Going through life with no direction, no goals, no priorities is like embarking on a journey with no compass, no maps, no guides, just hoping that the wind will blow your sails into good and fruitful new places. That happens only in romantic, historical novels of long ago; today, you’ll barely survive in this fast-paced, high-pressure lifestyle of the modern world.

We now live in a very demanding society we have built ourselves. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll not be able to enjoy life to the fullest. If you think you are living life as if the only places in the world are your office cubicle, your bed, and the fast food outlet down the street, then you’d better stop for a minute, catch your breath, and try to look at your life.

Is it heading the way you want it to go? Are the sacrifices you bring unto yourself worth the efforts? Are you really living life – or are you running around and spending too much time trying to keep up with it?

If you answered a hesitant yes to any of these questions, you need to work your priorities and goals in life. And what better way to do that than to read powerful and inspiring books!

Here are the top three must-read goal achieving books you need to get hold of and spend some time to read and meditate on the ideas they convey:

1. Having It All: Achieving Your Life's Goals and Dreams by John Assaraf – It doesn’t matter what or where you want your life to be, reading this book will help you learn to "develop and utilize the seven power factors all highly successful people use, apply the most advanced techniques that world-class athletes and entrepreneurs use to eliminate mental obstacles, pinpoint and design the exact life you truly want, and use the power of your subconscious mind to develop empowering success habits". These techniques will help you take control of your life and steer it towards the direction you want it to go.

2. The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch – Have you ever heard of the 80/20 Principle? It means that only 20% of what you do brings in 80% of the results. So you waste a good amount of time, money, and effort (that’s the remaining 80%) which you could have used for another productive investment or activity. In this book, Koch helps you recognize that productive 20% and explains on how you can acquire "more out of your business, and life, for less".

3. Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind & Your Life by Martin E.P. Seligman – Are you an optimist or a self-proclaimed pessimist? Are you more inclined to look at life’s hitches and glitches as challenges which you’re to take on or are you the type who has the worst-case scenario in mind and believes you’re helpless to prevent things from happening? In this insightful book, you will techniques of learned optimism – "identifying your own self-defeating thought patterns and how to harness the powers of your conscious mind to break those patterns."

Hopefully, these books will help you put your life into perspective and identify the factors that make you fall short of your goals.

Trying to catch up with your life is not living at all. We all die; it’s such a bad thing to die tired and unhappy!