How to Find a Self-Development Book That Suits Your Needs

By Conqueror Team

With so many self-development books, it can be hard to know which is right for you. After all, each book provides a different approach, and they all have advantages and disadvantages. So how do you decide which book is best for you? Here are some tips on choosing the right self-development book.

Research Different Types of Self-Development Books


The first step in choosing the right self-development book is to research different types of books. Do you want a book focused on personal growth and wellness? Or are you looking for a more focused approach, such as business communication or time management? Once you’ve narrowed down your search to a specific type of self-development book, it will be easier to find one that suits your needs.

Read Reviews and Recommendations


Once you’ve identified the type of self-development book that interests you, it’s time to start reading reviews and recommendations from other readers. Read reviews from trusted sources such as Amazon or Goodreads, or ask friends who have read similar books for their opinion. Reviews can provide valuable insight into the book’s value, its readability level, and any potential issues with content or layout.

Check Out Sample Pages

Many self-development books offer sample pages online so that readers can get an idea of what the book contains before they buy it. This is a great way to get an overview of the topics covered in the book and determine whether it’s something that appeals to you or not. It also allows you to judge the quality of writing and see if it’s something that resonates with you before investing money in it.

Choosing a good self-development book doesn’t have to be difficult — just remember these tips! Research different types of books, read reviews and recommendations from other readers and check out sample pages before deciding which one is right for you. Taking these steps will help ensure that your investment pays off by giving you access to valuable information about personal growth and development.

Get your FREE copy of Code of the Conqueror – The Journey (bookfunnel.com)

21 Best Books To Change Your Life [They Changed Mine]

By On My Canvas

Has anyone ever asked you to read books to change your life? I would go as far as to say reading is one of the synonyms of personal growth.

I started reading books, both fiction and non-fiction, sincerely only for the last five years. But during this time, I read some books that shifted the course of my life. They exposed me to unbelievable facts. They laid open the science I didn’t know exist. They told me stories I could never imagine. They made me cry like I hadn’t before. They made me laugh as if I had nothing to worry about. They accompanied me when I was lonely. They told me life can be lived in many ways. They reassured me it was okay to be who I was. But that I could learn, too.

By a life changing book, I don’t necessarily mean a bestseller.

By life changing books I mean those in which the most obvious things have been said in the simplest form; or those that tell the history of life not as how people want us to know but how it happened; or those that show life writhing out of the mouth of suffering with full force; or those that remind us of adventures we had as little children that give sense to our today, too; or those that seem long and convoluted but essentially they talk about things we have always ignored; or those that make us reconsider if the thing is worth beating ourselves about; or those that make us look at life with a child’s eyes again; or those that make us ask questions we were too scared to even think about; or those that unravel the science behind all this and help us be a little less clueless; or those that give us hope that change is nothing but little things done every day; or those that show us compassion and tell us we are okay as who we are.

1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

[Highly recommended on the list of books that change your life.]

“The real question is not what do we want to become, but what do we want to want?”

In Sapiens, Yuval has not only told the story of the evolution of the planet and homo sapiens but he has also exposed our conduct on earth.

Sapiens will tell you all about the great grandmother we shared with chimpanzees, how our brain and body developed, the power of stories in uniting sapiens, how we made all other animals extinct, why we eat wheat, the reality of the agricultural and industrial revolution, systems behind capitalism and marital rape laws, why our religious and cultural values are hypocritical, humanity’s biggest frauds, the impact of money, the first usage of chloroform, steam engines, Buddhism, and the latest but the scariest technological advancements including the advent of cyborgs.

Sapiens is the story of everything. Read this one to know what has been happening since fourteen billion years aka day zero. (It is also a great book for new writers to understand the importance of story-telling.)

If a preserved mummy wakes up and says, “Who am I? Where am I?” Give him a copy of Sapiens and he will know everything that has happened and would be able to predict an event or two in the future, too. But he might just say, “Could you please put me back to sleep? The world of my unconscious was better than this one.”

Reading Sapiens is like going through our family’s black and white photo albums, at least if we think of the whole world as one.

“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”

2. Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

When I picked up Man’s Search for Meaning — a remarkable journey of an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor — the author Victor himself, life took another meaning.

I had been asking some hard and deep questions about life. Why are we here, what is space, why do we live on, why do we do the same things every day?

When I read this book I was assured humans don’t have a grand reason to live or go on despite the suffering. The author was a bit too familiar with agony; he had been in the Auschwitz concentration camp for many years. His wife died in the women’s camp. Victor’s father, mother, and brother were also captured and killed. He lost everything. But he didn’t lose hope.

