June 8th, 2024 – Books That Changed My Perspective

I have had the incredible opportunity to reflect a lot on my own career journey recently. Over the past few weeks, I have been contacted by a few people looking to get into scopistry, or looking to make contacts in scopistry, and sharing their experiences with me. These people have shared that they found my blog and resonated with some of my experiences. Or they were grateful for some of my tips about the industry. I’m so excited that my work is reaching others, and that they are finding it helpful! I am also very excited to see people getting into scopistry. I love (and encourage) people to tell me their success stories. It warms my heart to see others succeed, especially in this field!

These experiences with my fellow scopists lead me to think about what I think helped me progress myself over the years. What are things I have done, seen, or experienced that have made me more prepared for this job, or for life in general? Is there anything I think made a fundamental difference in my life that could also be helpful to others? Surprising absolutely no one who knows me, the answer came in the form of books.

When I was a teenager, I could easily read a five-book series in three days. I had the time, I had the energy, and I didn’t sleep. As I grew older, these numbers leveled out. I entered the work force, I started taking care of my body, and I became more regimented with my time. Now, I read about 100-150 books per year. More if I take vacations, and less if I’m working a lot.

 I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years, so it’s fair to say I’ve read a lot of books. However, there have been a few books I read that completely shifted my perspective, or changed fundamental things about my personality and life. I could go down a whole list of books that changed me in one way or another, but today I want to focus on the ones I think helped me best prepare for my life now.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

Now, I probably didn’t learn exactly what Tim Ferriss was expecting to teach when he wrote this book, but I still gained valuable insight and had a great change and shift in my perspective. Suffice it to say, I don’t work a four-hour workweek.

This book taught me a lot about the value of my time. Ferriss teaches about automating tasks or cash flow, delegation, and the difference between absolute and relative income, among other things. I enjoyed this perspective, and I learned a lot. However, when I read this book, the fact that anyone on earth had noticed these things and was able to make a living this way was the thing that resonated the most with me.

I read this book when I was working twelve-hour shifts at a factory, wearing steel-toed boots on concrete floors all day. It was hard on me mentally and physically. I found this book and the title stopped me. “There is no way a man can live this kind of life and only work four hours per week. I don’t believe that for a single second.” But then I read it.

What I gained from this book was the idea that what I was doing in my life was not the only option and that there were people out there doing something different and enjoying it to a degree I couldn’t fathom. I started to realize that in order to truly be happy, I needed to get out of my current mindset, and start realizing how truly possible it was to earn enough money to live without working a job I hate for twelve hours per day. It made me really start believing in the idea of making money while following my passions, and not letting work be the thing that defined me unless I wanted it to be.

Buy your copy here

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck by Mark Manson

This is a book that became instrumental in the narrative shift in my life. It is a book that completely upended and changed my perspective on how to address and view the problems in my life. Manson has a writing style that suits me, and I like that he has this no-nonsense way about him. I gained a lot of perspective when I read this book for the first time, and I read it every so often just to remind myself of the things I learned the first time.

This book doesn’t aim to solve your problems, but it helps you identify which ones are actually worth thinking about. It doesn’t teach you to be indifferent, because indifference is not the meaning of “not giving a f*ck.” It takes courage to care about things but they need to be the right things. This book will help you see that.

This book helped me to understand that so much of what is happening around me, that my anxious brain has decided is worth devoting so much time to, is so wildly unimportant. It helped me understand what finding happiness really looks like, and what things in my life were holding me back. This gave me a sense of freedom that I hadn’t experienced before. It gave me the courage to start looking into what was going to make me happy in my life, and how I wanted to start achieving that.

Buy your copy here

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

This is my Roman empire. I will never stop talking about this book, and I regularly think about and recommend it to people.

This is another example of a book which I probably didn’t learn the intended lessons or takeaways, but it changed me, nonetheless. I think “changed” might be too small of a word. This book obliterated my worldview. It sent me into a tailspin for days.

In this book, Harari discusses the ways in which modern society came to be. He discusses the topics of laws, money, religion, and societal revolution. These were not things I was unaware of. I went to history class, I went to Catholic school, I read books. I know how society came to be and I know where we started from. However, Harari discusses the fundamental interconnectedness of all of these systems, and it made me question so much of what I thought I knew.

Overall, what it gave me is this overwhelming sense that everything is made up and nothing matters.

I know it sounds negative or pessimistic, but I promise, the amount of freedom that simple idea has given me has made me the person I am today. Read the book. You’ll understand.

Buy your copy here

And that’s it. Those are three of the books that I can say have contributed to the person I am today. They came at three very different points in my life and I think they were all necessary in those moments. Each one taught me something unique, but equally valuable, and I am grateful for what I learned and the courage I gained to apply these lessons in my daily life. If you read or have read any of these books, leave a comment down below and let me know. I’d love to hear your perspective and the things you learned, liked, or disliked. If you did like this post, make sure to check back for a new post on the Next Step Scopist blog!

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