Top 3 Books To Empower Women

Do you have a couple of books that changed your life as a woman? 
Here are the top 3 books that empowered me. These books helped me become independent and successful as a woman.  
Being a successful woman today is a confusing topic for everybody, especially for women. 
Yet I believe this is an opportunity for me, and for you, to forge our way of reimagining ourselves and redefine our role in society. 

Without trying to go too deep with my own journey how I found my understanding of what it means to be successful, I can say one thing, if you ever get lost on the topic of what is your path to success, what is your success, remember… You're a pioneer for even attempting that, it is hard to overcome the mountains of the cultural slur, instilled beliefs, that strip our rights to independence, leadership, vision, visibility. Navigating the traps the society puts in front of us and in our heads, seems sometimes impossible, but giving up is not an option. Only with our independent thinking, we can gain meaningful understanding and experience, because if we don’t know who we are and what we want, there is always going to be someone, if not everyone, expressing their strong opinion about what we ought to be. 
Sometimes the fight for my independence was trying to understand what were my true wishes and dreams and what was installed in me as appropriate for a woman to want. Independence, success, talent, power - these all sound too aggressive and uncomfortable for any woman to even think, let alone exhibit these qualities, and in many ways difficult to apply in our lives. We certainly want to be accepted, loved, and appreciated. These needs nobody will cancel, yet, I believe navigating towards balanced and successful life takes an understanding of ourselves, of our surrounding reality, and our will to navigate through it, towards our passion and goals. At the same time, not to end up despised and isolated, we need to redefine what these words mean for us, in this transitional world when the impossible is expected from us, to be leaders yet to be true women, maybe is time for us to think hard how we combine the reality we cannot change and our potential for growth, in order to find the lost voice in us.

I believe that in order for us to find the path towards our inner power, we need to do these things:

1. Learn and understand ourselves - our potential, strengths, and weaknesses. 
2. Learn and understand our internal traps, biases, habits, and fears. 
3. Learn the circumstances we live in, the culture, the ideas, beliefs, motivation, fears, and biases in people who surround us. 
4. Learn and understand what can make us resilient, flexible, adaptable. 

It is much easier to do all these things while learning from experienced voices, and powerful role models. I cannot press more importance to the fact that without role models we can not reach out further, see our potential, and learn successful behaviors otherwise. It is sometimes hard to find one in real life, and forming a relationship with the wrong role model can be draining your time, energy, and focus, this is why I recommend you to read books first. Simply read more books about the topics that you care to learn, and especially those described in 4 points of achieving personal success. This will teach you that opinions are different, contradicting, and not always apply to a specific situation, you will think about these experiences and ideas you’ve read and expand your understanding of it, this way next time you can use your wide experience with these concepts and rely on your gut feeling to know what is what. 
I try to fight the most unfortunate phenomenon taking our powers away as women, too often we succumb to an authoritative voice and trust an opinion on the subject that can be radical and damaging for us and others. This happens because of 2 things, we have not studied this topic to learn about different points of view, and second, we have been threatened by negative repercussions if we do not follow their “advice”. In order to nurture our independent thinking, we need to study more by reading on these topics, learning about the complexity and different opinions, and learn that in most cases there is diversity in life and things are never just one way.

So, here are the top 3 books that helped me to claim my independence, and understand who I am and what I want, how I can get it, and maybe more in-depth about how others deal with similar problems, that sometimes I am not even aware of. 

Book 1: Man's Search for Meaning by Frankl, Viktor E.

You must see the irony of the title here…
As the first step into reaching greatness, you need to understand yourself. The author gave me the voice to aim for the stars, which I always been aiming at, yet often discouraged by narrow rationalism. Unlike others, V.E. Frankl goes to the highest and deepest point of our nature, and this is where we should go, no lower, no more mercantile, we are born to have high hopes, high scopes, high dreams. Overcoming the syndrome of an invisible woman is the first step, we need to open our eyes wide, our minds far, our dreams high. This book finally took me there and taught me that my own mind puts the limit to where I go, so I must take the roof off to see the sky. 

After you see where you need to reach, the next step is how you do it, and for this, you will need a practical guide. 

Book 2: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Dweck, Carol S.

This book is an amazing practical guide that helped me understand clearly the processes which happen in my mind and others, helping me see how I can achieve a mindset that will make me more adaptable, resilient, and constructive. It showed me a direction through which I can make my own path, where I can analyze my own processes and adjust them to give me the results I want. 

Next, you’ll need an example of how others make it work… 

Book 3: Lean In Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sandberg, Sheryl    

In the third title, I will recommend a role model story from a woman who successfully navigated the professional and social jungle. Her experience, her insights, her knowledge on what looks like a woman's path to success. Surely your path will never be like hers, but nothing teaches us more than a story of how others have done it. 

More Books To Help You Grow as a Woman:

Thrive by Ariana Huffington - good reading for understanding the meaning of success, it really helps to navigate through priorities in your life. 

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg - hands-on how our good and bad habits work and how you can be in control of them. 

Mastery by Robert Greene - excellency debugged, helps you to dispel some myths on genius and mastery and how you can achieve it yourself. 

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman - understanding yourself and others, helping you unleash your potential, and not be dragged by your internal traps and social barriers. 

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - one ingredient of our success is whether we find a way to enjoy the path and not only the rewards, and here is a study of what makes something enjoyable. 

Have you read something that turned your life around as a woman? Tell me about it in your email to me :)