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10 Life-Changing Ideas from 10 Life-Changing Books
Matt Karamazov
September 15, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 39 minutes
My life has been changed literally hundreds of times by something I’ve read in a book (sometimes multiple times in the same book), and I’m going to recommend ten of those life-changing books today.
At the bottom of each mini-summary I’ve also got a short recap of that life-changing idea and what it could mean for you.
But something’s also been troubling me…
You see, I’ve spent years filling your inbox with book insights, quotes, and takeaways…
…but rarely showed you how to actually use what you’ve read to change your life (and your bank account).
That changes this Tuesday (tomorrow).
In this free workshop, my friend Bryan Harris will show you how to:
Stop hoarding knowledge and start packaging it
Build a simple $10K offer out of what you’ve already learned
Land premium clients without grinding for followers or likes
📅 Tuesday @ 3pm CT
Save your spot →
I’ll be there, and Bryan’s going to teach you everything he’s taught me: the ideas, information, tactics and strategies that have helped me become a recognized expert in my field, and get paid like an expert too.
There’s a literal wealth of knowledge trapped inside your head. So click here, register for the free workshop, and Bryan Harris will show you how to monetize your mind.
And now, before our coffees get hold, let’s hit the books!
Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, We’ve Got:
“If you will not believe in yourself, then why should anyone else? Without self-belief, nothing can be accomplished. With it, nothing is impossible. It is as brutal and as black and white as that. If you take no other memory from this book, then take that single thought. It was worth a damn sight more than the price you paid for it.”
“Not many things are more stressful than finances in a small business. So, to make the leap to 7-figures and do so without the stress, get control of your money.
It’s time to go pro. Each week, do a quick cash review, going through the key metrics to make sure that you’re clear and ahead financially. This will get you out of the week-to-week survival mode and into the power position.”
Inside my private business mastermind, Creator Launch Academy, we’re tackling one nonfiction book per month and implementing its lessons inside our businesses.
This month’s book is From 6 to 7 Figures, by Austin Netzley, a great business book about why the things that brought you to six figures in revenue won’t take you to seven figures and what to do about it. Click here to claim your free trial, and join our business book club for educational content creators!
After achieving my (somewhat meaningless) goal of reading 1,000 books before I turned 30, I set a new (also meaningless but cool) goal of reading 10,000 books. As of today, I’ve read exactly 1,414 books, including 62 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
“The purpose of life is simply to be alive. It is so plain, and so simple, and so obvious. Yet everyone rushes around in a great panic, as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
Alan Watts introduced millions of Western readers to Eastern religion and philosophy, and for me personally, all of his books have made my life demonstrably better in some way. I’ve just kept coming back to him over and over.
This book is a compilation of a few of his more controversial lectures, delivered at various American universities throughout the 1960s. Western culture wasn’t “the enemy,” according to Alan Watts, except perhaps to the good life. Americans were “missing the point” of being alive, and their way of life alienated them from reality by making them feel rushed and harried, inadequate and insecure.
In his own way, he showed audiences why and how they became sick - why they never felt they were “enough” - and what to do about it. Or, not do about it, as the case may be.
Because maybe we’re not actually sick at all? Maybe there’s nothing wrong with us at all? Maybe it’s our society that’s sick, and to be well-adjusted to it is no measure of good health in the first place.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Life-Changing Idea: Existence is full and complete as it is. There’s nothing we have to “do” or “achieve” or “become,” unless it’s for the purposes of deepening our own joy. The universe tends to unfold exactly as it should, regardless of our feelings about it or how stressed we might feel.
“The overwhelming reality is: we live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable."
The main thrust of Essentialism (both the book and the idea itself) is that almost everything is completely worthless.
Discerning the "vital few" from the "trivial many" is going to be one of the most in-demand skills in the economy of the future, and those who can do this well are going to reap the majority of the rewards and experience the highest possible meaning in their lives, while the rest of us are drowning in distraction.
One of the most famous Essentialists in history, Michelangelo, once said that he "saw the angel in the marble and carved until he set him free." In a similar way, we are the sculptors of our own lives, the creators of our own meaning.
