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Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

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121–130 of 225 posts

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#121

is there a similar topic for videos? Some YouTube videos can cause profound changes in yourself an your life in minutes (if you are sufficiently open and actually want the change).

How to be open ?

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#124
post #112

33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene. It's about dealing with conflict. Resource management, especially in regards to conflict. Emotional management on a group level. And it applies to conflicts with yourself as well. All of us have some kind of conflict to deal with, whether it's an unruly client, bullying boss, emotionally draining relative, burnt out staff. The book covers strategies in dealing with them. It even s…

Sir, I’m currently reading non violent communications by marshall rosenberg, do you find any similar idea ?

Entirely different idea. The book is still about different types of violence (political, social, military/physical, financial).

To put it one way, it doesn't embrace violence for the sake of violence, e.g. Ares, god of war. But uses the possibility of violence to enforce peace, like Athena, goddess of wisdom.

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#126
"Stranger in a Strange Land"by Robert A. Heinlein.

It's a science fiction book, but it made me question everything, made me change my way of thinking towards a lot of concepts, and integrate those new concepts it in my life. I can definitely say it changed my life.

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#128
post #93

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse Never really been one to enjoy popular books on philosophy (Alchemist was overrated, Monk who sold his Ferrari cliched, The Secret just boring ...IMO) and picked this up at a used book store. The book truly put a new perspective on life for me. Perhaps it was a combination of the time when I read the book: Undue stress, massive imposter syndrome, that feeling of not moving ahead in life, a…

Perhaps I'm still not at that time and place in my life where I'd appreciate Siddhartha. I found it thoroughly nauseating. And the forced translation of Sanskrit idioms was especially cringe inducing.

I didn't find it nauseating, it's an interesting tale, but I'll agree that it didn't make any profound influence on me beyond any other fiction book that I've read.

Perhaps reading it as an eBook on my phone, means that I didn't take it in well enough.

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#129

TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 1: The Protocols . It changed my life because I realised I could better comprehend systems others had already pored over and offer new insights. By comparing the contents of this book to RFCs I was able to propose numerous new remote operating system detection strategies which I published. I then had contact from a hacker group on the other side of the world, plus web visits from a swathe of…

+1 for Mr. Stevens!
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