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Five Great Books: A High-Performing Mind, The Wealth Money Can't Buy, Rich Habits, and More!
Matt Karamazov
March 16, 2025 ā¢ Estimated Reading Time: 27 minutes
YOUTUBE š THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE š PATREON
Did I ever tell you about the time I got hit by a car on St. Patrickās Day?
No, I donāt think I did. Well, I would tell you, but since it has nothing to do with books, Iāll just get on with tonightās Reading Life newsletterā¦
Okay, fine, Iāll tell you.
Yes, itās true that I did get hit by a car on St. Patrickās Day a few years ago, but the driver was going about 2 miles per hour and I guess didnāt see me in the crosswalk.
Itās quite an anticlimactic story, actually (I wasnāt even drinking), and definitely not as exciting as tonightās books!
Below are my complete notes and summaries from the following booksā¦
And in my latest YouTube video I talk about the books Iām reading now, including five you might love. Iām also working on a monster video: 100 Wildly Popular Self-Help Books - Summarized in 1 Sentence Each.
Thatāll take me 15+ hours to edit (at least) but Iāll let you know when itās done! Butā¦
In This Issue of The Reading Life, Weāve Got:
š What Iām Currently Reading
š Books Iāve Finished This Month
š The Book Quote of the Day
š„ The 5 Books Iām Reading Now (That You Might Love)
ā My Latest Medium Articles
ā New Book Releases Coming Soon
š Tonightās Five Main Book Recommendations
š Earn Rewards for Referring This Newsletter
Letās not wait for our coffees to get coldā¦letās hit the books!
Napoleonās Library, by Louis N. Sarkozy: My friend Alex recommended this one and I bought it immediately. Itās about Napoleon Bonaparte and the books he read that influenced him. Not just him though, but really the entire content - even the entire world. Itās also written by the son of the former president of France, Nicholas Sarkozy - so thatās pretty cool! I just started this recently, but itās excellent so far.
The Five Types of Wealth, by Sahil Bloom: This is another book that Iāve been dying to read, and itās finally out! Unsurprisingly, Sahil discusses how to optimize the five most important types of wealth, those being Time Wealth, Social Wealth, Mental Wealth, Physical Wealth, and Financial Wealth. Spoiler Alert: Financial Wealth comes last for a reason.
Unreasonable Success and How to Achieve It, by Richard Koch: This is a great book about the nine similarities shared by āunreasonablyā successful people who changed the world, from the same author of The 80/20 Principle, a business classic that taught me how to think completely differently about what I really wanted and how to get it.
āYou are where you are and what you are because of yourself. Everything you are today ā or ever will be in the future ā is up to you. Your life today is the sum total of your choices, decisions, and actions up to this point.
You can create your own future by changing your behaviors. You can make new choices and decisions that are more consistent with the person you want to be and the things you want to accomplish with your life.ā
The 5 Books I'm Reading Right Now (That You Might Love): As you can see, I'm reading some great books right now - a mix of physical books, and several on my phone.
I've got 5 different book apps (as most obsessive readers do haha), and on my phone I'm reading the Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson, See You at the Top, by Zig Ziglar, and Success, by John C. Maxwell. Plus a whole bunch of great ones downloaded!
And no, I don't plan to cut back any time soon :)
In this video, I go through some of the physical books I'm reading right now, and recommend a few other good ones to go along with them. [Watch Time: 13:06]
If you enjoy the video, please consider subscribing to my channel and sharing it with a friend. Cheers!
Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship: The book that taught me more than the six years I spent at university.
I Wish I Had THIS Book Before I Built My $5K/Month Creator Business: Takeaways from The Great Rat Race Escape thatāll help you build the business of your dreams, 10X faster than I did.
The Miracle of a Definite Chief Aim: 15 principles from Napoleon Hill for getting everything you want out of life.