The perfect form of our lives is hidden inside the marble of all the distractions, detours, and trivialities of the modern world, and we have to be artists; we have to be disciplined in carving away everything that's stealing our time, focus, and attention away from what we want our one and only lives to be about.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Life-Changing Idea: Almost literally everything is completely and totally meaningless. Except those few things which are vitally important and deserve your dedicated, undivided, perfect attention and focus.
“At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.”
Ryan Holiday has read this book more than a hundred times, and I can absolutely see why. I’ve only read it twice, but whenever I come back to my notes (which is often), I’m struck again and again by its power and force. The term “life-changing” is thrown around a lot on the internet, but this book is literally life-changing.
Meditations was originally kept as a private journal by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who never intended to publish it. But as will become clear as you read through my notes, the entire world has been strengthened and improved because it was published.
Marcus Aurelius was the last of the “Five Good Emperors,” and he’s also considered (rightly) to be one of the most important Stoic philosophers, right up there with Seneca and Epictetus. Those are the three that come to my mind anyway whenever I think of Stoicism.
Meditations is even more astonishing when you think of the time period Marcus lived through, which was characterized by constant wars, invasions, plagues, revolts, struggles…just on and on, and Marcus’s book is his impeccably honest attempt to understand himself and make sense of the universe with all this going on around him.
I honestly can’t recommend this book highly enough, and I can’t even imagine a world without it. To think that it was almost lost to the endless abyss of time is unfathomable to me, and I’m just extraordinarily grateful every time I think about it that it wasn’t.
Difficulty Rating: Intermediate
Life-Changing Idea: You literally don’t have any time to waste. It’s constantly slipping away from you, every single moment of your life, and if you don’t use it now, today to become everything you said you’d be, it will be gone and never return.
“There’s a reason why you can’t find a wall clock in a casino to save your life - those folks stealing your money do not want you to be aware of the passing of time. And that tells you something useful right there: you want to be very aware, all the time, of the passing of time. It is to your advantage to be very conscious of the passage and usage of minutes and hours.”
This book is a phenomenon. Dan’s is a radical approach to time management that I strongly resonated with because of his deep, visceral knowledge of how valuable time actually is. He gets it, and what do you know? I ended up with fifteen pages of notes from this one.
Okay, so for one thing, Dan refuses to communicate either by phone or email. He insists that anyone who wants to get in touch with him do so by fax. It’s one of his “rules of engagement” and it stems from his (correct) observation that way more thought gets put into faxes than emails. You actually have to think ahead when you send a fax, whereas with email, any pinhead can just ping you whenever a new thought pops into their head.
But that’s not even the half of it…
Dan Kennedy also refuses to take any unscheduled incoming calls, and he will only fly by private jet when going out to meet clients. Faced with a choice of taking a cheaper flight to come and see him, or paying for Kennedy to fly private, they just end up coming to him, saving him who-knows-how-many hours of travel. Time he could more profitably put into his business, his writing, and his life.
Because that’s what this book is really about, by the way. Yes, you’ll pick up tons of valuable business lessons throughout that are only tangentially related to time, but you’ll also come away with a deep understanding of the infinite value of time, the infinite value of your own life, and you’ll start to get right and proper angry at the Time Vampires who would rob you of pieces of your one and only life.
Oh yeah, Dan also surrounds himself with clocks and other visible reminders of the passing of time, up to and including a hangman’s noose that he keeps in front of his writing desk, and a clock that looks like a ticking bomb, complete with flashing lights on the front for a timer.
This is all a conscious, concerted effort to continually remind himself of the infinite, unbelievable importance of time, and of not carelessly tossing away a single moment of your limited human life.
No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs is aggressive, it’s smart, it’s extreme, it’s unimaginably helpful, and it’s also sincere. Dan Kennedy lives his philosophy and he’s a convincing advocate for it. This will likely always be one of my most highly recommended time management books of all time, and I do not exaggerate one bit when I say that your life depends on reading it.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Life-Changing Idea: Your time, energy, focus, and attention is constantly being stolen from you. You are besieged on all sides, and you need to take extreme measures to hold onto every single second of your one and only life.
“If the whole world were to appear to mortals now, for the first time; if it was suddenly and unexpectedly exposed to their view; what could one think of more marvelous than these things, and which mankind would less have dared to believe?"
If you took a few required philosophy courses in university, hated it, and subsequently wrote off philosophy forever as “not really my thing,” then it probably wasn’t philosophy.
