• Home
  • 50 Classics Series
    • 50 Self-Help Classics >
      • James Allen - As A Man Thinketh
      • Dale Carnegie - How To Win Friends and Influence People
      • Stephen Covey - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
      • Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance
      • Benjamin Franklin - Autobiography
      • Louise Hay - You Can Heal Your Life
      • Joseph Murphy - The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
      • Samuel Smiles - Self-Help
      • Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man
    • 50 Success Classics >
      • Claude M Bristol - The Magic of Believing
      • Jim Collins - Good To Great
      • Russell H Conwell - Acres of Diamonds
      • Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich
      • Catherine Ponder - The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity
      • David J Schwartz - The Magic of Thinking Big
      • Wallace Wattles - The Science of Getting Rich
    • 50 Spiritual Classics >
      • Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan
      • Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet
      • Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception
      • Carl Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections
      • Margery Kempe - The Book of Margery Kempe
      • CS Lewis - The Screwtape Letters
      • Miguel Ruiz - The Four Agreements
      • 50 More Spiritual Classics
    • 50 Psychology Classics >
      • Eric Berne - Games People Play
      • Isabel Briggs Myers - Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type
      • Louann Brizendine - The Female Brain
      • David D Burns - Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy
      • Robert Cialdini - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
      • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Creativity
      • Albert Ellis - A Guide To Rational Living
      • Milton Erickson - Teaching Tales
      • Erik Erikson - Young Man Luther
      • Hans Eysenck - Dimensions of Personality
      • Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams
      • Malcolm Gladwell - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
      • Carl Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
      • Alfred Kinsey - Sexuality In The Human Female
      • Abraham Maslow - Motivation and Personality
      • Stanley Milgram - Obedience To Authority
      • IP Pavlov - Conditioned Reflexes
      • Jean Piaget - The Language and Thought of the Child
      • Carl Rogers - On Becoming A Person
      • BF Skinner - Beyond Freedom & Dignity
    • 50 Prosperity Classics >
      • James Allen - The Path to Prosperity
      • Genevieve Behrend - Your Invisible Power
      • Richard Branson - Losing My Virginity
      • Warren Buffett - The Essays of Warren Buffett
      • Rhonda Byrne - The Secret
      • Andrew Carnegie - The Gospel of Wealth
      • Felix Dennis - How To Get Rich
      • Peter Drucker - Innovation and Entrepreneurship
      • Harv Eker - Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
      • Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom
      • Michael E Gerber - The E-Myth Revisited
      • Benjamin Graham - The Intelligent Investor
      • Esther & Jerry Hicks - Ask And It Is Given
      • Conrad Hilton - Be My Guest
      • Joe Karbo - The Lazy Man's Way To Riches
      • Catherine Ponder - Open Your Mind To Prosperity
      • Ayn Rand - Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
      • Donald Trump - The Art of the Deal
      • Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
      • Prosperity Principles
    • 50 Philosophy Classics >
      • Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex
      • Heraclitus - Fragments
      • Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling
      • Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
      • Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage
      • John Stuart Mill - On Liberty
      • Montaigne - Essays
      • Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
      • Plato - The Republic
      • Karl Popper - The Logic of Scientific Discovery
      • John Rawls - A Theory of Justice
      • Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness
      • Nassim Nicholas Taleb - The Black Swan
      • Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
    • 50 Politics Classics
    • 50 Economics Classics
    • 50 Business Classics
  • Capstone Classics
    • Think and Grow Rich
    • The Science of Getting Rich
    • The Art of War
    • The Prince
    • The Wealth of Nations
    • The Republic
    • The Tao Te Ching
    • Meditations
    • Beyond Good and Evil
    • Origin of Species
  • New Writing
  • Services
  • Newsletter
  • About
  • READER REVIEWS
  • Foreign Editions
  • Think Long
  • Contact
Tom Butler-Bowdon

theory of success

You must change your life

10/12/2017

 
Picture
The writing

Just finished writing another book - well, the first draft anyway. A rewarding and fascinating few months, and with a tight deadline it was pretty intense towards the end.