“We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly.”

Every sentence in the book builds towards the idea that a human’s purpose is to act upon what is in front of her. Do what the time calls for. Even the tiniest of goals can keep us going even in the darkest hour.

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” 

This is a mind-opening book that would remind you of the magic in being here and breathing and living in the first place. Now we go on fulfilling what is asked of us. (This is mostly the definition of a fulfilling, happy, and healthy life.)

Click Here To Read More https://www.onmycanvas.com/books-to-change-your-life/

7 Simple Strategies To Improve Reading Comprehension

By Indeed Editorial Team

Comprehension is an important aspect of reading. When you read, strive to understand and extract meaning for better overall awareness of what you are reading. By learning and implementing reading strategies and changing how you read, you can improve your reading comprehension abilities and make reading easier and more enjoyable.

In this article, we will explore what reading comprehension is and the best strategies you can use to advance your reading skills.

What is reading comprehension?

Reading comprehension is the ability to comprehend or understand, what you are reading. This is an intentional and active part of reading and takes place before, during and after you read something. By being able to comprehend what you are reading, you can extract meaning from the text and better realize what the author is trying to convey.

There are two components of reading comprehension: text comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary knowledge is the ability to understand the language being used, while text comprehension is using this language to develop an awareness of what the meaning is behind the text.

Why are reading comprehension skills important?

Reading comprehension is important for several reasons and can provide many benefits. Being able to effectively read can improve both your personal and professional life and can increase your overall enjoyment of reading. Knowing how to understand a text can help boost your knowledge in certain areas and help you learn new skills and information faster.

Additional benefits of good reading comprehension skills include:

  • Being able to understand, analyze and respond to documents and written communication in the workplace
  • Improved your ability to write clearly and effectively
  • The ability to comprehend and engage in current events that are in written form such as newspapers
  • Increased ability to focus on reading for an extended period
  • Better enjoyment of and motivation to read

Related: The Value of Increasing Your Business Vocabulary

7 strategies to improve your reading comprehension skills

There are several reading strategies that you can begin implementing today to improve your reading comprehension skills. The more you practice, the better you will become at understanding what you are reading. The following are seven simple strategies you can use to work on your comprehension skills:

1. Improve your vocabulary

Knowing what the words you are reading mean can improve your ability to comprehend the meaning of the text. To improve your vocabulary, you can:

  • Take an online vocabulary quiz to assess your current level of vocabulary understanding
  • Use flashcards to quiz yourself on words you don’t know once or twice a week
  • Make a point to use newly learned words in verbal and written communication
  • Read as much as possible to improve your ability to guess what a word means in a certain context
  • Make a list of unfamiliar words as you read and look them up in the dictionary

Read more: 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Vocabulary Skills

2. Come up with questions about the text you are reading

Asking questions about what you are reading can help improve your reading comprehension by allowing you to become invested in the text. It can also broaden your overall understanding of what you are reading by enabling you to explore themes, motifs and other components of text that you otherwise wouldn’t inquire about. The following are examples of questions you could pose as you read:

  • Why did the author begin the book at that location?
  • What kind of relationship do these two characters share?
  • What do we know about the main character up to this point in the book?
  • Are there any themes that have consistently come up throughout the book? If so, what do they mean?

The more specific your questions, the more likely you will gain further insight into the text and its meaning.

3. Use context clues

Using context clues is a great way to understand what you are reading even if you don’t know all the vocabulary being used. Context clues can be found in the words and sentences surrounding the word that you aren’t familiar with. To use context clues, you can focus on the key phrases or ideas in a sentence and deduce the main idea of a sentence or paragraph based on this information. You can also look for nearby words that are synonyms or antonyms of the word you don’t know.

Click Here To Read More https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/reading-comprehension-improvement-strategies

How to Read Faster: 11 Ways to Increase Your Reading Speed

By Leon Ho

Do you have a lot of paperwork to get through with a deadline that continues to stalk you around every corner? Do you have a lot of reading to do? Do you simply just want to read at a faster rate, whether it be for your own personal reasons, or for work?

If you’re wondering how to read faster so you can get more done quickly, these tips are for you.

11 Ways to Help You Read Faster

Here are 11 proven ways to help increase your reading speed.

1. Stop the Inner Monologue

One’s inner monologue, also known as subvocalization, is an extremely common trait among readers. It is the process of speaking the words in your head as you read, and it is the biggest obstacle that gets in the way of you being able to increase your reading speed.

