Crush Your LIMITING BELIEFS: 3 Secrets Navy SEALs Use to UNLOCK Their FULL POTENTIAL

In Can’t Hurt Me, former Navy SEAL David Goggins describes his transformation from someone who let his circumstances control him to someone who proactively seeks greatness by tackling new challenges. He thinks everyone can work to cultivate a drive for self-improvement in order to overcome obstacles and reach their goals.

Most of us only give 40 percent of our effort, leaving 60 percent on the table and falling short of our potential. Goggins offers 10 actionables to help people push themselves to address obstacles and work efficiently toward their goals.

Do you struggle with bad habits? Do you try to create good habits that will bring positive changes to your life, but have trouble making them stick? In Atomic Habits, James Clear argues that adopting the right habits will drastically improve your life—but to do so, you must understand how habits work and how you can change yours.

In this guide, you’ll discover why habits matter and the three mindsets you can use to create them. You’ll then learn how habits form and the four keys to changing yours. Finally, you’ll learn how to continue improving habits you've implemented. Along the way, we’ll examine how other psychologists and experts approach habit formation, and we’ll explore how Clear’s theories either align with or differ from theirs.

The way we think about toughness, according to Steve Magness, is all wrong. We traditionally define toughness as a combination of machismo, lack of emotion, and outward displays of dominance and control. But Magness claims that this “old-school” definition of toughness is harmful and that real toughness is defined by confronting reality, acknowledging your thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and using a multitude of strategies to cope with discomfort or adversity. In Do Hard Things, Magness provides a new, more accurate, and more effective way of thinking about toughness, which will help you overcome challenges and make better, more thoughtful decisions.

In this guide, we’ll explore why traditional ideas around toughness are not only ineffective but harmful. Then, we’ll look at Magness’ ideas on what it really means to be resilient, and we’ll provide strategies on how to overcome discomfort and adversity. Throughout the guide, we’ll compare Magness’s ideas and strategies with those of other self-help and psychological experts, helping you become a more thoughtful, versatile, and thus tougher person.

In The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp argue that many leadership models are unsustainable because they don’t prioritize self-management and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. This causes leaders to burn out, lose their passion, and succumb to an unhealthy culture of competition and greed. As a result, employees disengage, turnover soars, and organizations break down from within. To overcome these issues, the authors argue that leaders must learn to understand and manage their emotions and mindset, communicate effectively with others, and align their actions and behaviors with their goals and commitments.

Dethmer, Chapman, and Klemp present 15 commitments that conscious leaders must uphold to run an effective organization, which we’ve synthesized into eight primary behaviors. We’ll explain what each behavior is, why it’s important, and how to put it into action. In our commentary, we’ll further discuss how to improve your leadership abilities and adopt the authors’ recommended behaviors, citing experts like Brené Brown (Dare to Lead) and Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth).

In The Light We Carry, former US First Lady Michelle Obama explains that everyone has the potential to improve the world in a way others can’t since everyone has unique abilities, strengths, and perspectives. Since our potentials are unique, Obama believes we have a responsibility to fulfill them: No one else can fulfill your unique potential to create positive change, so you must do so.

In this guide, we’ll explore the benefits of nurturing and sharing one’s unique abilities, strengths, and perspectives. We’ll also discuss the major obstacles to doing so and the tools Obama recommends for overcoming those obstacles. In our commentary, we’ll compare Obama’s ideas to those of self-help authors such as Stephen R. Covey and Maxwell Maltz, and we’ll examine how her suggestions intersect with psychological principles.

If you want to be a good leader, you have to put your team before yourself. Jocko Willink explains exactly how to do this in Leadership Strategy and Tactics. By learning to practice humility, build good relationships, and take responsibility for your team’s mistakes, you’ll elevate your team to success and empower them to become leaders themselves.

Willink is an author, speaker, and podcaster who served for 20 years as a US Navy SEAL. Through his military and leadership experience, he’s acquired a series of leadership principles and advice that he shares in this field manual. We’ll examine Willink’s leadership principles, comparing them to Principles: Life and Work, The Obstacle Is the Way, and more. We’ll also explore Willink’s advice through the lens of other leadership experts and psychologists to add nuances and actionable tips that will help you implement his ideas into your daily life.

Vulnerability is all too often engineered out of today’s work cultures, in a bid to make employees more efficient and less susceptible to emotions—but brave leaders who have the courage to allow vulnerability are essential to thriving work cultures. Dare to Lead breaks down the four courage-building skills that make up brave leadership, so that you can create an organization that takes risk, uncertainty, and failure in stride. You’ll learn how to lead your team in engaging with vulnerability, acting with integrity, having more productive and honest conversations, and moving on quickly from failure—skills that will allow your work culture to meet today’s ever-increasing innovative and creative demands.

Most people think that happiness comes after success, and that success comes after hard work. But we’ve had the equation all wrong: Happiness isn’t the result of success—it’s the cause of it. In The Happiness Advantage, author Shawn Achor introduces this formula for success, based on research in neuroscience and the relatively new field of positive psychology. Achor offers insight as a leading expert on the connection between happiness and performance and the founder of a research and consulting firm that optimizes people’s achievement through positive psychology.

This book explains the benefits of happiness—from increased creativity to improved health—and how a positive mindset can change your personal and professional life. In addition, Achor provides strategies for adopting a positive mindset, remaining optimistic in the face of adversity, and raising your happiness baseline.

What’s the key to transforming your life?

In Think Big, behavioral science expert Grace Lordan argues that most of us fail to transform our lives because we try to change too much too quickly. Instead, we must set a big goal, acknowledge that achieving it will take a few years, and then take the regular, small steps necessary to achieve it. Moreover, we must understand how to overcome the cognitive biases—the mental shortcuts that all humans take—that hinder us from achieving our goals.

In this guide, we’ll first define what cognitive biases are and how your own (and others’) affect your life. Then, we’ll share Lordan’s advice on changing your life by identifying who you want to become, and how to recognize and work around both your cognitive biases and external obstacles. Along the way, we’ll share other experts’ tips on working around your cognitive biases so you can transform your life.