7 Books That Helped Shape My Worldview [Only Read With An Open Mind]

We all see the world in a wildly different way. Almost like the caricature with the blind people touching an elephant and making wildly inaccurate assumptions:

Some blind people claim it’s a fan. Some claim they must be touching a spear. Only a person with an understanding on how the world truly works can remove the blind-fold, step back – and see that it’s indeed an elephant.

If I’d have known one thing earlier, it’s that there’s only one way to see the world that is rational and factually correct.

Same as an elephant is an elephant and not a giraffe, our world works based on certain rules that only very few people are aware of.

Being aware of these rules not only will help you satiate your curiosity, it will also help you get almost anything you want in life. Bold statement, but bear with me for a second:

I certainly wasn’t aware of any of these things. Although I was raised in arguably the best country education-wise (Switzerland) I had to re-learn almost everything I’ve been taught.

Here’s the 7 books that helped me do so and my key takeaways:

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A university-level textbook with about 500 pages - but if it’s one book I wish I’d have read sooner: It’s this one.

Evolutionary psychology is by far the best way to predict ANY human behaviour. A crucial read for everyone who wants to understand why people do what they do.

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A fantastic book by world-renowned investor Ray Dalio. Ray Dalio made his living (or fortune) by accurately predicting the future.

Ray Dalio does so by understanding cause and effect. The effect (future) can be traced back to the cause (present). This book also helped me understand that life is largely cyclical. History repeats itself.

PS: I strongly believe that this book is a must read for everyone living in the US currently.

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A short book by legendary writer Will Durant. The key takeaway of this book is that the lessons of history are the laws of biology. History repeats itself because of the inherent flaws of our human nature.

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Although history repeats itself, it’s individuals that have the possibility to change the course of history. Edison was one of these individuals.

Edison almost singlehandedly created most of the progress in the early 20th century. Light bulb, cinema, cars, synthetic rubber – all of these inventions can be directly traced back to Edison.

He was a mentor to Tesla (which later on invented the Tesla coil) – and a mentor to Henry Ford (which later on streamlined car production).

Fun fact: The more you read about history, the more you understand how overrated Tesla is – and how underrated Edison is.

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Fantastic, short-read about why countries act the way countries do.

Most people see countries as these faceless entities: ‘Germany decided not to intervene in the crisis’, ‘UK imposed sanctions’ – nonsense.

Countries are run by people just like you and me. With fears, worries and egocentric desires – just like you and me. If you understand how people work, you understand how countries work.

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The #1 book that explains you (along with the Evolutionary Psychology one), how people want to be treated.

Fun fact: A Dale Carnegie course seems to be the only ‘self improvement’ course Warren Buffett has ever attended. Seems to have served him well.

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The first book that opened my eyes about food production – and it’s cruel inefficiency.

If the future is not dystopian, I can't help but think that the current food system is something future generations will look back at and shake their heads in disbelief.

It doesn’t take a genius - but an independent mind – to understand that our food system is inherently broken and that slaughtering 72,000,000,000 animals per year is morally completely unjustifiable.

‘Eating Animals’ was the first book that showed me that ‘group think’ is often synonymous to ‘no think’.

Most of us inherently believe what we’re told by authority figures, forgetting that ?????????????? is 100x more important than ????????????.

Thomas Edison used to have one quote in his laboratory at all times: “There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.”

Edison understood how the world works.