In the words of Dr. Seuss,
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go.
No-Nonsense Personal Development Books for Women
Can we really change our lives just by reading a book? I believe so. Good books are like good conversations – you can gain insights into your own life by listening to the experiences of another. If you are a believer in life-long learning and personal development, you will enjoy this list of 30 personal development books for women that offer practical, no-nonsense advice.
From confidence and self-esteem, the mindset of money, health, relationships, and spirituality, there’s something for every woman on a journey of growth, self-discovery, and life-long learning.
Spirituality
The Alchemist ANNIVERSARY EDITION Edition by Paulo Coelho published by HarperCollins (2006)
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho continues to change the lives of its readers forever. With more than two million copies sold around the world, The Alchemist has established itself as a modern classic, universally admired.
Paulo Coelho’s masterpiece tells the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found.
The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories can, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, above all, following our dreams.
Man’s Search for Meaning
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it,
Confidence and Self-Esteem
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
In her ten guideposts, Brown engages our minds, hearts, and spirits as she explores how we can cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, “No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough,” and to go to bed at night thinking, “Yes, I am sometimes afraid, but I am also brave. And, yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am worthy of love and belonging.”
The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know
Following the success of Lean In and Why Women Should Rule the World, the authors of the bestselling Womenomics provide an informative and practical guide to understanding the importance of confidence—and learning how to achieve it—for women of all ages and at all stages of their career.
Confident You: An Introvert’s Guide to Success in Life and Business
Introversion can be a good thing. Without introverts, society would be full of outgoing and social people but a lot fewer artists, analysts, scientists, doctors, writers, engineers, and designers. On the other hand, the world often celebrates and rewards extroverts, often leaving introverts out in the cold.
Instead of trying to make you an extrovert, the goal of “Confident You” is to help you capitalize on all the positive aspects of being an introvert, while helping you overcome the less positive aspects of introversion.
Happiness
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking
Oliver Burkeman introduces us to an unusual group of people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. Whether experimental psychologists, terrorism experts, Buddhists, hardheaded business consultants, Greek philosophers, or modern-day gurus, they argue that in our personal lives, and in society at large, it’s our constant effort to be happy that is making us miserable. And that there is an alternative path to happiness and success that involves embracing failure, pessimism, insecurity, and uncertainty―the very things we spend our lives trying to avoid. Thought-provoking, counterintuitive, and ultimately uplifting, The Antidote is the intelligent person’s guide to understanding the much-misunderstood idea of happiness.
Finely Tuned: How To Thrive As A Highly Sensitive Person or Empath
As a sensitive person, you may believe you’re weak and less resilient than others. This belief may have been reinforced all of your life, but nothing could be further from the truth. Highly sensitive people and empaths are gifted with unique skills making them more creative, intuitive, conscientious, and empathic.
The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World (Art of Happiness Book)
Through conversations, stories, and meditations, the Dalai Lama shows us how to defeat day-to-day anxiety, insecurity, anger, and discouragement. Together with Dr. Howard Cutler, he explores many facets of everyday life, including relationships, loss, and the pursuit of wealth, to illustrate how to ride through life’s obstacles on a deep and abiding source of inner peace. Based on 2,500 years of Buddhist meditations mixed with a healthy dose of common sense, The Art of Happiness is a book that crosses the boundaries of traditions to help readers with difficulties common to all human beings.
Life Passion and Purpose
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah’s Book Club, Selection 61)
Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence.
Illuminating, enlightening, and uplifting, A New Earth is a profoundly spiritual manifesto for a better way of life—and for building a better world.
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Sandberg is chief operating officer of Facebook and coauthor of Option B with Adam Grant. In 2010, she gave an electrifying TED talk in which she described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers.Written with humor and wisdom, Lean In is a revelatory, inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth that will empower women around the world to achieve their full potential.
The Success Principles – 10th Anniversary Edition: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be
The Success Principles will teach you how to increase your confidence, tackle daily challenges, live with passion and purpose, and realize all your ambitions.
A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings
The Sufi mystic Rumi offers insights into the divine within us and around us. Delightful.
Mindfulness and Habits
Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Dr. Kabat-Zinn has taught this two-thousand-year-old Buddhist method of relaxation to thousands of patients. Through mindfulness, one makes every moment count. By “capturing” the present and living fully within each moment, one can reduce anxiety, achieve inner peace, and enrich the quality of life.
