Best Inspirational Books: For When You Need to Get Inspired

There have been many moments in my life when I reached a crossroads, and I felt like the entire world was caving in around me. Where do you go when you aren’t sure that there is a reason to keep moving at all?

Finding inspiration in those dark hours can be very difficult, and everyone comes to these moments in their life when they feel like they cannot move forward ever again. I’ve wasted a lot of time in these time traps, remaining stagnant and learning nothing.

Inspirational books cover a vast array of topics, and there’s nearly always a book that I can pick up to help me when I’m feeling trapped, overwhelmed, sad, or just simply lost. Inspiration isn’t always about becoming some popular or huge figure in the world; often, it’s about just finding and becoming yourself again.

Reading inspirational books more frequently brings lots of benefits in your life, including:

• Re-learn that hard work pays off, but you have to do the work.
• It’s easier to remember that you’re not alone when you find an inspiring story that connects with your own story.
• You can learn not only from your own mistakes but from someone else’s as well.
• You can more easily cope with failure and use each failure as a fresh place to grow from.
• You have a better outlook on life and your purpose in general.

Are you interested in bringing some of those benefits into your life just as I brought them into mine?

Start by reading some of the best inspirational books! The following books are all recommended as great sources of inspiration when you need something more.

The Little Black Book of Design

A short, simple book with pertinent and funny quotes about design and engineering.

Benjamin Humphrey

CEO & Co-Founder/DoveTail

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

As for a non-business book, it’s got to be Alice in Wonderland by C. S. Lewis. It’s an unrivalled work of imagination and shows what it looks like to “think outside the box”. Sometimes I like to flick through a copy and look at the illustrations if I’m stuck on a problem and need some inspiration.

Foti Panagio

Founder/GrowthMentor.io

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

Honourable Mentions: Four Hour Work Week, The Happiness Hypothesis, Meditations, Catch 22, A Guide To The Good Life.

Mike Benkovich

Founder/Anatomonics

The MouseDriver Chronicles: The True-Life Adventures of Two First-Time Entrepreneurs

Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but the book is CAPTIVATING. I read the entire thing in one day.

Pat Walls

Founder/StarterStory

Walden

In case you were deceived and expected me to name Walden by Henry David Thoreau, you should read it too if you haven’t, it obviously is the inspiration to Walden Two. 🙂

Joan Boixados

Founder/everydayCheck

Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too

so much congrats to my friend @garyvee on the release of his new book. out now! do yourself a favor a pick up a copy

Casey Neistat

Founder/368 Creative Space

Creative Quest

When Questlove says he’s going to do something, he will find out how to do whatever that is, and become a master at it. I can’t think of a person more suited to write a book about being creative.

Jimmy Fallon

TV Host

Hire With Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great Teams

In what regards the professional side, if we talk about headhunting, it still remains an inspiration for me what Lou Adler wrote in

Madalina Uceanu

Managing Partner/CareerAdvisor

Stop Making Sense: The Art of Inspiring Anybody

If Brené Brown and Simon Sinek had a book baby together, you’re looking at it right now. Stop Making Sense is a new manual for learning true leadership. Fanuele’s set of simple principles that changed my life over the last quarter century will change yours in a matter of hours

Andrew Zimmern

Chef, Co-creator/Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

Tom Reiss’s book The Black Count was impressive and a side of French history I never knew and never would have otherwise.

Ryan Holiday

Founder/Brass Check

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir

On the non-business side of things, “What I Talk about When I Talk About Running” by Haruki Murakami is my recent favorite. I’m a long distance runner and I was extremely delighted to find out that one of the top fiction writers in the world draws a huge chunk of his inspiration from long distance running. In this book, Murakami beautifully connects running to writing, which are two skills close to me that I want to get better at.

Anant Jain

Co-Founder/CommonLounge

The Prophet

I love really condensed, shakti [empowerment]-filled, energy-filled statements - something that you can read in a few minutes or you can read for your whole life.

Jason Nemer

Founder/AcroYoga

The Last Lecture

I read "The Last Lecture" because I had seen Randy Pausch give this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Gabriel Coarna

Founder/Readable

The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential

John has been a mentor and teacher for me for many years and what I love most about him is that he has pushed and helped me personally go through the 5 Levels of Leadership!

Kevin Turner

COO/Microsoft

Jack: Straight from the Gut

I read Jack Welch’s book back in 2003 and it was at the time a great source of inspiration. There were a couple of things that got stuck in my mind and in some cases changed my mind: that there are no shortcuts, that facts always must be faced no matter how brutal and that losing or failing had a value as long as your learn from them. His thoughts on how crucial the soft values are, inspired me a lot. It is really a genuine focus on people and mindset, or call it culture, that makes an organization excel in the long run.

Annika Falkengren

CEO/SEB Group

Joy At Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job

Joy At Work provides great insight into the journey of Dennis Bakke and AES, the company he co-founded. Bakke and his partner Roger Sant started the company and strived to live to a core value of Fun. It is a fascinating read in terms of their definition of fun (making important decisions and being given trust, not ping pong tables and snacks), and also in how difficult they found it to run the company unconventionally in order to be true to their values.

AES reached over 40,000 employees all across the world and they created a significantly different corporate structure than many organizations of today. At Buffer, AES and Bakke have been a big inspiration for us in staying true to our own values.

A large part of the process of staying true to the value of fun for Bakke was for him to be a sevant leader and to help individuals in the company make as many important decisions as possible. They devised the Decision Maker method of making decisions as a team, where the person closest to the problem (rather than a manger) makes key decisions. He also wrote a fable called The Decesion Maker around this concept, which I have also included in this list.

Joel Gascoigne

Co-founder/Buffer

Creativity Rules: Get Ideas Out of Your Head and into the World

Tina Seelig "Creativity Rules" - a hop, skip and a jump through the invention cycle. Tina is amazing. The guidance helps you to get ideas out of your head and into the real world.

Cat Williams-Treloar

Founder/Humanisation

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

As for non-fiction, Half the Sky (about crimes against women, especially in the developing world) and Whatever it Takes (about the Harlem Children’s Zone and the work of Geoffrey Canada) both changed my world-view enormously, and I thought they were both super compelling.

Julia Enthoven

Co-Founder/Kapwing

Everything Is Figureoutable

Millions of young women look to Marie Forleo as their inspiration for empowerment and achievement.

Oprah Winfrey

CEO/Oprah Winfrey Network

March: Book One

“It is a very unique way to present what is probably the most important story of my entire lifetime,” Tim Cook said when introducing Congressman Lewis at Apple HQ. “My hope is that everyone reads this, and I would love to see the day that it is required reading in every school."

Tim Cook

CEO/Apple

More