You might have heard some version of this joke where a doctor is asked what he specializes in, and the doctor replies, “I specialize in the treatment of the left earlobe.” The joke is that medicine has become so ultra-specialized and exact - so finely technical - that you could have a specialization like that and no one would know if you’re even joking or not!
Well, it’s kind of the same thing in philosophy nowadays. It’s become so unbelievably stuffy and academic that you could present a thesis on “Semiotic De-Temporalization in Abstract Existentialist and Metaphysical Meta-Realities” and you’d probably get your doctorate! Did I make that up? Or is it a real thing? Who knows!
Anyway, it’s so far away from the actual philosophy that real people used to practice to, you know, improve their lives! Hadot’s book is about real, honest to goodness philosophy (a word that means love of wisdom), and it’s about real people (everyone from slaves to Roman Emperors) who used it to become mentally stronger, more joyful, less afraid, and more fully alive.
I won’t say that this is an easy read because it’s not. It’s more of a philosophy textbook than something you’d bring with you to the beach, but the whole purpose is to show you that philosophy’s a real, live activity, that can actually improve your one and only life.
Reading it, you’ll see why people like Socrates felt that real communication with other human beings was infinitely superior to knowledge gained from books, how Marcus Aurelius used philosophy to help him run the Roman Empire without losing his mind, and how you can go from where you are now, to where you want to be.
Difficulty Rating: Intermediate
Life-Changing Idea: Life is unbelievably miraculous and incredible, and we simply miss it because we’re not paying attention. We become desensitized to how amazing our lives are, but consider that if you just popped into existence today and suddenly you had iPhones, plane travel, music festivals, great books and libraries - how magical everything would seem!
“The evil that is within us is finite, as we are. The good by whose help we fight it is outside us and is infinite. Therefore it is absolutely sure that evil will be vanquished.”
I’d like to introduce you to one of my favorite people ever. Her name is Simone Weil, and I’ve learned more from her than almost anyone I’ve ever read or been in contact with, ever. That’s three “evers” I just used. That shows you how serious I am!
She might actually be one of the greatest and most compassionate human beings who ever lived, and whenever I think of truth, or goodness, or beauty, or justice, I tend to think of her.
She taught me how to listen, how to really “see” other people, how to demand the most from myself, and how to give the most of myself. In fact, Albert Camus called her “the only great spirit of our time.”
This was back in the middle of the 20th century, as she died in 1943 at the age of 34. Why so young? The answer is that she starved herself to death - defying her doctor’s orders to eat - in solidarity with the French citizens living under Nazi occupation during World War 2. She refused to eat any more food than the French people were allowed to eat (she was living in England at this time) under German rule, and with eating such a small amount of food, she died of malnutrition.
I have mixed feelings about this. Of course, what she did was so completely selfless and incredible and totally in line with who she was as a person and with what she believed to be true.
On the other hand, what could such a brilliant philosopher like her have contributed through her works that would have had a much larger positive impact on the future health of humanity? No one knows, and that’s part of the tragedy and absurdity of her death.
What you almost have to respect about her though is her total commitment to her ideals. Unlike pseudo-intellectuals like Karl Marx and friends, she actually spent time working in factories herself so that she could understand more about the life of the urban poor and gain insight into what they were actually like and what they needed.
She didn’t disdain physical labor but instead embraced it as a chance to get closer to what’s most real. She thought it unusual - as I do - that we complain about low pay, but not about soul-crushing work itself. It’s like saying, “That’s not enough money! My soul is worth at least twice that amount!” Ridiculous, right?
As I hope you’ll see from these book notes below, Simone Weil was a very special philosopher, a woman of unimpeachable intellectual honesty, and the possessor of the type of limitless compassion - and stubbornness - that could have only ended with her death. In so many ways, I just wanna be like her!
Difficulty Rating: Hard
Life-Changing Idea: Few individuals ever truly listen to anyone anymore, and there are great masses of people who go through their entire lives completely unheard. Compassionate attention is thus one of the rarest things in the world, and yet it’s exactly what so many of us desperately need.
“The Outsider cannot go back to bourgeois existence, as this would be a defeat and a lie. He or she has to go forward towards greater thought, feeling, and activity.”
