Four Books That Changed The Way I Think

The earliest memory I have of loving reading involves pizza. My grade school participated in the “Read Across America” program where students received pizza coupons from Pizza Hut for reading a certain quota of books a month. At the time I’d already fallen in love with the Boxcar Children but the pizza incentive led me to read with increased voracity.

Today, business magazines and websites have hundreds of articles about successful business people and their reading habits. For example, Warren Buffet recommends reading 500 pages per day. Reading plays a large role in a person’s development and today you can exercise your reading muscles with everything from Twitter and fashion blogs to Kindles and Pocket.

My favorite medium by far remains physical books, regardless of how impractical it is to lug half a suitcase of books from the US to Shanghai every Christmas to restock my shelves. Nothing beats the feeling of that final page turn as you finish a good book. Here are just four of the books that have stuck with me, impacting my life on more than one occasion, even after the final page turn.

1. Harry Potter by JK Rowling

The cult-classic came out at the right time for me as I was still in grade school and developing my love of reading (with a side of pizza obsession). JK Rowling’s bestseller series sparked my imagination to question the world around me. They taught me self-control since each book release meant staying up until midnight at Borders to finally receive my pre-ordered copy and then resist rushing home to read it all at once. The series kept me coming back for more and I found a hero that I could grow with, staying up until midnight with my friends in high school to read the final book in the series. You’re never too old to experience Harry Potter and the rush of the learning about the places you can go just by opening a book.

2. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

In high school, you’re taught that your studies and courses will apply to life in college and beyond. As much as I tried to believe them, I didn’t really feel the effects of my learning until I opened Freakonomics. This book taught me that economic principles really could explain everyday phenomena. I learned that the name my parents’ gave me could determine my future earnings and socioeconomic status and that swimming pools are actually more dangerous than guns (at least at the time of publishing).

It put my economics classes into perspective and this sparked my personal interest in social economics. Similar to working in social media, social economics shows you that numbers can help you explain the world around you and makes abstract trends or concepts easier to digest. My bookshelf is now filled with books like Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point and David McRaney’s So You Think You’re Smarter Than Einstein.

3. The Defining Decade by Meg Jay

I received this book as a Christmas present before my final semester as an undergrad at the University of Virginia. The cover boasted that it could tell me “why your twenties matter and how to make the most of them now.” But after the first chapter, I was hooked.

Page after page revealed anecdotes about twenty-somethings grappling with the transition to the working world, navigating personal relationships, and growing into the person they would become. I was able to see someone I knew or myself in most of the stories and Meg Jay followed each with practical advice or a new framework for the reader to use to address similar problems in your life. If anything, it reassured my growing belief that there is no “one path” in post-graduate life. It was a scary concept at the time but led me to make my decision to move to China and explore a career abroad.

4. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

It’s a cheesy topic off the bat – to read about happiness – but Gretchen Rubin breaks down the different aspects of life and instead of preaching to be overall happier, she provides actionable tweaks to your daily habits. Since moving to China, her theory about the four tendencies in people has stuck with me and changed the way I approach clients, colleagues, and friends.

She believes that all people fall into four tendencies: upholder, obliger, rebel, and questioner. I’m an obliger so I tend to meet outer expectations and resist inner expectations. Instead of trying to get you to change your tendency, she finds that embracing it helps you maximize your happiness.

No one is perfect and we’re all different so the sooner we realize that and adjust our expectations, the happier we’ll be. Falling in line with my interest in social economics, The Happiness Project gave me a new lens to view the world around me, enhancing my experience living abroad.

Books have challenged me, led me to question the world around me, and inspired me to embrace learning opportunities. I could write paragraphs more about the books that have taught me about life but what books do you treasure and how do you think they’ve played a role in your life?