Champion Mindset, by Patrick Mouratoglou: I had never heard of this guy, but apparently he was Serena Williamsā tennis coach for more than a decade, on top of his work with other icons of the sport. This book contains his āten commandmentsā for success, applicable not just to sports but everywhere in life. I donāt even watch tennis, but I expect to learn a ton from this book. Expected: May 13th, 2025
Hard Lessons from the Hurt Business, by Ed Latimore: My friend Ed is a former heavyweight boxer too (his record is better than mine though), and his long-awaited new book is about how boxing gave him the tools to overcome childhood trauma and alcoholism. Really looking forward to this one! Expected: August 5th, 2025
Moral Ambition, by Rutger Bregman: Iāve read (and loved) Rutgerās first book, Utopia for Realists, and plan to read his follow up book, Human Kind - now I have to add this one to my list too! The subtitle is āHow to stop wasting your talent and start making a difference,ā and itās a book about using your career for good, and to make the world a better place. Expected: May 6th, 2025
Protocols, by Andrew Huberman: Andrewās a neuroscientist and tenured professor at Stanford, not to mention hosting one of the most popular health podcasts in the world. This book is a collection of simple, evidence-based solutions to a whole host of challenges, and a distillation of his very best advice from the podcast. Expected: September 9th, 2025
Time Anxiety, by Chris Guillebeau: One of Chrisās first books, The Happiness of Pursuit, was the inspiration for my goal of reading 1,000 books before I turned 30 (which I achieved)! This newest one is about the chronic sense of rushing and urgency that afflicts so many people today and how to get comfortable with the impossibility of ācatching up with everything.ā Expected: April 15th, 2025
āIf you have an āall inā state of mind, dedicated to following your passion and achieving your goals, then you have a warriorās mentality.
The only things that will ever stop you are success (because youāve achieved your goal) or failure.
If itās the former, youāll pick up where you left off and establish a new goal, and if itās the latter, your temporary failure is only going to stop you until you adjust your approach and get back to it.ā
The most powerful tool for achieving success isnāt an app, or a training protocol, a āframework,ā or some secret āhack.ā Itās your mind. Itās always been your mind, and this book will help you get the most out of itā¦every single day.
Andrew Thompson has spent decades coaching some of the most elite athletes and high-performers in the world, and A High-Performing Mind breaks down 12 of the key traits and characteristics shared by all of them.
Many of the lessons are taught through short stories emerging from his own life and work, including his personal (and eventually victorious) struggle against a debilitating medical condition that nearly killed him.
Andrew successfully passed through the worst of the worst (and guided many others through the most challenging moments of their lives too), and emerged with a vital understanding of how to pull out your very best at all times.
His book will show you how to sharpen and fortify your mind, and I actually feel quite fortunate having discovered this fairly underrated book! Itās not widely known, and having read it I felt that it gave me a sort of secret advantage. Reading it will give you a secret advantage too.
Add this one to your mental armory and you can keep coming back to it throughout your life to help you face a variety of difficult challenges and capitalize on your most incredible opportunities. What youāll find is that it helps you navigate every single one of them.
āThe common proverb āyour network determines your net worthā needs to be adjusted to add that your community and associations also increase your self-worth. The more good and amazing people you have in your personal circle, the better youāll feel about yourself - and all you can do, have, and become in your lifetime.ā
I still remember being introduced to Robin Sharmaās books while working my old minimum-wage security job, sitting in my car, āguardingā some event-ground or whatever overnight (but letās be honest, I was reading, and it could have burned down for all Iād have noticed), having my eyes blown open to my own possibilities by books like The Greatness Guide, among others.
Heās definitely a part of the reason why my reading habit remains so strong to this day, and Iāve never, ever been disappointed by one of his books.
This book is no exception, though it is, of course, exceptional! Not all of the sentences land perfectly (some of the corniness certainly brushes my ear the wrong way), but if you ever have a 12-hour shift that you have to get through somehow, then definitely pick up The Wealth Money Canāt Buy. You wonāt be working for minimum wage for long.
The book is about expanding your definition of wealth to include 8 different forms of wealth: wellness, family, craft, money, community, adventure, service, and growth.
In exactly the same way that Bob Marley said some people are so poor that all they have is money, Robin Sharma says that even the most financially prosperous people are surprisingly poor when it comes to the things that truly matter for a life of happiness, vitality, and serenity.
It seems that society conveniently forgot to tell us that all these additional forms of wealth even existed, before they shuttled us off, crammed together or alone in little tiny boxes, headed to make some other person extraordinarily financially wealthy, while neglecting to grow our own various forms of wealth.
Robin Sharma will help you correct the balance, and you can tell thatās true because financially, he doesnāt need to write books.
Naval Ravikant once said that if they wrote a book to make money, donāt read it, and itās highly unlikely that Sharma actually needs it. He has to write - he has to be of service - and thatās the only reason why this book exists.
āThink of your Rich Habits as snowflakes on a mountainside. Over time your Rich Habits, like snowflakes, will accumulate. You will not notice the accumulation from day to day, but at some point they will create an avalanche.ā
This is the updated and expanded second edition of Rich Habits, a classic book that distills what Corley learned after spending 5 years studying 233 wealthy people and 128 poor people. His purpose was to identify what the rich do differently, and the result was this book.
Except in this case, unlike Robert Kiyosaki and his Rich Dad series, the people he learned from actually existed. Nothing against Kiyosaki, by the way! Rich Dad, Poor Dad is great (buy assets, not liabilities!), but Rich Habits is grounded in real observational data about how the wealthy and successful achieved their success, not stories about imaginary mentors.
