Top 5 books that really improved your life

[Mathemagician]

Bro I walked up to a gallerist at an art event and dude immediately exhaled and said “Oh I’m so glad you walked up, it’s my job to work the room and it can be daunting”.

I was like “yeah no problem how has set-up been?” Like I didn’t myself just have a minor stroke. Lmao.

 

[Ordacleaphobia]

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch really did a lot for me.
I picked it up as a teenager because the cover and title were interesting, and after reading the premise, I figured the least I could do was to give this man a few hours of my time.

In short, Randy had just been diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer. He's not gunna make it and only has a small amount of time left. He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon where they had a tradition where professors would give a 'last lecture,' to contemplate the idea of their own demise and identify what's important to them. So Randy's last lecture...really was his last lecture, and he wanted it to be as beneficial and positive of an experience as possible, given the circumstances. The result is that the book is more about how to get the most out of your time on earth, rather than how to cope with death.

The difference from most of these other types of books is that it's really just a distilled understanding of the core of this man's character, and how he got there. Extrapolating some of what he's gone through and applying it to yourself reveals a lot that you may not have thought about before, and in my case, really helped with establishing a sense of direction and what I wanted out of life. It really made me sad to see that he passed right after the book was published [and before I had the chance to read it]. Almost felt like I knew him and his family.

I promise it's not as cookie cutter or cheesy as it sounds.