Unlock your potential for personal growth

You have goals and aspirations, but they seem to be on the other side of an impenetrable door. What’s locking that door? Negative patterns of thought, chronic procrastination, bad habits, a lack of self-belief? Often the thing that locks us out of our own potential is ourselves, but the right advice might just be the key you need to unlock that door.

Leave old habits and negative thinking behind with motivational titles and listens that will change the way you see yourself and the world. Changing your perspective can be daunting. The first step is learning how to view your life differently and stop talking down to yourself. For many, turning to self-help and motivational audiobooks helps manifest those changes.

There’s so much out there to learn about personal growth, we decided to put together some of the advice offered by leading motivational writers and make a list of the audiobooks that can help you learn more.

No matter what you want to learn or how you want to change, there’s something for you in this collection. You can turn around a bad day, change the way you do things at work and at home or learn how to approach life with newfound confidence.

Taking the time out of your day to stop and listen benefits you in all kinds of ways. Listening can be a source of motivation to change, an opportunity to slow down or a tool you can use to live a healthier lifestyle. In the past we’ve explored how to connect with yourself through listening and find the thing that’s missing in your day-to-day.

We’ve pulled together these memorable tips from some of the best motivational audiobooks out there.

#1 Stop Standing in Your Own Way

Sometimes the biggest obstacle in life is yourself. Davis Hollis’s Get Out of Your Own Way is about his transformation from the kind of person who was skeptical about the idea of “personal growth” into someone who could look honestly at his life and push himself out of his own comfort zone. Get Out of Your Own Way is the self-help title for those who aren’t so sure about self-help but know they want something more than the status quo.

Get Out of Your Own Way

#2 Wake Up to Who You Really Are

“Wake up to the miracle you are,” says Gary John Bishop in Unfuk Yourself, a tough-love approach to getting over your own self-limitations. One of the most important lessons you can learn is that it isn’t other people who are standing between you and your goals. The real culprit is the negative thinking and self-doubt that holds you back from trying in the first place.

Whether we’re aware of it or not, we’re constantly in self-dialogue, talking ourselves through big ideas and daily challenges. Take a step back and re-evaluate how you think to yourself. Are you always finding a reason why you can’t do something? Change your tune and start thinking about how you can.

Unfu*k Yourself

#3 Attract the Life You Want

What kind of energy do you put out into the world? Are you attracting the kinds of things you want in life or are you repelling them without knowing it? Gabrielle Bernstein shows you how to manifest the life you dream about in Super Attractor, an Audible Original that will help you claim your desires.

When you accept that you are a Super Attractor, you can relax knowing good things are on their way. Everyone has a right to well-being and Gabrielle Bernstein helps you accept that you do too.

Super Attractor

#4 Work Smarter, Not Harder

Do you feel like you’re grinding yourself down at work? Do you clock out with no time or energy to pursue your passions on evenings or weekends? Careers are competitive and there is a constant pressure to get more done in a day, but that leaves us feeling drained. It gets harder to do things like sign up for evening classes, exercise or learn how to meditate when you don’t have time to recuperate from work.

What if the secret to finding more time for yourself was working more effectively? In the classic 7 Habits for Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey delves into the behaviour and thinking of highly effective people. The advice is simple but it works and it begins with changing the way you think about your career. It breaks down how to build a life with more time to recharge, how to approach win-win thinking and many more habits that will change your life.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

#5 Take a Moment to Meditate

Relax, re-focus and ground yourself through meditation. Meditating is one way you can focus on yourself and your goals when life gets chaotic. It’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees in your everyday life. You need to calm down, breathe and look at the situation with a bird’s eye view.

In addition to giving you a fresh perspective, meditation reduces stress, controls anxiety and lengthens your attention span. It’s a path toward enhanced self-awareness that will show the way beyond your self-limitations. If you’ve never meditated before, explore meditation through these audiobooks and learn how to get started. You can use meditation for all kinds of reasons, from stress relief to spiritual guidance.

Listen to Yourself, Change What You’re Saying

One way or another, all of these recommendations urge you to change the dialogue you have with yourself. Instead of coming up with reasons why you can’t do this or that, they want you to encourage yourself to reach higher.

It’s never hard to brighten up your day and listen to something new with an Audible membership. Find ways to disrupt cycles of negativity holding you back with titles that invite you to focus on personal growth and well-being.

If you’re ready to shake things up, you can find more suggestions for life-changing titles on the Audible blog. Or share your favourite listens via Instagram Stories tagging @audible_ca for a chance to get featured. The world is waiting for you. You just have to get out of your own way.

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