Now comes the editing, which involves: 1) the commissioning editor's initial judgement - fortunately, she liked what she read; 2) a copy editor marking up the document of 100,000+ words with highlighted mistakes and queries - see the example to your left from a chapter on Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century in 50 Economics Classics; and 3) the manuscript going into 'proofs', which is the page layout you see when the book is published, and which gives me a final chance to make corrections.

These stages mean that by the time you read the book, I've read it through at least four times. A bit laborious, but it doesn't mean mistakes and typos don't get through - for example, we somehow left out the author bio page in 50 Economics, which is in every other title in the series, and in the original edition of 50 Spiritual Classics I confused GI Gurdjieff follower Kathryn Mansfield, a Kiwi poet, with the film star Jayne Mansfield! - but luckily advances in the printing industry means you can do quick reprints (with corrections) more often.

What have I just written? A couple of years ago I sent out a survey asking people what subject they would most like to see featured in the 50 Classics series. Top was philosophy, which was duly covered; second was business, so there's a hint of what's coming in 2018.

Picture
We can change, right
​
As well as books written on contract, I also have personal writing projects that are more long-term or speculative. As part of one of them, this week I've been devouring the German philosopher Peter Sloterdjik's You Must Change Your Life, which imagines human beings as a striving species that is continually working to better itself - either through spiritual, ascetic practices, or through secular physical training or personal development. The title comes from Rainer Maria Rilke's poem ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’, which has an observer taking in the headless stone torso of the Greek god in the Louvre museum. Struck by the power and athleticism of the figure, the observer suddenly sees his own, insufficient existence. The poem ends with the famous line, You must change your life.

This impulse for improvement or transformation is behind all my books. Writing the first three, 50 Self-Help Classics, 50 Success Classics, and 50 Spiritual Classics, I was often so taken by the great titles I was reading that I kept the book covers face down - such was their power.

These three books together celebrate what Sloterdjik calls Homo artista, or the "human in training". As a member of this striving, self-improving species, I wanted to find the best ideas from each of these realms, for myself as much as the reader.

Later this week is the release of a new edition of 50 Self-Help Classics, a new edition of 50 Success Classics, and the rerelease of 50 Spiritual Classics, all with lovely new covers and in Kindle e-book.

Picture
Help yourself

Almost 15 years have passed since 50 Self-Help Classics was published. What, if anything, has changed in the self-help field? Many would argue that the genre has been superseded by psychology and its more scientific approach to understanding why we think and act as we do. Indeed, when I wrote about Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism, such titles were a sign of things to come in terms of personal development becoming more grounded and scientific. A person who, 20 years ago, might have been happy to get a lift or a set of life pointers from How to Win Friends and Influence People, today might be drawn to a book by Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow).

There is still a place for great self-help writing, although it is more likely to support its claims by reference to research. Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit and Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly are good examples. Yet self-help books can offer something that goes beyond psychology. David Brooks’ The Road to Character is really a work of ethical philosophy with a powerful message about personal change across a lifetime. Marie Kondo’s deceptively simple The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up aims to transform our life through changing our attitude to things and spaces; if our homes have the air of a Shinto shrine, peace, order and happiness reign.

What self-help books do well is combine aspects of different areas, including psychology, philosophy, spirituality, motivation and even business (see, for example, Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life?) to create an intimate connection with the reader. You really can change your life, the authors tell us, and here's how.
​

The second edition of 50 Self-Help Classics includes new chapters on the above titles. The genre is as fascinating and inspiring as ever.

Picture
Success manual

​
The success genre continues to develop as well. One thing that has changed since the first edition is that strategies for success, which were once the preserve of folk wisdom, parents, bosses, and motivational speakers, have become the subject of mainstream academic research. Two great examples, which I include in this new edition, are psychologist Angela Duckworth’s investigation of the concept of ‘grit’, which tells us much about what makes people successful irrespective of intelligence, grades, or even life circumstances, and organizational psychologist Adam Grant’s research into the long-term benefits of being a ‘giver’ in the workplace, which contradicts the idea that success comes from selfish ambition.

I also wanted to go beyond tips, ideas and advice to cover theories of success. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success has been important in the way it goes beyond pat explanations of the ‘self-made’ person to offer a more well-rounded environmental, social view of how success happens. And yet, I believe that Gladwell goes too far in reducing the role of human agency and free will. The fact that life is not just about good opportunities, but having the guts or wisdom to seize them, despite the waves they can create, is really the essence of success.

