I recently finished a book called Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box. In a word, this book was fantastic.
The premise of the book is about understanding the problems that we have in our relationships—with family members, co-workers, anyone. The irony of it all is that we can often see problems in other people but we are rarely even aware of problems with ourselves—we are self-deceived.
This 150-page book is written in a story/narrative-format which makes for very easy read and allows you to get inside the head of the main character to see his thought process. For me, the critical part of the book where I had that sudden burst of inspiration that said, "This applies to me too" was when the main character, Tom, was listening to his superior, Bud, talk about how he (Bud) often ignored his infant crying in the middle of the night which meant his wife would have to tend the baby. How many times have I done that? But that wasn't the spark of inspiration. It was how Bud decided to stay in bed and how he began to feel about his wife because he ignored the prompting to help—he "betrayed" the prompting. This moment of self-betrayal can be viewed as the fundamental source of relationship problems.
The book is a very quick read. In fact, I've read it twice in just a few days. This is the first time I've recommended a book on my blog before. On a scale of 1-10, this book scores 11. It ranks in the top five books I've ever read.