Best Books to Read for Self Improvement
I t is easy to dismiss self-help books and those who read them. But not only do nosotros need serious self-assist, we must as well take self-help more seriously. Valued at $11bn (£8bn) worldwide, self-help is a major global industry. Information technology both reflects and generates many of our prevailing ideas about the self and well-nigh the cultures in which we live. The cocky-aid industry not only seeks to shape the style in which we think, experience and comport, but as well provides many of the core metaphors on which we rely to talk about our inner lives. Many of those metaphors, not least that of the mind as a computer that might require reprogramming, are at all-time unhelpful.
Critics of cocky-help believe that its current popularity is part of an all-pervasive neoliberal imperative to maximise efficiency. They encounter information technology as a sinister plot to straight all responsibility for our wellbeing dorsum upon ourselves. Self-aid, they feel, casts all our problems equally personal, and our failures equally owing to a lack of willpower and resilience, when they are in fact acquired by the politics of capitalism. But while this may be true of some cocky-help, the thought of cocky-comeback has a long and rich history, extending back to ancient wisdom traditions. The wish to improve ourselves is bound upwards with our need for self-cognition, for mastery and for transformation. It is a timeless desire and an essential part of what makes united states man.
And some self-improvement literature really can help the states to become better people. I mean ameliorate not in a competitive but in an ethical sense: the improved self is more than able to direct attention outwards, towards projects, other people and the communities of which we are a function.
i. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius (Advertizing 121–180) believed that all suffering is in our minds. Suffering is acquired not by external events but past our reactions to those events – by faulty judgments and unrealistic expectations. Given that most external events are beyond our control, Aurelius argues in his Meditations that it is pointless to worry about them. Our evaluations of these events, by contrast, are completely within our command. It follows that all our mental energies should exist directed inwards, with a view to controlling our minds. The key to a happy life, then, lies in adjusting our expectations, because "only a madman looks for figs in winter".
2. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D Burns (1980)
The scientific discipline underpinning Burns's book may no longer be cut-edge, just its core bulletin remains a powerfully relevant one. A more downwards-to-earth version of Stoicism, information technology is based on the bounds of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Feeling Skilful illustrates how our feelings are shaped by our thoughts, and contains some nifty techniques for training our minds to question negative thinking about ourselves and others.
3. The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris ( 2007)
Nosotros are, of course, not purely rational creatures. Sometimes our attempts to control our thoughts can become counter-productive. Here, Australian psychologist Harris explains the principles of acceptance and commitment therapy (Deed). He invites u.s.a. not to try to control our negative thoughts or uncomfortable feelings, only simply to de-fuse with them, to accept them and then to let them go. That way we take more than free energy to commit to value-based activity.
iv. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
Spiritual self-tillage through the art of letting go is the central theme of the Tao Te Ching (the classic study of "The Way and Virtue", normally dated to the sixth or quaternary century BC). In Daoism, letting go centres on the idea of offering no resistance to the natural club of things. It promotes a sophisticated form of submitting our volition to cosmic forces, by accepting what is and loosening our attachments to our desires and expectations of specific outcomes. The Tao suggests that nosotros can improve ourselves by returning to a simpler, more accurate and intuitive mode of life. A central concept is wu wei – "not-activeness" or "effortless action". Wu wei can perhaps all-time be described every bit a spiritual state marked by acceptance of what is and the absence of selfish desires.
five. The Power of At present: A Guide Book to Spiritual Enlightenment past Eckhart Tolle ( 1998 )
We are not our thoughts, argues Tolle in this bestselling book. Most of our thoughts, Tolle writes, revolve around the by or the hereafter. Our past furnishes usa with an identity, while the time to come holds "the promise of salvation". Both are illusions, considering the nowadays moment is all we always really have. Nosotros therefore need to learn to be present as "watchers" of our minds, witnessing our thought patterns rather than identifying with them. That way, we can relearn to alive truly in the now.
6. Altruism: The Science and Psychology of Kindness past Matthieu Ricard ( 2015)
In many theologies and wisdom traditions, altruism is the highest moral and spiritual value. More than recently, psychologists have shown that altruistic acts not just benefit the recipient but also pb those who perform them to be happier. Moreover, practising altruism, the French Buddhist monk Ricard argues, is the key non just to our personal happiness but too to solving our most pressing social, economic and environmental problems. Altruism enables united states of america "to connect harmoniously the challenges of the economy in the brusque term, quality of life in the mid-term, and our time to come surround in the long term".
7. Walden by Henry David Thoreau ( 1854)
The American transcendentalist philosopher Thoreau famously withdrew to a cabin in the woods well-nigh Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, where he sought to live merely and "deliberately". It was there that he developed the intriguing notion of "life toll" – the perfect antidote to unthinking materialism and the toxic Protestant work ethic to which so many of usa are notwithstanding enslaved. Near of us observe it normal to trade our life time for goods, assertive that productivity and success are secular signs of grace. Thoreau saw paid work as a necessary evil to which we should dedicate equally trivial fourth dimension every bit possible. His aim was not to work a single minute more than was necessary to cover his virtually basic living expenses, and to spend all his remaining time doing what he truly cherished.
8. Grit by Angela Duckworth (2017)
According to the psychologist Angela Duckworth, grit tops talent every fourth dimension. That is music to the ears of anyone inclined to identify with Aesop's plodding tortoise rather than the effortlessly speedy hare. "Our potential is ane thing. What nosotros do with information technology is quite some other," she writes. Here grit is a drive to improve both our skills and our performance past consistent effort. Gritty people are always eager to acquire and are driven past an enduring passion. They learn from their mistakes, have direction and live more coherent lives.
9. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri ( 1308–21 )
This 14th-century poem chronicles the gradual overcoming of the centre-aged and burned-out Dante'due south spiritual weariness. Guided by his mentor Virgil, he journeys from Hell to Paradise, where he is eventually reunited with his beloved Beatrice. The ballsy can exist read as a cautionary Christian tale or as an extended revenge fantasy in which many of Dante'due south personal enemies get their gruesome come-uppance. Just we can also read it as an archetypal story of spiritual growth and self-overcoming. The doubting Dante is systematically re-educated by his many encounters in Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. The inhabitants of Hell prove him how not to live his life, and the costs of their bad choices. In the cease, purged of his own weaknesses, Dante reaches a higher spiritual airplane and glimpses the divine.
10. The Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2100–1200 BCE)
Nigh all forms of self-improvement resemble a quest narrative or a heroic journeying. Such narratives testify the hero or heroine venturing into the unknown – a dark forest, an secret kingdom or the belly of a brute. There they come across obstacles and often have to battle with an enemy or a temptation. Having overcome these challenges, they return from their adventures transformed and fix to share what they have learned to help others. The oldest surviving narrative of this kind recounts how the formerly selfish Mesopotamian king Gilgamesh returns from the wilderness bearing the establish of eternal life. Rather than eating information technology himself, he shares his boon with his people.
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Anna Katharina Schaffner is Professor of Cultural History at the Academy of Kent. Her book The Art of Cocky-Improvement: 10 Timeless Truths is published by Yale University Printing.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/29/top-10-books-about-self-improvement-anna-katharina-schaffner-the-art-of-self-improvement-new-year-resolutions
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