The truth is that I am not much in favor of motivational books or how-to books anymore. Not completely shut myself to them, but. I used to like them because I thought that it could really help. Because the root cause of the problems that they laid out were what I could identify with and the solutions seemed plausible. It is mostly about ‘pushing the limits’ in the direction that the author has set in but at most of the times, in a general case, there is a limit to the limit that one can push (or so we hardly believe). Obviously the author can’t identify this borderline because he knows only his own and asks us to push, push, push. ‘You will succeed if you push further like I say’, they would tell you. So we read the book, happy that the author rightly identified the problems, assured that we would succeed if we followed as he/she had said, close the book and comment “what a great, useful book” and get on with our lives without using any of the techniques that the author explained about. In the end, it becomes useless, though it ‘inspires’ you, or you think it’s great and practical.
I would rather go for biographies. They draw a different problem in each of them. Sometimes, the same problem but different solutions that fit each individual towards working out that same problem. How ordinary people got into it and came out as extra-ordinary people. How they pushed their limits within their limits. The examples that other ordinary people could follow.