How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t: 14 Habits that Are Holding You Back from Happiness


Andrea Owen - 2018
    From listening to the imposter complex and bitchy inner critic to catastrophizing and people-pleasing, Andrea Owen--a nationally sought-after life coach--crystallizes what's behind these invisible, undermining habits. With each chapter, she kicks women's gears out of autopilot and empowers them to create happier, more fulfilling lives. Powerfully on-the-mark, the chapters are short and digestible, nicely bypassing weighty examinations in favor of punch-points of awareness.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life


Mark Manson - 2016
    "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up.Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—"not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek.There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience. A much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-look-you-in-the-eye moment of real-talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is a refreshing slap for a generation to help them lead contented, grounded lives.

How to Be Here: A Guide to Creating a Life Worth Living


Rob Bell - 2016
    Whether it’s writing the next great American novel, starting a business, or joining a band, Rob Bell wants to help us make those dreams become reality. Our path is ours and ours alone to pursue, he reminds us, and in doing so, we derive great joy because we are living our passions.How to Be Here lays out concrete steps we can use to define and follow our dreams, interweaving engaging stories, lessons from biblical figures, insights gleaned from Rob’s personal experience, and practical advice. Rob gives you the support and insight you need to silence your critics, move from idea to action, take the first step, find joy in the work, persevere through hard times, and surrender to the outcome.Like Stephen Pressfield’s classic The War of Art, How to Be Here will inspire readers to seek the lives they were created to lead.

Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies about Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be


Rachel Hollis - 2018
    Now comes her highly anticipated first book featuring her signature combination of honesty, humor, and direct, no-nonsense advice.Each chapter of Girl, Wash Your Face begins with a specific lie Hollis once believed that left her feeling overwhelmed, unworthy, or ready to give up. As a working mother, a former foster parent, and a woman who has dealt with insecurities about her body and relationships, she speaks with the insight and kindness of a BFF, helping women unpack the limiting mind-sets that destroy their self-confidence and keep them from moving forward.From her temporary obsession with marrying Matt Damon to a daydream involving hypnotic iguanas to her son's request that she buy a necklace to "be like the other moms," Hollis holds nothing back. With unflinching faith and tenacity, Hollis spurs other women to live with passion and hustle and to awaken their slumbering goals.

Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment


Robert Wright - 2017
    The mind is designed to often delude us, he argued, about ourselves and about the world. And it is designed to make happiness hard to sustain. But if we know our minds are rigged for anxiety, depression, anger, and greed, what do we do? Wright locates the answer in Buddhism, which figured out thousands of years ago what scientists are only discovering now. Buddhism holds that human suffering is a result of not seeing the world clearly—and proposes that seeing the world more clearly, through meditation, will make us better, happier people. In Why Buddhism is True, Wright leads readers on a journey through psychology, philosophy, and a great many silent retreats to show how and why meditation can serve as the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age. At once excitingly ambitious and wittily accessible, this is the first book to combine evolutionary psychology with cutting-edge neuroscience to defend the radical claims at the heart of Buddhist philosophy. With bracing honesty and fierce wisdom, it will persuade you not just that Buddhism is true—which is to say, a way out of our delusion—but that it can ultimately save us from ourselves, as individuals and as a species.

How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self


Nicole LePera - 2021
    Nicole LePera often found herself frustrated by the limitations of traditional psychotherapy. Wanting more for her patients—and for herself—she began a journey to develop a united philosophy of mental, physical and spiritual wellness that equips people with the interdisciplinary tools necessary to heal themselves. After experiencing the life-changing results herself, she began to share what she’d learned with others—and soon “The Holistic Psychologist” was born.Now, Dr. LePera is ready to share her much-requested protocol with the world. In How to Do the Work, she offers both a manifesto for SelfHealing as well as an essential guide to creating a more vibrant, authentic, and joyful life. Drawing on the latest research from a diversity of scientific fields and healing modalities, Dr. LePera helps us recognize how adverse experiences and trauma in childhood live with us, resulting in whole body dysfunction—activating harmful stress responses that keep us stuck engaging in patterns of codependency, emotional immaturity, and trauma bonds. Unless addressed, these self-sabotaging behaviors can quickly become cyclical, leaving people feeling unhappy, unfulfilled, and unwell.

The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety


Alan W. Watts - 1951
    The Wisdom of Insecurity underlines the importance of our search for stability in an age where human life seems particularly vulnerable and uncertain. Watts argues our insecurity is the consequence of trying to be secure and that, ironically, salvation and sanity lie in the recognition that we have no way of saving ourselves.

Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving


Celeste Headlee - 2020
    We strive for the absolute best in every aspect of our lives, ignoring what we do well naturally. Why do we measure our time in terms of efficiency instead of meaning? Why can't we just take a break?In Do Nothing, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside and start living instead of doing. The key lies in embracing what makes us human: our creativity, our social connections (Instagram doesn't count), our ability for reflective thought, and our capacity for joy. Celeste's strategies will allow you to regain control over your life and break your addiction to false efficiency, including:-Increase your time perception and determine how your hours are being spent. -Stop comparing yourself to others.-Invest in quality idle time. Take a hot bath and listen to music.-Spend face-to-face time with friends and familyIt's time to recover our leisure time and reverse the trend that's making us all sadder, sicker, and less productive.

The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You


Elaine N. Aron - 1996
    In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Elaine Aron, a clinical psychologist, workshop leader, and an HSP herself, shows you how to identify this trait in yourself and make the most of it in everyday situations. Drawing on her many years of research and hundreds of interviews, she shows how you can better understand yourself and your trait to create a fuller, richer life.

Who Will Cry When You Die?


Robin S. Sharma - 1999
    Specific lessons include how to: "Discover Your Calling," "See Your Troubles as Blessings," "Enjoy the Path, Not Just the Rewards," and "Live Fully So You Can Die Happy." This is a truly remarkable book that you will treasure for a lifetime!

Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment


Tal Ben-Shahar - 2007
    . . according to the teacher of Harvard University's most popular and life-changing course. One out of every five Harvard students has lined up to hear Tal Ben-Shahar's insightful and inspiring lectures on that ever-elusive state: HAPPINESS.HOW? Grounded in the revolutionary "positive psychology" movement, Ben-Shahar ingeniously combines scientific studies, scholarly research, self-help advice, and spiritual enlightenment. He weaves them together into a set of principles that you can apply to your daily life. Once you open your heart and mind to Happier 's thoughts, you will feel more fulfilled, more connected . . . and, yes, HAPPIER."Dr. Ben-Shahar, one of the most popular teachers in Harvard's recent history, has written a personal, informed, and highly enjoyable primer on how to become happier. It would be wise to take his advice." --Ellen J. Langer, author of "Mindfulness" and "On Becoming an Artist""This fine book shimmers with a rare brand of good sense that is imbedded in scientific knowledge about how to increase happiness. It is easy to see how this is the backbone of the most popular course at Harvard today." --Martin E. P. Seligman, author of "Authentic Happiness"

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living


Dale Carnegie - 1944
    Also, the golden rule for conquering worry, keeping your energy & spirits high.The book consists of some True Stories which will help the readers in conquering worry to lead you to success in life.The book is full of similar incidences and narrations which will make our readers to understand the situation in an easy way and lead a happy life. A must read book for everyone.

Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill


Matthieu Ricard - 2003
    Wealth? Fitness? Career success? How can we possibly place these above true and lasting well-being? Drawing from works of fiction and poetry, Western philosophy, Buddhist beliefs, scientific research, and personal experience, Ricard weaves an inspirational and forward-looking account of how we can begin to rethink our realities in a fast-moving modern world. With its revelatory lessons and exercises, Happiness is an eloquent and stimulating guide to a happier life.

Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within


Chade-Meng Tan - 2016
    Explaining joy and meditation as complementary things that naturally reinforce each other, Meng explains how these two skills form a virtuous cycle, and once put into motion, become a solid practice that can be sustained in daily life. For many years, meditation has been taught and practiced in cultures where almost all meditators practice full-time for years, resulting in training programs optimized for practitioners with lots of free time and not much else to do but develop profound mastery over the mind. Seeing a disconnect between the traditional practice and the modern world, bestselling author and Google’s “Jolly Good Fellow” Chade-Meng Tan has developed a program, through “wise laziness,” to help readers meditate more efficiently and effectively. Meng shares the three pillars of joy (inner peace, insight, and happiness), why joy is the secret is to success, and demonstrates the practical tools anyone can use to cultivate it on demand.

Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic


Esther Perel - 2006
    She invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home.In her 20 years of clinical experience, Perel has treated hundreds of couples whose home lives are empty of passion. They describe relationships that are open and loving, yet sexually dull. What is going on?In this explosively original book, Perel explains that our cultural penchant for equality, togetherness, and absolute candor is antithetical to erotic desire for both men and women. Sexual excitement doesn't always play by the rules of good citizenship. It is politically incorrect. It thrives on power plays, unfair advantages, and the space between self and other. More exciting, playful, even poetic sex is possible, but first we must kick egalitarian ideals and emotional housekeeping out of our bedrooms.While Mating in Captivity shows why the domestic realm can feel like a cage, Perel's take on bedroom dynamics promises to liberate, enchant, and provoke. Flinging the doors open on erotic life and domesticity, she invites us to put the "X" back in sex.©2006 Esther Perel (P)2006 HarperCollins Publishers