Self help books to change your life?

Also, if you smoke, Alan Carr's book on how to give up smoking works like magic. I went from 30 a day to none at all before I was half way through the book, even though he suggests you keep smoking until you finish reading. Cigarettes just revolted me by the time I was a few chapters in, despite having smoked pretty heavily for a decade.

It's an old one and may be dated (not read it in decades) but I learned so much from Feel the Fear by Susan Jeffers. I still return to some of the key exercises in it and I've taught them to DC and to friends and students who all appreciate them. It transformed my approach to life in my twenties in terms of making key life decisions and also teaching me how to build and live a really full life. I'm coming back to it now DC are grown, to rebuild a full life now most of it isn't taken up with parenting. Her advice is just timeless and brilliant.

I also found The Road Less Travelled useful. Lots about it that I dislike, but Scott Peck was the first person to point out to me that real love begins after the 'in love' phase. I had been drifting from relationship to relationship as soon as the 'in love' feeling ended, with a real fear and distaste for any sort of cosiness or domesticity. I learned to overcome that and although the first LTR I stuck with was disastrous, the next one was DH.

Listen to rangan chatterjees podcast he interviews so many different inspirational people and has written books too.. I was listening to his most recent epsiode with someone called Kirsty Gallagher and it was really interesting and well worth a listen for self help

The Let Them theory by Mel Robbins. Not even finished it yet and already changed my life. Even got DH saying ‘let them’ if I forget
myself and start to get annoyed.

I have it on audible and listen to a chapter at a time and am incorporating it into my life slowly

I liked The Happiness Project by Gretchin Rubin.

It's not really a self help book as much as it is an account of her trying 12 different ways to improve her own happiness for a month at a time and reflecting on it but I took a lot from it and really enjoyed it as a book.

I think the problem with a lot of self help books is that they are a reasonable concept but the author tries to stretch it ridiculously out to fix every single problem in the world and nothing really works like that.

I like books where the author recounts their own journey or experience somehow in some detail, that is the most useful thing IME.

I like both The happiness trap and Atomic habits.

I also just read Don't believe everything you think.

Atomic Habits is really excellent. It helped me a huge amount.