If ordinary life usually seems a bit...well, ordinary...it may be because the way most human beings live their lives can be compared to an extraordinarily powerful jet airplane flying on only one engine. That's Colin Wilson's basic contention in The Outsider, where he outlines his fundamentally optimistic philosophy of New Existentialism.
It's meant to contrast with the "old" existentialism of philosophers such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, and others for whom the universe is a rather cold, dreary, abysmal place.
While they wrote about futility, "Being-towards-death," the absurd, and the inevitability of suffering, it was always Colin Wilson's contention that there is a deeper, more meaningful, and vibrant dimension to life that all human beings have access to if only they would put forth the proper effort.
I usually avoid using the words "most people," because I don't know "most people." However, it's a safe assumption that most people are nowhere even close to reaching their full potential or to living as deeply and intensely as they could be living if they tried.
Most people just "coast" on one engine, never even realizing that they are much more powerful than they've ever imagined.
Human beings, according to Wilson, possess a "visionary capacity" that, if they could only tap into it, would allow them to say "Yes" to life, in spite of everything.
He doesn't deny the existence of suffering and the harshness of life, but in this book, he examines the lives of individuals he called "Outsiders," who were able to come closest to realizing this ultimately optimistic view of life and the universe.
Wilson exploded onto the literary scene with this book, which came out in 1956 to massive acclaim. It's never been out of print since then, and it's been translated into more than thirty languages.
What's more, is that he was only 24 years old when he wrote it! After publishing The Outsider, he went on to write more than 100 books, including six others which, along with The Outsider, comprise the "Outsider Cycle," a fuller representation of the ideas first proposed here.
The Outsider can be thought of as a survey of some of the most profound responses to urgent questions about existence, meaning in life, and how to confront death.
Wilson explores the lives of key literary and cultural figures such as Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, T.E. Lawrence, Vincent van Gogh, H.G. Wells, George Gurdjieff, and a multitude of others, discussing their effects on society, and society's effects on them.
I just happened upon this book one time – I had never heard of it before – and thought it looked interesting, given that he references philosophers and writers I enjoyed reading, such as Kierkegaard, Camus, Dostoyevsky, etc.
I had no idea that it would completely change my life forever after and would radically alter how I lived out each day of my one and only life.
Difficulty Rating: Hard
Life-Changing Idea: Human beings possess an abundance of vitality and energy that habitually goes unused. We are anesthetized to the joys and wonder of everyday life, but if we were to intentionally bring forth these latent powers within ourselves, we would experience a consciousness of power and life that would truly astonish us.
“If we take this journey together, and simply observe as we go along the extraordinary width and depth and beauty of life, then out of this observation may come a love...which is a state of being free of all demand...and we may perhaps be awakened to something far more significant than the boredom and frustration, the emptiness and despair of our daily lives.”
This book was my first introduction to Krishnamurti, and he took me completely by surprise with his total rejection of authority, and his insistence on seeking the truth for oneself, not relying on any external sources of knowledge or truth.
The Revolution from Within is a collection of public talks he gave throughout the world in the 1950s, where he asks, again and again, whether or not the mind can be free of its own projections, and whether the limited human mind can ever perceive the unlimited nature of ultimate truth.
In fact, Krishnamurti speaks mostly in questions. He proceeds very slowly, and uncovers more and more questions in slowly escalating stages, the whole point of which is to provoke independent thought and objectless awareness in the minds of his listeners.
If Jiddu Krishnamurti had a dominant message, it would be that there must be a revolution in our thinking. Not an outward revolution, which is just the continuation of conditioned thought, slightly adapted according to some other philosophy (whatever it may be), but a complete and total rejection of external authority, ideology, and belief.
The whole book is just incredible, covering ideas as diverse as war and global conflict, parenting and relationships, education, spiritual belief, critical thinking, self-awareness, and personal freedom.
After I finished reading the transcript of each lecture - and even while I was reading them - I could feel myself being transformed. I knew that I’d never live the same way again, see the world the same way again, and sure enough, I never did.
Difficulty Rating: Intermediate
Life-Changing Idea: There’s literally dozens of them in this book. Seriously, Krishnamurti has impacted my thinking so profoundly, it’s just incredible. If you were to take just one thing away, however, it would be that you can never, ever, ever default to the beliefs, opinions, or teachings of some external authority. You have to turn inward and discover what you think, what you believe, and never stop questioning those beliefs for as long as you live.
