Where Do You Go For Inspiration?

Who are your biggest sources of inspiration? What books, articles or talks have had the greatest impact on how you live your life?

Throughout my journey, I have been blessed to come across many people and resources that have taught me really valuable lessons, both in life and in business.

I believe in sharing good things, so I want to share with you the sources that spoke to me and my journey the most. Sources that have inspired me to take action, make changes, face my fears, find my true self, believe in myself and my abilities, and have helped get me back on track in difficult times.

Here they are:

The Big Leap – Gay Hendricks

This is the book that convinced me to leave my VP Marketing job and become a full time coach! Hendricks’s book will show you how to step out of your comfort zone and create a life you love. It will show you how to identify your zone of genius and do more of that every day. It will show you how to continuously expand in love, abundance and success.

From Good to Great – James C. Collins

This book is all about making an amazing company a great company. My favorite part instructs you to never do business with people you don’t feel you could love or trust. This has become one of my guiding principles and has helped me to continually curate a life and business that I love. After all… to love what you do, you also have to love who you work with. This is a big contributor to being orgasmically joyful on a daily basis :-)

Taming Your Gremlin – Rick Carson

This book was like amazing therapy. It is not the most fun to read, but the learning and growth experience is well worth it. It helps you tame the voices in your head that tell you that you can’t; that you are not good enough. The voices that try to keep you safe in your comfort zone, and tell you stories that prevent you from doing what you truly want to do.

Karmic Management – Geshe Michael Roach, Lama Christie McNally, Michael Gordon

This is a whole new way of looking at your business and your life. It shows you eight karmic management rules to help you create what you truly want in your life and your business. It shows you how to stop doing things that aren’t working; how to start from yourself; that if something’s happening to you that you don’t like, you need to stop doing it to others… and much, much more. I love doing business the karmic management way. It’s definitely not something they teach you in school. It’s about doing things right and, at the same time, helping all the people around you.

The Four Agreements – Don Miguel Ruiz

This book provides you with four agreements based on Toltec wisdom. The Four Agreements being: Be impeccable with your word; Don’t take anything personally; Don’t make assumptions; Always do your best. This book goes into details on how to truly apply these agreements in your life so they bring about true transformations that help you bring your life to a whole new level of freedom, happiness and love.

HeartMath Institute

Did you know that your heart has 2000 more neurons than your brain? This is why I always encourage people to connect with their heart first when making decisions. Your passion is your soul speaking through your heart. The HeartMath Institute provides tools that connect us with the heart of “who we truly are” and when we live our life from that place we will have much more healthy and fulfilling lives.

The Power of Vulnerability – Brene Brown, TedX

To be able to have meaning and joy in our lives, we need to allow ourselves to be vulnerable; to feel both the good and the bad. Brene walks through her own struggle with vulnerability and how her life changed for the better once she learned to let go of perfection. This talk encourages you to embrace vulnerability and learn to put your true self out there.

Each of these resources have impacted my life in tremendous ways. They have truly helped me put my best self forward.

If you’d like help on integrating any of these learnings and resources into your life and business, I invite you to contact me for a coaching conversation.

Here is to you being the CEO of your life!

Melissa Dawn is Coach & Founder of
CEO of Your Life.