[phugoid]

I'm bracing for a serious downvote... I have to admit that Anthony Robbins had a big influence on my thinking, particularly with "Awaken the Giant Within." The message was - you can control how you feel.

Nearly twenty years later, I can see the limitations of his ideas - the danger of creating an arbitrary belief system for yourself and the selfishness of simply deciding what you want and rigging everything in your existence to get it. I also came to believe it's OK to not be happy all the time. But I will always respect Robbins' direct explanations of human motivation and how it can be nudged.

That and 'Single Variable Calculus; Early Transcendentals'; the universe is about change and math can model nearly all of it.