If you’re hearing voices in your head when you’re reading, don’t fret. As long as it is your own voice, reading along with you, you’re fine. In fact, this is how teachers teach kids to read – say the words silently in your head as you read.

Do you recall the instructions, “Read in your head, as I read the passage aloud”, that were said fairly often in the classrooms? That is one of the ways in which this habit of having an inner monologue was ingrained into you as a young reader.

When you were initially taught to read, you were taught to sound out everything and read aloud. Once you were proficient enough at that, your teacher had you start saying the words in your head. This is how the habit originated, and most people continue reading this way. It does not adversely affect them in any way, until they start wanting to read at a faster pace. If you are seeking to increase your reading speed, this is the first thing you must learn to overcome.

Why does this slow you down? The average reading speed is pretty much the same as the average talking speed. According to Forbes, the average adult reading speed is 300 words per minute.[1]
The average talking speed is the same.

Since most people are in the habit of saying the words aloud in their head as they read, they tend to read around the same pace as they talk. This means, your reading speed will only increase so much if you continue to keep up that inner monologue. If you want to continue to increase your reading speed, you need to eliminate it.

To do this, you need to understand one thing: It’s unnecessary. You do not need to say every word in your head in order to understand the material you are reading. It was when you are younger, but now you are able to input the meaning from just seeing the words. Your brain still processes the information.

For example, when you see a “YIELD” sign, do you actually stop to speak the word in your head? Of course not. You just look at it and process it automatically. This is what you need to be doing when you read your print material, such as books or paperwork.

If you have a hard time attempting this, try reading with instrumental music playing in headphones or chew on some gum. A distraction will keep your brain less focused on subvocalization, though you will still look at the words and process them.

2. Word–Chunking

Word-chunking closely parallels with the idea of eliminating the inner monologue. This is the act of reading multiple words at once, and is the key to reading faster. All of these reading tips tie together, yet word-chunking is probably the most active tool to use when you work to increase your reading speed.

A person can take in several words at a time, even though we are trained – as mentioned with the inner monologue – to read each word at a time and not miss a single article. Using your peripheral vision is one way to make this step easier, but we will get to that in the next section.

Click Here To Read More https://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/10-ways-increase-your-reading-speed.html

How To Boost Your Memory Power Part One

8 Books to Read When You’re Stuck in a Rut at Work

By Charlotte Cowles


The term 
bibliotherapy was first coined in 1916 by Samuel Crothers, a Unitarian minister who believed in prescribing books to help people deal with their troubles. More recently, bibliotherapy has been incorporated into medical treatment programs for depression and other psychological disorders, with positive results. Meanwhile, researchers have found that reading fiction improves general brain function and connectivity, boosting emotional intelligence and even muscle memory — handy skills for any job. The right book at the right time, be it a novel, an autobiography, or self-help literature, can be a real kick in the pants, workwise and elsewhere. Here are eight suggestions for your office ailments.

When you’re out of ideas:

This memoir-slash-life instruction manual is intimidating at first. One of the world’s most celebrated dance choreographers, Tharp is intensely disciplined and adheres to near-militaristic rituals: She rises before dawn every day to work out with her trainer, eats three hard-boiled egg whites for breakfast, and files reference materials for her projects (index cards, music albums, photographs) in meticulously organized cardboard boxes. Extreme? Sure, but it’s also a hyperspecific portrait of the granular, painstaking, day-to-day effort it takes to succeed at grand creative endeavors. Tharp also breaks down her own processes into small, simple exercises that anyone can do (questionnaires, memory prompts) and extols the benefits of what she calls “scratching” — groping around at little concepts until they cohere into something useful. You don’t need artistic aspirations to get a lot out of this book; it’s more of a general road map to developing bigger, better ideas, and staying focused on them.

When you’re feeling unappreciated:

Obviously, this book is funny, and therefore good for anyone in the dumps. I read it when I was trying to decide whether I should quit a miserable job that looked impressive on paper for a much less glamorous job that seemed fresh and different, and this passage pushed me over the edge: “Treat your career like a bad boyfriend,” Poehler writes. “Your career will openly flirt with other people while you are around. It will forget you birthday and wreck your car. Your career will blow you off if you call it too much. It’s never going to leave its wife. Your career is fucking other people and everyone knows but you … If your career is a bad boyfriend, it is healthy to remember you can always leave and go sleep with somebody else.” Poehler’s advice isn’t to take yourself (or your career) less seriously — it’s a reminder to not let your pride get in the way of your options, and that you are never truly trapped.

