This post is on must-read self-help books to change your perspective on your day, your situation, and even life! From burnout to stifled creativity to feeling trapped by your job, these books will help to ignite the fire and provide comforting words.
Self-help book to deal with stress and burn out
Read Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. Who doesn’t feel stressed out in the modern workplace? I know that burnout is the #1 monster that I have tackled consistently in my professional life.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Emily and Amelia Nagoski are the sisters who came together to write Burnout. Emily is a Ph.D. in health behavior and has been a sex educator for 20 years. Amelia has a Doctorate in musical arts and is a musical conductor. This combination of their backgrounds, as well as their sweet relationship as sisters, makes this an engaging read that shows you how to get your body into a state of relaxation, regulate frustration, learn to love your body, and befriending that naggy voice in your head that criticizes you incessantly. As a professional woman who has felt burnout many times over my career, I am thankful to have this read in my arsenal.
Check out Emily and Amelia’s podcast, “for feminists who feel overwhelmed and exhausted by everything we need to get done in 2020, and still worry that we’re not doing enough” at feministsurvivalproject.com. Check out Emily and Amelia talking about Burnout below from the XOXO Festival.
Self-help book if you’re stuck in a rut
Read The Law of Attraction Plain and Simple by Sonia Ricotti. This little gem of a book has been by my side the past few weeks. It is filled with inspiring quotes and encouraging prompts to help you take action towards creating the life that you yearn for.
The life you want may feel so close, but you just can’t get there. Or maybe it feels so far away that it’s impossible. Sonia Ricotti put together the perfect balance of inspiration and activities to pull ideas out and give you encouragement to change your mindset and make things happen for yourself.
I recommend reading a chapter and then journaling about what thoughts arise. You can also do the activities in your journal. There are pages for you to write in the book itself, but I like to keep it clean so that I can keep using it over and over again.
Self-help book if you’re stifled creatively
Read Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. If you are feeling stuck in a rut, Big Magic will shake you out of it. It got me going and made me feel seen and understood.
The creative struggle is real and it helps to know that everyone goes through it and you have to just push through. One day at a time and trust yourself to do the damn thing. It’s when we are so scared that we don’t act, or listen to the self-critic who says that we don’t have anything worthwhile to share, that we feel defeated and deflated.
Elizabeth Gilbert talks about Big Magic in the below video!
“Your soul has been waiting for you to wake up to your own existence for years.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
Self-help book if you feel trapped by your job
Read What it Takes to Be Free by Darius Foroux. If you dread the alarm going off and facing the workday, then this is a must-read, because, “No person should ever settle for anything less than freedom. No matter where you are, there is always a way out.” It encouraged me to trust in the process. That you can take a leap of faith in life and make your dreams happen for yourself.
That’s what Darius did. He writes about when he started to focus on his writing career back in 2015 and did what it took to make his dreams into a reality. It is full of great tips to listen to your passion, trust that you can make your dreams happen, why we get caught up in different emotions that get us stuck, and how to get out.
Self-help book if you worry about what other people think
Read The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. If you have social anxiety or imposter syndrome, read this book. The format is a dialogue between a youth and a philosopher over a series of meetings. This book has so many great lessons. One such lesson is that our experience of life is determined by the meaning we give to experiences, not the experiences themselves.
An excerpt that really made me stop and think is, “There is no such thing as worry that is completely defined by the individual; so-called internal worry does not exist. Whatever the worry that may arise, the shadows of other people are always present.” I never thought about it that way before, but it’s true! Worry is so tied to what other people have said, what you think they’ll say, or how they may react.
“There is no such thing as worry that is completely defined by the individual; so-called internal worry does not exist. Whatever the worry that may arise, the shadows of other people are always present.”
Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
Self-help book if you feel disenchanted with anything
Read Infinite Possibilities: The Art of Living Your Dreams by Mike Dooley. Mike Dooley will give you energy, period. Because his energy is infectious. I heard of his work through a friend in my women’s process group who’s a writer. I ended up taking one of Mike’s writing workshops and I could not stop smiling and laughing.
Just watching and listening to him was a mood booster and his book is the same. He is like the little engine that could to cheerlead you to where ever you want to be in life. I wish I had a recording of him I could play whenever I needed a pep talk.
“A higher understanding always has to be there to dissolve old beliefs, and in the light of understanding, limiting beliefs have to disappear, just as the dark disappears when the sun rises.” Enough said.
Self-help book if you need some perspective
Read Yes to life: In Spite of Everything by Victor Frankl. Feeling disillusioned with life or wondering why we’re here? Read Yes to Life. You probably know Victor Frankl from his famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning.
Yes to Life holds up to that important work in its own right. In spite of seeing his family and friends perish in the Holocaust, Victor was still able to keep a hopeful outlook on life. While not a “self-help” book, this work provides grounding and a level of appreciation that is prolific.
I hope this post on discovering poignant reads to change your perspective has lead you to find words of wisdom that you needed to hear at the exact moment you needed it.
Let me know in the comments what other books have changed your perspective. I’d love to get other recommendations!
