundational spiritual text detailing ancient philosophical lessons on duty, yoga, and the nature of existence.
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
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Breath
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor is an eye-opening exploration of the mechanics and evolutionary history of human respiration, demonstrating how modern breathing habits damage health and how conscious breathwork can transform physical and mental well-being.
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