“Most people have the wiring in their brains messed up. They’ve decided to doubt the wrong things, such as their potential, the availability of breakthrough opportunities, and their chances for making a quantum leap. For now, if you must doubt something, doubt your limits.”
This book has one of the highest ideas-per-page ratios of any book I’ve ever read, which is always a pleasant surprise, since a lot of nonfiction books probably could have been blog posts. They may have 1-3 main ideas in the whole book, stretched to 300 pages just to make the publisher happy.
However, there is no wasted wisdom in this one - it’s full of fantastic stuff that can help you make a tremendous amount of progress in a very short time.
The Quantum Leap Strategy is tiny, clocking in at just 40 pages or so - haters might call it a pamphlet. But anyway, I took five pages of notes from the thing, and Dr. Pritchett had me thinking completely differently about my potential, what’s attainable, and what I would have to adjust about my approach in order to achieve my 5-year goals in six months.
None of it is overcomplicated, and even some of my notes may seem stupidly simple. Almost obvious. Like, of course you should start thinking about what you actually want, not just what’s reasonable for you to expect. Of course you should think big, aim high, and take massive swings. Of course you should doubt your limits, not your potential.
But there’s something about the clarity and power with which these very simple (yet profound) ideas are expressed that made them really connect with me.
Out of the 40 pages, I took five pages of notes, like I said, but I probably came away with at least 100+ ideas for how I could grow my business, make more money, fill my life with more adventures and memorable experiences, and make more progress in 12 months than most people will make in their entire lives.
Give this one a shot. It could do the same for you.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Life-Changing Idea: Most people are paralyzed by self-doubt and indecision. There’s no shame in that (see Alan Watts above), but what if instead of doubting your abilities or your potential, you decided to doubt your limits instead?
“Yet if I wished to single out those individuals who did engrave their traces most deeply upon my soul, I would presumably designate these four: Homer, Bergson, Nietzsche, and Zorba.
The first was a serene, all-bright eye for me like the sun’s disk, illuminating everything with redemptive brightness. Bergson released me from insoluble philosophical anguishes that had tormented my early youth.
Nietzsche enriched me with new anguishes and showed me how to transform misfortune, sorrow, and uncertainty into pride. Zorba taught me to love life and not to fear death.”
Well, great, now I have to read every single other book that Kazantzakis has ever written. Seriously, Zorba the Greek is one of the most powerful, life-affirming books you’re ever likely to come across, and I don’t think that anyone who is somewhat alive and breathing can read this book and sit still.
But yes, I might have to mention that since it was written in 1941, it is certainly the product of a different time and it contains some “unpleasantness” where women are concerned. But I mean, we don’t have to agree with every sentiment or the views and opinions of every character in every situation.
Instead, we can sense the Life-Force leaping off every page, the way that Kazantzakis shakes us each by the shoulders, shouting into our ears, ‘Live! Live now! Breathe deeply! While you still can!’
Wait, so what is the book about? Right. Well, the unnamed narrator of the book goes into business with an older man, Zorba, and they both go on to operate a lignite mine on the island of Crete. Zorba criticizes the lifestyle of this “pen pusher” whose whole head is constantly stuffed inside a book, and shows him that there’s a great big world out there, just waiting to be eaten up.
The narrator is based on Kazantzakis and Zorba is a real person whom he met early in the 20th century and who irrevocably changed the direction of Kazantzakis’s one and only life. He also changed mine.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Life-Changing Idea: Real life will never be found between the covers of a book. It’s meant to be lived and experienced, savored and enjoyed. You’re too soft! You’ve been sitting inside for far too long! It’s time to stand up, stretch your limbs, and take on the great big beautiful world out there! It’s time to live!!!
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OK, that’s it for now…
I’ve got plenty more excellent book recommendations coming your way soon though!
There’s also my YouTube channel, where I publish book reviews, reading updates, and more each week.
And if you want to learn how I’ve built an audience of 160,000+ followers across social media, became a full-time creator, and how I’m rapidly growing my audience and scaling my profits in 2025, join us inside Creator Launch Academy and that’s exactly what I’ll teach you — we’d love to have you in the community!
With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your day!
Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are two more ways I can help you:
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