When you’re apologizing nonstop and can’t seem to do anything right:

A best seller and cultural sensation when it was originally published more than 25 years ago, this book is a bit dated now (even the word self-esteem feels very ‘90s), but the message still resonates: A strong core of self-respect produces more fulfilled, productive people, and there’s a lot of data to prove it (the book is heavily footnoted). “Self esteem isn’t everything,” Steinem writes, “it’s just that there’s nothing without it.” She is not peddling blind, everyone-gets-a-trophy confidence; instead, the book is about fostering your own independence and individualism, pushing your own boundaries, and then squaring them with the obligations and pressures of our society (which, of course, has changed since the H.W. Bush era —but not by that much). Do some of the book’s exercises veer into finger-painting, drum-circle cheesiness? Yes. But they’re also fun and approachable (orgasms: recommended), and you’ve got to start somewhere.

Click Here To Read More https://www.thecut.com/2018/04/8-books-to-read-when-youre-stuck-in-a-rut-at-work.html

https://azuni.blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Azunivoice-get-a-free-voice-over-1.mp3
Get A Free Voice Over Like This

10 BENEFITS OF READING BOOKS: WHY YOU SHOULD READ EVERY DAY

ARTICLE by Thomas J Law

There are so many benefits to reading books.

But let’s face it: It can be challenging to motivate ourselves to read a 382-page book when we can watch the movie, listen to the audiobook, or watch a YouTube video summary instead.

Am I right?

However, if most of your daily reading consists of social media posts, text messages, and news headlines, you’re missing out.

So, what are the benefits of reading books? 

If you’re interested in reading more books but need some motivation, this article’s for you. After all, when you understand the importance of reading books, you’re more likely to do it.

Now, let’s dive a little deeper to better understand the advantages of reading.

1. Gain Valuable Knowledge

One of the most obvious benefits of reading every day is learning. 

And unlike a YouTube video or podcast, books provide access to in-depth knowledge. In other words, if you want to become more productive, which do you think you’ll learn more from:

  • A book by someone who’s studied productivity for 20 years,
  • Or a 10-minute YouTube video by someone interested in the topic? 

Which do you think you’ll absorb more from? Which do you think is more likely to help change your habits? Books, of course!

Going beyond the surface of a subject is essential to success, too. This is probably why the author Roald Dahl once said, “If you are going to get anywhere in life, you have to read a lot of books.”

Plus, you can learn literally anything from books. For example, whenever anybody asks Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, how he learned to build rockets, he says, “I read books.”

So, what do you want to learn?

Perhaps you want to learn how to code, paint, or start a successful business? Maybe you want to learn how to stop procrastinating? Or perhaps you want to figure out how to change your life completely?

Whatever it is, reading can help.

2. Exercise Your Brain

Why is reading important? As the 17th century English writer Joseph Addison once wrote, “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

So, what does reading do to your brain?

Research has confirmed that reading stimulates a complex network of circuits and signals in the brain. Plus, as you improve your reading ability, these networks become stronger and more sophisticated.

In another study, researchers measured how reading a novel affects our brains. The study’s participants read the novel “Pompeii” by Robert Harris, and as tension in the story developed, more areas of the brain were activated.

Want to know the best part?

The scans showed that brain connectivity increased while reading and for days afterward, demonstrating the enormous benefits of reading books every day.

Bottom line, our brains have a “use it or lose it” policy, just like our muscles. In other words, if we don’t exercise our minds regularly, our cognitive abilities may decline. However, when we read every day, we can keep them strong and healthy.

3. Improve Your Focus

Being able to concentrate and focus for long periods is essential to our success and wellbeing. Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work, writes:

Read more https://au.oberlo.com/blog/benefits-of-reading-books#:~:text=Reading%20is%20good%20for%20you,in%20your%20work%20and%20relationships.

Bedtime Routines for Adults

Written by Danielle Pacheco

One-third of Americans don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis, according to the CDC. If you’re one of them, creating a bedtime routine is one of the easiest steps you can take to enjoy better sleep. Bedtime routines are a simple lifestyle change that can help your mind and body relax before bed.

What Is a Bedtime Routine?

A bedtime routine is a set of activities you perform in the same order, every night, in the 30 to 60 minutes before you go to bed. Bedtime routines can vary, but often include calming activities like taking a warm bath, reading, journaling, or meditation.

Why Are Bedtime Routines Important?

Humans are creatures of habit. Like any other routine, bedtime routines establish habits that help our brains recognize when it’s time to sleep. By performing the same activities in the same order every night, your brain comes to see those activities as a precursor to sleep.

