4 Weird Obscure Books That Totally Changed How I See The World

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Since starting the 50/50 reading challenge (yesterday, ha!) I’ve been thinking about some of the books that have had an incredible impact on my life.

And while I’ve read a bunch of the classics in entrepreneurship, personal development, etc… there have been a few that have become dogeared, marked up, and beat up as they’ve been read over and over… each time giving me something new.

These books were the landmark moments for me.  Moments were I had a sudden realization or insight that totally shook up the way I viewed the world… and expanded it to something new… here they are, in the order I discovered them!

1. The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G Allen

Read in: 2007

This was a funny little book. I picked it up in a seaside town in Ireland in a tiny hole in the wall bookstore while trying to break myself of a weird puzzle addiction 🙂

On the right hand pages of this book is the story of a woman attempting to make a million dollars in a year. Through a weird turn of events she has to make exactly a million to be able to get her kids back from her wealthy father in law.  The left hand side of the pages are business lessons.

What I LOVED about this book was the story. Most business books just teach you lessons, but they don’t really engage your imagination or help you think about how those lessons would look in a real life scenario.

The woman had to be creative, she had to battle her worries and fears, she had to take risks and work her butt off. The strategies are probably a bit outdated at this point, but it’s more about the principles of entrepreneurship and the idea that you can be creative in your pursuit of wealth.

The margins of my copy of this book are chock full of business and money making ideas… the word WOW appears a lot 🙂

The Major Lesson for me: Making money can be a creative art, there are hundreds of ways to do it if you open yourself up to ideas, and you can choose to be a “conscious entrepreneur” and make sure to do business that contributes to society.

2. Creating Money: Attracting Abundance by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer

Read in: 2008

This book blew my mind.  I was embarrassed to read it in public because I was ashamed of wanting “money”… but the further I got through the book the more I realized that money isn’t dirty or somehow unspiritual. Money just is… and it’s whatever we do with it that makes us who we are.  This book both teaches how to deal with energies and has exercises throughout to help you meditate and manifest.  With so much stuff out there about the Law of Attraction and manifesting, this book had an incredible amount of depth and real instruction.

It helped me to understand where my desires were coming from and identify what I truly want underneath all the superficial stuff. What was great was I could still have the desires, but understanding what they meant to me at their essence (i.e. happiness, freedom, pursuit) allowed me to instantly become happier and more fulfilled.

This book is probably the weirdest on the list, but definitely had the biggest impact. The author claims to have channeled the book from a higher entity, which to my mind was a little on the edge of bizarre. But regardless of who actually wrote it, the material is THE BEST I have ever seen on spirituality and money.

Without this book I don’t think I would have continued my path to become an entrepreneur. It allowed me to realize that I could make money AND be me!

The Major Lesson for Me: The pursuit of money can be a deep spiritual path if you choose to make it one. Money is energy and is neither good nor bad at it’s essence.

3. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One by Joe Dispenza

Read in: 2012

I got to hear Dr Dispenza talk in 2008 and was blown away by his teaching on neuroscience.

I like spirituality and depth of wisdom, but I also love science and I need to feel like the spiritual stuff is also grounded in reality.

So when I saw that Dr Dispenza had a new book I decided to pick it up….. best decision ever!

This book digs into how our mind and body work together… how our thinking and feeling can get stuck in patterns, and how meditation can help us to create a new mind for ourselves.

I grew up around meditation and spirituality and never felt it was really for me… but having a scientific understanding of what is going on inside our brains and bodies really helped me ground the idea of meditation and spirituality into reality.  It helped me see the benefits and see that you don’t have to be “off with the fairies” or channeling entities to have more spirituality in your life.

Really what fascinated me about this was it felt like someone had finally given me a manual to understand why I am the way I am, what parts are me, and what parts are automated processes.  And it helped me realize that we can change at any time… as long as we are willing to put a bit of deliberate time and energy into it.

This book really opened a door for me and led me into the fields of neuroscience, molecular biology, and the study of complex systems… which is AWESOME. I love understanding how the world works, and still accepting that so much of it is a mystery!

The Major Lesson for Me: Our minds and bodies are designed to get stuck in patterns of thought and feeling, with deliberate effort we can change our body chemistry and neural networks to essentially become completely new people.

4. Brida (P.S.) by Paulo Coelho

Read in: 2014

This book isn’t really about business and it isn’t really about personal development.  It’s a fiction novel.  But it really did something interesting inside for me.

The story is about the journey of a girl called Brida who wants to learn about magic. It covers her finding a mentor to teach her what is basically a form of witchcraft, and leads her to discovering her soul mate.

What I loved about this book was it opened me up to all kinds of ideas about each persons path to discover their truth.  I’ve always felt like I didn’t quite fit into any spiritual box.  I like to think about things and read and wonder, and to me that’s something of a personal journey, but I’ve always found the idea of declaring ourselves as part of one group or another a little weird.

It opened me up to the idea that I can look for and discover the secrets of the universe by following my interests.  Like we can learn as much about the mysteries of life by looking at a tree as we can by reading spiritual texts or working with a teacher.  I think everything holds the opportunity to learn about ourselves and the world.

You can learn about life and spirit and truth by disappearing into the wilderness to meditate, or by teaching yourself how to build a Youtube channel.  It’s just about deciding you are on the path to learn… and then uncovering the lessons held for you in whatever you chose to do.

This book is not going to be for everyone, and your thoughts and lessons from reading it would probably be wildly different from mine… it’s just a book that got my brain whirling!

The Major Lesson for Me: Life is about wonder and seeking truth and depth, and that can take almost any form for any person. They just have to follow their instincts.

What books created shifts in how YOU see the world???

Comment below and let me know! You can help me build my list for the 50/50 challenge! 🙂

You can pick up any of the books by clicking the pictures, it will take you to their Amazon page!

Happy Reading!

Niamh