The framing parable used to set up the bookās insights kind of gets in the way a little bit, but itās not too bad. If youāre pressed for time, you can safely skip the intro chapters and get right into the habits, but itās not the worst read! After dozens of pages though, itās just like, āJeez man, just tell me the habits already!ā
None of these Rich Habits are particularly difficult to install, but as easy they are to do, theyāre also easy not to do. Drift through life practicing the Contradictory Habits, and youāll eventually find yourself broke, stressed, and wondering where it all went wrong.
Thatās also not to say that success and prosperity beyond your wildest dreams are guaranteed by practicing these Rich Habits. Rather, itās more like, by practicing them consistently you stack the probabilities in your favor, increasing the likelihood that you get what you want out of life.
As Corley puts it, youāre inviting āOpportunity Luckā by doing this: stacking up wins, building up positive momentum each and every day until, at some point (again, in the not-too-distant future) you look up and realize that you could have told your own fortune.
āYour brain is listening to you as you say what you want right now, in this moment, to happen. āIām reaching my financial goals.ā āIām becoming the person that I want to be.ā You must see yourself in that position.
No Olympic athlete says, āIām going to be a good Olympian three years from now, but right now, Iām not very good.ā
No, the Olympian says, āIām better than I was last time. And Iām incrementally better. My new high jump is seven feet nine and one-fourth, which is close to the Olympic record.ā
In other words, itās who you are right now, not who youāre going to be.ā
Personal and professional excellence is Waitleyās project in this book, and after a fifty-year career in the personal development industry, heās uniquely positioned to explain how winning isnāt necessarily about luck or talent, but about developing the mindset of a champion, starting from the inside-out, modifying your self-image, beliefs, and daily behaviors, and adapting to feedback in order to get closer to your goals over time.
To Waitley, winning is less of an event than a process, and you also donāt necessarily have to have won anything to be a winner in his eyes.
As long as youāre focusing on possibilities rather than limitations, taking positive action to reinforce a strong self-image, and visualizing success daily, youāre on your way to becoming a champion, long before anyone hangs that gold medal around your neck.
I didnāt know too much about Denis Waitley going into this book, but I came away extremely impressed with his 100% personal responsibility (no excuses, no matter what) philosophy, offered in a supportive, yet demanding manner that leaves you with no doubt that you are the CEO of your own life, and gives you everything you need to make the most of it - wherever you may find yourself, and whatever you feel called to take on.
āI went to get a life insurance policy the other day, and the agent told me that, from an actuarial perspective, I probably have 20 years of life left - 7,300 days. I assume the last 1,000 or 2,000 days might not be my healthiest, so I probably have only about 5,000 good days left. I donāt want to spend even one hour with people who are unkind.ā
This is another book I didnāt know much about going into (and I knew even less about the author), but it was not what I was expecting! In a good way, I mean. And hey, nothing puts me to sleep faster than chapters about mergers and acquisitions, and yet somehow I ripped through this book, taking pages and pages of notes, as you can see below.
Brad Jacobs has a sharp, powerful mind, which I guess partly explains why and how he was able to spend four decades building eight different massive companies in different industries, helping to create billions of dollars of shareholder value along the way.
Again, even writing āshareholder valueā makes me nod off a little bit, but the possibilities I imagined after reading Bradās book kept me wide awake.
It definitely helps to have more than a passing interest in business if youāre going to read this book, and for people who donāt, Bradās life doesnāt seem all that desirable, despite the millions and billions.
Thereās not much of what youād call ābalanceā here, which is kind of what youād expect when you think of the ungodly amounts of effort and focus - the sheer hours - that go into building companies of that size. And so many of them! Thereās no way you could ever do that if you didnāt love it, and he clearly does.
How to Make a Few Billion Dollars offers a mix of mindset, strategy, and soft skills that were essential to his success, and includes some excellent advice about how to spot trends and capitalize on them - ideas that I was able to profitably adapt to my own situation as a creator and business owner.
Humility, compassion, and accountability are all espoused ideals of his as well, and I can only hope he lives up to them in real life! If he does, heād be someone I wouldnāt mind working with.
Now, he doesnāt exactly make me want to start doing M&As, mind you, but he certainly makes an excellent case for thinking big, talking big, and acting big, on your way to giant, larger-than-life success and achievement.
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OK, thatās it for nowā¦
Iāve got plenty more excellent book recommendations coming your way soon though!
And if you want to learn how Iāve built an audience of 150,000+ 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 three more ways I can help you:
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