Indeed, it is hard to go past the truth of Carl Jung’s thought:

“In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden source in individuals.”


​My hope is that the combination of psychological science and success philosophy, combined with close observation of how people advance in real life, will result in a discipline of success (in the way that, for instance, management became a discipline). 50 Success Classics is one contribution toward that.

Picture
Enlightening read

The third in the personal development trilogy was 50 Spiritual. Getting into the minds of people like Teresa of Avila, Herman Hesse and Paramahansa Yogananda was an amazing thing, and while writing it I had some spiritual experiences myself. One would think you could only have such experiences while meditating or praying or being in nature - but no, it can come simply while reading a book.
​
This is not a new edition as such, just has a new cover, but if you feel ready for a book like this it is a good entry point. It spans the thinking of all the great religions, but also novelists including Somerset Maugham and New Age writers including Neale Donald Walsch, Marianne Williamson and Eckhart Tolle.


Picture
Misbehaving

I included a chapter on Richard Thaler's Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, in 50 Economics Classics, along with commentaries on all the great names in the discipline, from Adam Smith to Thomas Piketty to Elinor Ostrom to Paul Krugman. As you've probably heard, Thaler has won the 2017 Nobel Prize for economics, or in this case behavioral economics, which blends insights from psychology with economic stuff to give us a more realistic picture of how people make decisions, and how economies work in the real world, not just in theory. According to orthodox economics, people are rational, and 'misbehave' when they don't act in their own best interests. But as Thaler's work notes, that is something we do all the time.

Picture
If you've seen the film The Big Short, about the 2007-09 financial crisis and how it happened (based on Michael Lewis' book, which I also cover), you will have seen Thaler himself in a cameo.

​The scene is a casino, where he explains the "hot hand" fallacy. Good film, but the book The Big Short is even better.

Picture
In the stacks

What is the role of a library in a time when it is so easy to download just about any book?

In fact, as I've discovered, there are millions of titles which have not been scanned or are not available in e-book form. But beyond that, libraries are a place that people go to elevate themselves, either their mood or their mind, or both.

Yesterday I was in the The British Library, which was packed - not just the hundreds in reading rooms, but many more people sprawled around the lobby area and cafes using the free wifi and generally enjoying the atmosphere of learning. People know that libraries are not just a store of knowledge but a symbol of civilization, and they want to be part of that.

This week in the mail came an invite to a ceremony for the $1 million Berggruen Philosophy Prize at the New York Public Library. Sadly I cannot go, but I see there's a new film, Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, by the esteemed documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. It won a prize at the Venice Film Festival this year, and has just been showing at the London Film Festival. Here's a review in the New York Times. Can't wait to see!

Kind regards, 
Tom

p.s. I've written my first online course, "Great Modern Philosophers", which you can find on Highbrow. It's based on 50 Philosophy Classics and covers ten great minds in brief, including Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and more. Have a look!

Find me 
Butler-Bowdon.com 
Twitter 
Facebook 
Instagram 
Email

Share & subscribe 
Subscribe to Theory of Success

    Tom Butler-Bowdon

    Author of the '50 Classics' series covering key writings in personal development, philosophy and psychology.

    50 Self-Help Classics
    50 Success Classics
    50 Spiritual Classics
    50 Psychology Classics
    50 Philosophy Classics


    ​Butler-Bowdon.com

    Archives

    February 2018
    January 2018
    October 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

    Subscribe

    ​Earlier newsletters

    November 2017:
    Utopias and Heterotopias

    October 2017:
    ​You Must Change Your Life

    August 2017:
    50 Economics Classics

    June 2017:
    ​Libraries as bastions of civilization

    February 2017:
    50 Classics series relaunch

    December 2016: 
    Thank You

    October 2016: 
    The Epiphany Problem
    ​
    May 2016:   
    Power, Deep Learning & Mental Freedom

    January 2016:   
    Doing What Works: Progress in Personal & Economic Life

    October 2015:   
    ​
    Moments of Inspiration
    ​
    Receive Tom's Newsletter
BUTLER-BOWDON
Home
About
Contact




