My Favorite Self-Improvement and Personal Growth Books

I absolutely love a good self-improvement and personal growth book, and with the beginning of the year upon us and (hopefully) some downtime around the holidays to read, it felt like the right time to share my favorites with you. I also have a list of podcasts I listen to for this stuff (but if you want to see my general list of favorite podcasts, go here) too but I thought we’d start with books for now! I hope you pick one of these up and find it helpful!

4 of My Go-to Self-Improvement and Personal Growth Books

Presence
Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges by Amy Cuddy 

Everything that Amy writes in her book, I felt in the depths of my core… If you’ve ever struggled with absolutely crippling anxiety on stage, in front of your classmates or co-workers, giving presentations— absolutely anything “performative”. And also, if you have always desperately wanted to overcome that debilitating fear, then this is the book for you. Amy does all of the research and connects ALL of the dots in such a way that everything might finally make sense to you as to why you’ve been feeling like you do. At least that was my experience. And the best part is that it doesn’t have to be so damn painful. There IS a light at the end of the tunnel. She explains that with incremental changes and/or nudges, you can overcome these highly stressful situations and show up as the powerful and calm, collected self that you know you are. She has the actual solutions to help you succeed so that you can be more confident, and present, as well as have more presence, i.e.- “the state of being able to comfortably express our thoughts”. I really cannot recommend this book enough and as an analytical person, I love that it has both the scientific/biological, as well as the anecdotal evidence to back it up. This book made me feel understood and it changed my life with concrete steps to take action. 

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown

This was the first book my therapist ever had me read so you know it’s an important one lol. As a perfectionist who has always been very hard on myself (even as a child), and who constantly felt that I was never doing enough or living up to my own expectations or potential, it was fitting and timely that I read this book back in 2017. The Gifts of Imperfection is about authenticity and self-compassion. It’s about acceptance of the self, embracing your flaws, and allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Being yourself and not trying to be who everyone else (or even you) thinks that you need to be. I guess you could say it’s really a book about self-love. And in my experience, this is not a one-and-done read. I think no matter how much we all might intellectually get this concept, for many of us, it’s a work in progress because we tend to forget over and over again how to be compassionate towards ourselves since it doesn’t usually feel like the “productive” choice in the moment. But really, without self-compassion, I don’t think it’s possible to get through life pleasantly unless you want to white-knuckle your way through everything, and in my opinion, that is simply not sustainable. Everyone should read this book, and probably many more times than once. 

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

Another incredible and absolutely moving book by Brene Brown that will have you laughing and in tears. This one is about the connection between courage and vulnerability and how incredibly powerful and liberating it can be to step outside of your comfort zone even when you cannot predict the outcome. It’s about the growth, peace, and fulfillment that you can find when you make the choice to be authentic and brave, whether in your relationships, love life, career, life changes, or anything really…  “When we step back and examine our lives, we will find that nothing is as uncomfortable, dangerous, or hurtful as standing on the outside looking in and wondering what it would be like if we had the courage to step into the arena. Daring Greatly is a practice and a powerful vision for letting ourselves be seen.” – Brenebrown.com 

The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle 

As someone who suffers from anxiety, I go back to the principles of this book ALL OF THE TIME. It teaches you that anxiety is basically rooted in worrying about all of the things that happened in our past, and how those experiences cause us to worry about all of the things that can and might go wrong in the future. As humans (whether you have anxiety or not), we are constantly worrying in some way about the past and the future, whether we realize it subconsciously or not. You might think you know how to be “present”, but the reality is that most of us don’t even know what life would look like without worrying about our long to-do lists, what we did/ate/said/experienced an hour ago/yesterday/5 years ago/in high school… and similarly, what it would be like to not always be thinking about the many potential stressors of the future or of things just simply going wrong somehow whether big or small. This book retrains you to always come back to the present. Do you realize that things are typically never as bad as you think they are going to be or feel when it actually happens? Even in the worst of the worst-case scenarios, people at the pinnacle of the moment find the grit and wherewithal, and resilience to get through almost anything in life. It’s the anxiety leading up to these events that’s usually much worse than the actual traumatic event itself, and most of the time, the thing you’re MOST worried about, won’t even end up happening at all! SO much time in life is lost to not being present and we. ALL. do. this. This book is immensely important and really applies to every single person on the planet. It is such an important reminder to stop worrying, free yourself from anxiety, and live in the now. Simple but so poignant and necessary.

As you can see, these books have all changed my life. HIGHLY recommend giving them a read as you kick off the new year!

xx Farrah

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