Four holiday reads to boost your career

Stories that will inspire you to reflect on what’s next

The holidays are the perfect time to slow down and reconnect with our purpose and reflect on how we want to show up in the New Year. And I have found that one of the best ways to do this is with a great book. There is nothing better than finding an author who inspires new ideas and perspectives while guiding us on the path to a truly meaningful life and career.

Here are four of my favourites — all great reads that will challenge you to be more courageous, creative and fulfilled, while reminding you to be true to who you are.

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon

You don’t need to be a genius, you just need to be yourself. That’s the message from Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who believes that creativity is for everyone. When Mr. Kleon was asked to address college students in upstate New York, he shaped his speech around the ten things he wished someone had told him when he was starting out. The talk went viral and inspired this book which is filled with fresh truths about creativity including how to collect ideas and that you can then remix and re-imagine to discover your own path.

One of my favourite messages from the book: “You might be scared to start. That’s natural. There’s this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It’s called “impostor syndrome.” It means that you feel like a phony, like you’re just winging it, that you really don’t have any idea what you’re doing. Guess what: None of us do. Ask anybody doing truly creative work, and they’ll tell you the truth: They don’t know where the good stuff comes from. They just show up to do their thing. Every day.”

Playing Big by Tara Mohr

“Playing big doesn't come from working more, pushing harder, or finding confidence. It comes from listening to the most powerful and secure part of you, not the voice of self-doubt.” This quote from the author pretty much sums up the underlying theme that runs through this entire book. Based on years of coaching and delivering programs to women, Tara Mohr saw an opportunity to help women who were "playing small" in their lives and careers to start "playing bigger." Playing Big provides real, practical tools to help quiet self-doubt, identify your calling, unlearn counterproductive habits, and begin taking bold action.

I found the chapter on unhooking from praise and criticism particularly poignant. In it, Ms. Mohr says: “Feedback doesn’t tell you about yourself. It tells you about the person giving the feedback. In other words, if someone says your work is gorgeous, that just tells you about ‘their’ taste. If you put out a new product and it doesn’t sell at all, that tells you something about what your audience does and doesn’t want. Attachment to praise and avoidance of criticism keeps us from doing innovative, controversial work and — more simply — from following the paths we feel called toward.”

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

This is a wonderful piece of fiction that gets you thinking about the big questions in life. When the main character, Nora Seed, finds herself in the Midnight Library, she is full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. The books in the library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. It allows her to explore the different possible paths her life could have taken where she spends a lot of time considering things like what success is, how our actions affect others, or how our lives are shaped by the people around us. In the end, Nora realizes she didn’t need a new life. She just needed to realize that her own had potential and that she could keep reinventing herself until she achieved happiness. Sound familiar?

I particularly loved this quote from the book: “It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. We can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”

Redefining Rich by Shannon Hayes

A third-generation farmer and entrepreneur, Shannon Hayes seeks to explore what she calls “true wealth” — defined as building sustainable communities, keeping families together and fostering greater creative fulfillment. Ms. Hayes tells the story of how she and her husband walked away from their white-collar career paths and chose to forge a life on her family’s frost-plagued mountain farm, starting up a small café in a small town. Against the odds, the Hayes family built a business that lets them live abundantly, spend time with family and in nature, and be part of a thriving community.

Redefining Rich is a wonderful reminder of the importance of finding time for the pleasures in life, with simple exercises and important lessons that anyone can relate to whether you are a new sole proprietor or a seasoned CEO. It offers a blueprint to increased fulfillment and achieving an abundance of wealth that goes beyond the numbers. It is a great inspiration for those of us who are trying to make our lives work in untraditional ways.

One reader summed it up best when he said: “Funny, humble, and wise . . . Hayes encourages us to live more simply, think more courageously, and perhaps most important, recognize we can begin right now.”

Happy holidays!