50 CLASSICS SERIES
Humanities & Social Sciences
Personal Development
50 Psychology Classics
50 Philosophy Classics
50 Politics Classics
​
50 Economics Classics ​
50 Self-Help Classics 
50 Spiritual Classics
50 Success Classics 

Business
50 Business Classics

​

​
© COPYRIGHT TOM BUTLER-BOWDON, 2023
​. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • 50 Classics Series
    • 50 Self-Help Classics >
      • James Allen - As A Man Thinketh
      • Dale Carnegie - How To Win Friends and Influence People
      • Stephen Covey - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
      • Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance
      • Benjamin Franklin - Autobiography
      • Louise Hay - You Can Heal Your Life
      • Joseph Murphy - The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
      • Samuel Smiles - Self-Help
      • Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man
    • 50 Success Classics >
      • Claude M Bristol - The Magic of Believing
      • Jim Collins - Good To Great
      • Russell H Conwell - Acres of Diamonds
      • Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich
      • Catherine Ponder - The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity
      • David J Schwartz - The Magic of Thinking Big
      • Wallace Wattles - The Science of Getting Rich
    • 50 Spiritual Classics >
      • Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan
      • Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet
      • Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception
      • Carl Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections
      • Margery Kempe - The Book of Margery Kempe
      • CS Lewis - The Screwtape Letters
      • Miguel Ruiz - The Four Agreements
      • 50 More Spiritual Classics
    • 50 Psychology Classics >
      • Eric Berne - Games People Play
      • Isabel Briggs Myers - Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type
      • Louann Brizendine - The Female Brain
      • David D Burns - Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy
      • Robert Cialdini - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
      • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Creativity
      • Albert Ellis - A Guide To Rational Living
      • Milton Erickson - Teaching Tales
      • Erik Erikson - Young Man Luther
      • Hans Eysenck - Dimensions of Personality
      • Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams
      • Malcolm Gladwell - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
      • Carl Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
      • Alfred Kinsey - Sexuality In The Human Female
      • Abraham Maslow - Motivation and Personality
      • Stanley Milgram - Obedience To Authority
      • IP Pavlov - Conditioned Reflexes
      • Jean Piaget - The Language and Thought of the Child
      • Carl Rogers - On Becoming A Person
      • BF Skinner - Beyond Freedom & Dignity
    • 50 Prosperity Classics >
      • James Allen - The Path to Prosperity
      • Genevieve Behrend - Your Invisible Power
      • Richard Branson - Losing My Virginity
      • Warren Buffett - The Essays of Warren Buffett
      • Rhonda Byrne - The Secret
      • Andrew Carnegie - The Gospel of Wealth
      • Felix Dennis - How To Get Rich
      • Peter Drucker - Innovation and Entrepreneurship
      • Harv Eker - Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
      • Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom
      • Michael E Gerber - The E-Myth Revisited
      • Benjamin Graham - The Intelligent Investor
      • Esther & Jerry Hicks - Ask And It Is Given
      • Conrad Hilton - Be My Guest
      • Joe Karbo - The Lazy Man's Way To Riches
      • Catherine Ponder - Open Your Mind To Prosperity
      • Ayn Rand - Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
      • Donald Trump - The Art of the Deal
      • Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
      • Prosperity Principles
    • 50 Philosophy Classics >
      • Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex
      • Heraclitus - Fragments
      • Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling
      • Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
      • Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage
      • John Stuart Mill - On Liberty
      • Montaigne - Essays
      • Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
      • Plato - The Republic
      • Karl Popper - The Logic of Scientific Discovery
      • John Rawls - A Theory of Justice
      • Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness
      • Nassim Nicholas Taleb - The Black Swan
      • Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
    • 50 Politics Classics
    • 50 Economics Classics
    • 50 Business Classics
  • Capstone Classics
    • Think and Grow Rich
    • The Science of Getting Rich
    • The Art of War
    • The Prince
    • The Wealth of Nations
    • The Republic
    • The Tao Te Ching
    • Meditations
    • Beyond Good and Evil
    • Origin of Species
  • New Writing
  • Services
  • Newsletter
  • About
  • READER REVIEWS
  • Foreign Editions
  • Think Long
  • Contact