Bedtime routines also play an important role in reducing late-night stress and anxiety — the kind of worrisome thoughts that keep you up at night. Anxious thoughts and rumination Trusted SourceNational Library of Medicine, Biotech InformationThe National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov activate your mind and sympathetic nervous system. Left unchecked, these thoughts can intensify and develop into insomnia. By following a bedtime routine, you can keep your mind focused on other tasks and encourage yourself to relax instead.

The importance of bedtime routines stems back as far as childhood. All on its own, a consistent bedtime routine has shown to relieve cranky infants and their parents, helping children fall asleep fasterand wake up less frequently during the night.

Read more https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene/bedtime-routine-for-adults

8 Mental and Physical Benefits of Audio books


Jenna Homen works on all things related to social media and the Libro.fm community. When not reading and listening to books, she is probably painting or hiking.

Social distancing and self-isolation in the face of coronavirus can take a toll on our mental health. Fortunately, audiobooks are a helpful tool to combat negative thoughts and feelings. 

Here are 8 ways audiobooks can boost your emotional and physical health—all you need to do is press play. Need some listening inspiration? Check out bookseller-recommended audiobooks.


Audiobooks Build Crucial Listening Skills for Children 

According to the Audio Publishers Association, audiobooks help “build and enhance vital literacy skills such as fluency, vocabulary, language acquisition, pronunciation, phonemic awareness, and comprehension—skills that often boost reading scores.” Need some audiobook recommendations for kids? Head to the Kids page.

Photo by @childrenslitlove

Audiobooks Help Reduce Negative Thinking

Audiobooks have the power to boost our moods and disrupt negative thinking patterns. Psychology Today notes that for “those of us prone to anxiety and depression . . . listening to someone else read aloud can help by replacing negative thoughts with something else.”


Audiobooks Have the Same Benefits of Reading

Don’t let anyone tell you that listening to audiobooks is cheating. Discover noted that “in a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers from the Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley scanned the brains of nine participants while they read and listened. . . Looking at the brain scans and data analysis, the researchers saw that the stories stimulated the same cognitive and emotional areas, regardless of their medium.”


Audiobooks Help Relax Our Eyes…

Most Americans spend over seven hours a day looking at digital screens, which can lead to blurred vision, eye strain, and long-term vision problems like nearsightedness. On top of that, studies have suggested that there’s a link between social media use and feelings of loneliness and depression—another reason to put an audiobook on and the phone down.


…Which Directly Impacts Our Sleep

The blue light from screens is a disruption to our circadian rhythm, which makes nodding off at night difficult. Listening to an audiobook allows your eyes and mind to relax while ushering in a good night of sleep.

Photo by @jennareadsbooks

Audiobooks Improve Time Management

Being able to work our brain and read books while doing tasks like driving, cleaning, or exercising is a win-win—and allows less satisfying chores to become more enjoyable, reducing stress.


Audiobooks Help Build Literacy Skills

The Audio Publishers Association notes that “readers with learning disabilities and English Language Learners who listen to audiobooks demonstrate increased literacy skills and reading ability.”


Audiobooks Immerse You in Another World

Psychology Today cites audio as “one of the most intimate forms of media—listeners work together with the narrator and author to create mental pictures of situations and characters. Audiobooks can captivate the imagination, allowing listeners to create a whole world at once within and outside themselves.” Being able to escape our daily worries is a powerful tool that we can easily tap into through the wonder of audiobooks. (P. S. Need tips on making a cozy space for reading and listening? Check out this post on how to create the perfect book nook.)

source: https://blog.libro.fm

HE THAT LINGERS

Everything is dull whenever the record stops.
There is a recluse she cherishes that fades away into nothingness,
She claims there is someone in the music.
A man of undecided wrath and sensual flares.
He wears a sumptuous crown ; a velvet curtain upon his eyes.
When the record starts to play he rises.
The melody is his breath; haunting his touch.
He holds her by her tender ways,
And serenades her with gracious promptness.
His eyes, she says, are afire with depth
And she longs to burn in them; she wants to wade in the ashes that results,
And feel the turbulent barrage of his abundant chivalry .

When the music plays, the majestic spectre sets in,
And pick her up.
From the brushes of her submissiveness is rekindled an immortal fairness.
She dances on a platform made of his glare and slips upon his eager and ready lips.
He strums her; spectacular chords.
He reels around her: sweet fainting keys.
And his heart beats are a raging drum roll.

A poem by Tonny Wandella