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15 Powerful Secrets of Self-Mastery
Matt Karamazov
October 11, 2025 ā¢ Estimated Reading Time: 19 minutes
YOUTUBE š CREATOR LAUNCH ACADEMY š PATREON
I want to share a tip about how to choose between two different books at the bookstore, and then weāll get into tonightās main book recommendation, which is a great oneā¦
First, when Iām trying to decide between two books, Iāll read the front and back flaps.
Then what Iāll do is read the first few lines of the introduction, the first paragraph of the first three chaptersā¦and then Iāll buy eight books!
Alright so Iām half-kidding. I donāt really have a āprocessā for choosing books at the bookstore, but I did pick up what I think are going to be eight awesome reads today:
From top left to bottom right, I picked up a biography of Catherine the Great, a powerful and enigmatic empress of Russia. The Art of Spending Money, by Morgan Housel, one of the books Iāve been most looking forward to reading is next, and then Mr. X, by Peter Straub, a horror novel to help celebrate spooky season.
Below that weāve got The Heroine with a 1,001 Faces, by Maria Tatar, an investigation of women in folklore and myth, a sort of āupdatingā of Joseph Campbellās The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which I loved. Not quite sure where Mariaās getting the extra face from, but Iām going to find out!
Then weāve got The Call of the Wild, an adventure novel from 1903 by Jack London, a book of Roman mythology, and two Shakespeare plays, King Lear and The Merchant of Venice. Looks my weekend is all ābooked!ā
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Lately, Iāve been using a book app called BookGenius to help me remember more of what I read. Above is my score from The Psychology of Money, Morgan Houselās first book. Check out the app for yourself here, and if you sign up through my link you can get 56% OFF the annual plan! (Sponsored) |
The main book I want to recommend to you tonight though is called Secrets of Self-Mastery, by Mitch Horowitz, one of my new favorite authors.
Iāve been binging his books like crazy this past year and a half, and his brand of practical metaphysics, New Thought, and intelligent, thoughtful, ethical ambition has improved my life tremendously ever since I read The Miracle of a Definite Chief Aim.
So now, before our coffees get cold, letās hit the books!
āāMaybe I did not live as I ought to have done, it suddenly occurred to him. āBut how could that be, when I did everything properly?ā he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible.ā
āHow can we expect people to buy our knowledge, if we donāt invest in our own knowledge?ā
Inside my private business mastermind, Creator Launch Academy, weāre tackling one nonfiction book per month and implementing its lessons inside our businesses.
This monthās book is How To: $10M, by William Brown, a great business book that contains everything you need to know about scaling a coaching and/or e-learning business to more than $10,000,000 in revenue. 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, Iāve read exactly 1,421 books, including 67 books so far this year, and if youāre interested, hereās my full Reading List.
āYou may be able to identify successful people who ignore these principles. They are easy enough to find. But, knowing a few personally, I maintain that they are privately miserable.
I have witnessed the lives of retirees who built their success by walking across the skulls of others. I cannot determine that what Iāve witnessed is universal, but I have never personally seen happy endings in that story.
Thereās no such thing as ājust business.ā Life is a whole.
Youāre either ethical or youāre not.ā
Secrets of Self-Mastery is one of my counterpoints to the critics of self-help books who say that theyāre not āpracticalā or that they donāt help you in the āreal world.ā
Mitch Horowitz is all about action and results, and in this book series (Secrets of Self-Mastery is Book Three), he extends and deepens the work of Napoleon Hill, and brings Hillās success philosophy and metaphysical principles into the everyday realities of how theyāre actually meant to be lived.
The starting point of all achievement is the burning desire for success, but most people donāt know what they truly want, which is what the first book in the series was meant to help you identify.
In that book, The Miracle of a Definite Chief Aim, Horowitz helps you identify one overarching purpose or goal that you want to orient your entire existence around achieving or pursuing.
For me, my Definite Chief Aim is to read 10,000 books, and a spin-off desire from that is to inspire literacy and the love of books and reading in as many people as I possibly can. By definition, everything else is a lesser goal, which makes it easier for me to design my life. If itās not taking me toward achieving that Definite Chief Aim, I donāt do it.
The second book in the series, The Power of the Master Mind, is all about recruiting a team of friends and allies to help you achieve your Definite Chief Aim (DCA).
No one is self-made. We rise or fall together, and no one achieves remarkable success without the assistance of innumerable people who helped them get there. From parents, teachers, business associates, friends and customers, there isnāt a person alive who achieved anything significant without help.
How the Master Mind principle differs, however, is that itās more tactical, targeted and strategic. Book Two helps you build a Master Mind of your own.
In Secrets of Self-Mastery, Horowitz focuses on what you can do, as an individual, to help bring about the kind of success that youāre looking for. Things like heightening your persuasiveness, becoming more charismatic, improving your skills and abilities, increasing your levels of luck (which is something you can influence, if not control), and to do so in a moral, ethical, upstanding way.
Success without integrity is hollow, but ethical ambition (which is also the title of a great book by Derrick Bell) can take you to the top in a way that wonāt make you hate yourself by the time you get there.
One of the more important ideas for me was that of coming to terms with what you actually want in life, not what others make you feel like you āshouldā want. If you want to get rich, thatās fine! You shouldnāt be ashamed of that.
Rather, you should be honest with yourself about why you want to get rich, what you think itāll do for you, and whether thatās what you really want, or if it masks some deeper desire instead. But if you truly and honestly just want to make a bunch of money and buy a fleet of supercars, you should accept that because itās authentic.
