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Side note: The Secret is actually a great book who’s message on positive thinking has all but dispelled my negative talk about my work and habits and simply just made life feel much easier. It’s totally whacky but I just kind of love it !

I would be the devil's advocate and disagree with you. There are more dangerous self help books like The Secret who took the Bible quote about praying and it will come true out of context, and many other THE 4-HOUR WORKWEEK, LAW OF ATTRACTION....

Any list with The Secret on it can't be a serious good list of books.

> I note that where we used to rely on media corporations to filter out bad information that's now sacrificed for entertainment value. e.g. Netflix allow Gwyneth Paltrow to show here "wellness" show because it's entertaining event though it's clearly bollocks.

But that isn't new, is it? More than a decade ago, that nonsense book The Secret was promoted by Oprah, and I'm sure there are countless more examples from even earlier.

     > To be honest I always thought that these kind of books
     > (i.e personal growth / motivational) were BS 

I feel I've had a huge amount in my life out of self-help books, on a real variety of subjects. There's a lot of obvious bullshit out there (like The Secret), but also plenty of gold. Scanning through my notes, and in no particular order, I have extensive notes from (and thus enjoyed):

* 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

* Beyond Chocolate

* Driven From Within (Michael Jordan biography)

* Get Altitude

* How To Make Friends and Influence People

* Iron John (Robert Bly)

* Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)

* Never Eat Lunch Alone

* Psychocybernetics

* Pulling Your Own Strings

* Ready For Anything (same author as GTD)

* The Dip

* Ten Days to Self Discipline

* The Power of Now

* Personal Power (Tony Robbins)

* Warrior King Magician Lover

Some were easier reads than others, and I suspect I am unusual in that I have a pretty rigorous system for making sure I regularly review my notes, and implement exercises and ideas in the books, but I feel I'd be a very different person for the worse without the value these books have added to my life.

Yeah, not to judge a book by it's cover, but everything about "The Secret" screams new-agey superstitious bullshit (redundant?). Positive psychology does seem to have some common sense things going for it (ie, if you think something is impossible, it probably is, for you), but there are better books out there (cf "The Happiness Advantage" by Shawn Achor; he also did a TED talk that sums up some of the themes nicely: http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_bet...)

Mac: Yeah. The Secret is a self-help book that Dee read and explained to us. It’s about how you can get whatever you want without having to work for it.

Dennis: Yeah, man, all you have to do is envision all the shit in the world that you want, cut pictures of it out and paste it on a board. Then you get it, you get the stuff!

- "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie

- "The art of thinking clearly" by Ralf Dobelli

- "Sources of power" by Gary Klein

- "The 8 pillars of motivation" by Farnoosh Brock

- "ReWork" by Jason Fried and David Hansson

- "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug

- "The art of explanation" by Lee LeFever

- "Getting real" by 37Signals

- "The secret" by Rhonda Byrne

The author sadly throws Seligman under the bus by comparing him to the quack author of "The Secret". Seligman's work is more than just "Pessimism should be avoided", and he didn't say avoid negative feelings, but that there are 2 ways of seeing setbacks; the pessimist usually thinks it's permanent ("it will be bad forever"), pervasive ("everything is fucked") and personal ("it's because of me"). Meanwhile the optimist would see a problem as temporary, specific ("We just need to fix this thing") and not due to the self, but more to do with circumstances (e.g. "I didn't sleep well so I didn't perform that well").

So it's not about how to avoid acknowledging problems, it's about how you shape your mind to see and deal with problems...

So I am not familiar with all of his books and it was some time I've read the last one (Outliers) but he doesn't give (at least not much) direct possibly harmful advice to people. He just describes some phenomena and some bold theories to explain those. It's not like you will hurt yourself committing to 10k hours of deliberate practice in your field or something.

On the other hand Oprah with her promotion of The Secret which is potentially very harmful if you start applying things it advocates or Kiyosaki with his books/mlm promotion are better candidates to put into scam category.

I'm in the same boat. I have always loved and tried to make startups work. I read all the books and all that jazz. I took a giant leap of faith and failed. Slowly but surely I have started to get my life in order again. I have tried sucide before and failed. After that I have refused to try again. I see that as the easy way.

Now I'm starting to get my hopes back up and there are people around me that believe in me. I would highly recommend reading "think and grow rich". Ever heard of the book "the secret"? They ripped off that book.

I often find myself too making new friends only to not keep them after a year or so. Sometimes less. That's part of life.

Find something you like to do and obsess over it. That's what I'm doing now.

Also you will always need balance in your life and the focus and motivation will come.

Again, if you haven't read think and grow, read it and follow the instructions outlined within that book. If you have read it, read the damn thing again.

The key point which is quite valid is that daydreaming about success is not very useful. Contrary to "The Secret" and such self-help books.

People seem to succeed if they a) Have a lot of confidence they will succeed AND b) They are fully aware that there will be setbacks, struggle, difficulties, and moments of doubt.

Good book on the topic with academic references "Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals" by Heidi Grant Halvorson and Carol S. Dweck.