My advice to you on reading motivational books would be, don't read them. You don't read a motivational book, you study it. Motivational books have to be studied thoroughly if you hope to get anything out of them.

You are better off reading one motivational book twenty five times rather than reading twenty five books one time. The reason for that is that getting to understand what the author has to say is simply not enough. The material has to be assimilated, digested and eventually becoming a part of who you are.

One of the difficulties of reading a motivational book is that the mind has a pernicious way of playing tricks on us. The way that is does that is by transforming whatever that we are reading in such a way that it will be conform to our previously held beliefs.

We all have deeply entrenched beliefs. Those beliefs may or may not be valid but they are part of how we think and what we believe to be true. So, changing those beliefs is not an easy task.

As an example, most of us believe that if we do not get the expected result when we try something it would be considered a failure. In reality, it was not a failure. We tried something and got the logical results. That is not a failure, it's the end result of an experiment.

If we are serious about reading a book, it should be read like if it was a letter or a message from a lover. Each word, each sentence is evaluated to assure that we understand perfectly what the author is trying to convey.

After reading and important or meaningful sentence, we should close the book and write down what we've just read, then compare the two versions, word for word. Many times, we'll find out that we had gotten the meaning all wrong. Our mind was trying to trick us into holding onto our previously held beliefs.

Personal Development and reading motivational book is mostly about changing our mindset. Not an easy task. And certainly not one that can be accomplished with passive or speed reading.

There are at least three motivational book that deserve to be studied this way. They are:

Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

If you are willing to put in the time and effort to study thoroughly these three books, your life will be transformed forever. They contain just about everything you need to access to a level of success and happiness that you never thought possible before.

It is said that what you don't know cannot arm you. That's simply not true. Success is a science and not a fluke. You need to know the principles and the techniques necessary to acquire success in life and in your life. Those three books contain almost all that information. Now, all that you have to do is to learn and apply them, and the world will be your oyster.

Dr. Raymond Comeau aka Shamou is the Author of ShamouBlog http://www.shamoublog.com/forum/index.php and Administrator of Personal Development for Personal Success Forums.