Maybe in the pursuit of riches you discover something that means even more to you than Maseratis, but you never would have discovered what that is if you hadnāt had that initial desire to get rich and pursued it.
Another key idea for me was the necessity of throwing your whole being into self-change, if thatās what you truly desire. āLife respects no halfway measures,ā says Mitch. You have to go all-in. You have to desire change more than you want literally anything else.
Whatever your goal, whatever your DCA, if you want to succeed as badly as you want to breathe, thereās not a whole lot out there that can stop you.
Above all, Secrets of Self-Mastery is about taking massive action to change your circumstances. Searchingly honest and offering up no āeasy answers,ā this is a book that will challenge you to accept your authentic desires, put together a solid plan for their accomplishment, and then to develop yourself into the person capable of putting that plan into action.
When you do, unseen forces will come to your aid. Doors of opportunity will open for you, but you have to be moving down the hallway.
This book will give you an encouraging push in the direction of achieving your authentic desires. Not from someone who claims to have all the answers, but from a fellow traveler on the path who authentically desires to see you reach the end.
āIf you take only one message from Hill and the larger body of work that developed around his ideas, make it the cultivation of an impassioned, concrete, and actionable aim toward which you orient your existence. Nothing will do more to heighten your abilities and ensure your progress.ā
āIn selecting an aim, you must be starkly self-honest. The driving force behind the pursuit of an aim is passion. It cannot be faked. Without emotion at your back, you will not be able to sustain the energy and fortitude needed for success. You will get bored, you will drift - and you will fail. Hence, in selecting your aim there must be no self-deception, which quickly catches up with you.ā
āWho am I to judge what is natural, productive, and valuable in anotherās life? I can easily imagine someone growing up in squalor, and simply wanting to experience beautiful objects and surroundings or a well-made automobile. That may not be all that person wants, but it may represent something personally meaningful.ā
āNever be too spiritually certain that the only things that matter are those we cannot see.ā
āLife respects no halfway measures. The only aim that gets reached - whether the answer to a personal crisis, the achievement of a desire, or the search for some kind of inner understanding - is what you want with everything in you, without contradiction or division.ā
āIf you have a wish for fame, what drives it? Whatever it is, do not be ashamed of it or embarrassed out of it. The very possession of the wish is validity enough.
Pursue it - and see.
We often hear that fame and riches will not make you happy. But those sentiments frequently come from people who have neither.
Or sometimes we hear them from people who have attained lifeās pinnacle, and found it lacking. In any case, neither observation dictates whatās intimately right for you. Find out.ā
āMovement itself is compensatory. It is a natural and metaphysical law that events conspire to force organic life beyond its boundaries if it must outgrow them to thrive. This is why the roots of a tree can burst through layers of concrete. Waters overrun their banks. You, too, are forced past limitations - a relationship, a workplace, a friendship - in ways that can at first seem painful and jarring; but, looking back, you will often discover that these breaks represented pathways of growth.ā
āFirst and foremost, I do not believe in a one-size-fits all approach to depression, anxiety, or other crises. I endorse a āD-Dayā approach to personal problems - throw everything into the struggle: meditation, prayer, exercise, therapy, and, where applicable, medication. Physical and emotional health are deeply intimate; let no one proscribe or dictate works for you. That said, I deeply believe that inspirational and motivational thought are part of the solution to emotional struggles.ā
āThere is one further ingredient that ensures the efficacy of this or any metaphysical problem-solving program: absolute passion for self-change. Without that, nothing is possible; with it, every idea becomes a key to your liberation.ā
āTo be great, you must dwell in the company of great thoughts and high ideals.ā
āImportant and often-fortuitous things happen to those who place themselves within the flow of life.ā
āThe very act of committing something to paper represents an inceptive, tactile projection of your intention in the world. It is actual. And you will feel this.ā
āIf there is a secret key to every self-help program, it is absolute, ravenous hunger for self-change. Absent that, self-help is a hobby. With the right degree of hunger, any legitimate program - from the twelve-steps to talk therapy - can make a difference. But never underestimate the depth of passion that must be present to sustain and drive your efforts. As C.S. Lewis put it: āAll depends on really wanting.āā
āOne of natureās laws is that concentration of energies brings impact. The concentration of a striking blow delivers the greatest force. Too often we deplete our energies by dispersing or spreading thin our aims and efforts.ā
āThe depth of your hunger for self-change is likely to match the benefit you experience from any legitimate self-help program. This is because the individualās passion for betterment is a force of deliverance. That is perhaps the most actionable principle of human nature. Use it.ā
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OK, thatās it for nowā¦
Iāve got plenty more excellent book recommendations coming your way soon though!
Thereās also my YouTube channel, where I publish book reviews, reading updates, and more each week.
And if you want to learn how Iāve built an audience of 160,000+ followers across social media, became a full-time creator, and how Iām rapidly growing my audience and my profits in 2025, join us inside Creator Launch Academy and thatās exactly what Iāll teach you ā weād 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 timeā¦happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are two more ways I can help you:
Creators: Book a 1-1 strategy call with me and Iāll show you how to reach $5K/month in revenue by following a custom plan that weāll build together.
Join Creator Launch Academy, my private business mastermind for educational content creators who want to stand out in their niche, build multiple revenue streams, and go full-time with their creative passions.
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