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
A word of mouth phenomenon since its first publication, The Power of Now is one of those rare books with the power to create an experience in readers, one that can radically change their lives for the better.
Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results (Volume 1)
You can succeed without the guilt, intimidation, and repeated failure associated with such strategies as “getting motivated,” New Year’s Resolutions, or even “just doing it.” In fact, you need to stop using those strategies if they aren’t giving you great results. They don’t work because they all require you to fight against your subconscious brain (a fight not easily won). It’s only when you start playing by your brain’s rules and taking your human limitations seriously–as mini habits show you how to do–that you can achieve lasting change.
The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)
What if you could wake up tomorrow and any—or EVERY—area of your life was beginning to transform? What would you change? The Miracle Morning is already transforming the lives of tens of thousands of people around the world by showing them how to wake up each day with more ENERGY, MOTIVATION, and FOCUS to take your life to the next level. It’s been right here in front of us all along, but this book has finally brought it to life.
Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Walking into our stories of hurt can feel dangerous. But the process of regaining our footing in the midst of struggle is where our courage is tested and our values are forged. Our stories of struggle can be big ones, like the loss of a job or the end of a relationship, or smaller ones, like a conflict with a friend or colleague. Regardless of magnitude or circumstance, the rising strong process is the same: We reckon with our emotions and get curious about what we’re feeling; we rumble with our stories until we get to a place of truth; and we live this process, every day, until it becomes a practice and creates nothing short of a revolution in our lives. Rising strong after a fall is how we cultivate wholeheartedness. It’s the process, Brown writes, that teaches us the most about who we are.
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. As Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.
Simple Living
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house “spark joy” (and which don’t), this international bestseller featuring Tokyo’s newest lifestyle phenomenon will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home—and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.
Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World
This ground breaking work goes beyond the books that tell you how to simplify your life. This book reveals what has happened in the lives of real people who have done it. Based on the author’s three-year study of over 200 people from 40 states and eight countries, Choosing Simplicity is a delightful and rich blend of real-life profiles and guidelines on simplicity. Interwoven throughout the stories are the author’s insights and lessons to guide those who want to explore simplicity and to sustain those who have already embarked on this journey.
The More of Less: Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own
Most of us know we own too much stuff. We feel the weight and burden of our clutter, and we tire of cleaning and managing and organizing.
While excess consumption leads to bigger houses, faster cars, fancier technology, and cluttered homes, it never brings happiness. Rather, it results in a desire for more. It redirects our greatest passions to things that can never fulfill. And it distracts us from the very life we wish we were living.
In The More of Less, Joshua Becker helps you…
• Recognize the life-giving benefits of owning less
• Realize how all the stuff you own is keeping you from pursuing your dreams
• Craft a personal, practical approach to decluttering your home and life
• Experience the joys of generosity
• Learn why the best part of minimalism isn’t a clean house, it’s a full life
The beauty of minimalism isn’t in what it takes away. It’s in what it gives.
Finances
In an age of great economic uncertainty when everyone is concerned about money and how they spend what they have, this updated edition of the bestselling Your Money or Your Life is an essential read. Millennial Money‘s Grant explains: “The premise of it is that you exchange your time for money. And when you start thinking about how many hours of your life it took to save up the money to buy something, you really start thinking twice about your purchases.”
In Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin shows readers how to gain control of their money and finally begin to make a life, rather than just make a living.
Sacred Success: A Course in Financial Miracles
Barbara Stanny, the leading expert on women and money, has helped women take control of their finances for two decades—and she knows there is much more to success than how much you earn. In her work with powerful, successful women over the last 20 years, bestselling author and financial educator Stanny has found that most women’s problems with money have little to do with money itself, but rather with their fear of, or ambivalence toward, power. Instead of pushing women to pursue financial success in the traditional fashion, Sacred Success seeks to redefine power from a feminine perspective.
More than a financial guide, Sacred Success is a primer on power for women—a tutorial for taking charge of your life by taking charge of your finances, and not only growing your money but creating a deeper, richer, and more meaningful life. Best described as “A Course in Miraclesmeets the Wall Street Journal,” Sacred Success gives you a proven process that uniquely blends the practical, psychological, and spiritual work of wealth.
All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan
You work hard and try to save money, so why is there never enough to cover all the bills, to put some away in your child’s college fund, to pay off your credit card debt—or to relax and have some fun, for once? In the New York Times bestseller All Your Worth, mother/daughter team Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi—authors of the acclaimed The Two-Income Trap—tell you the truth about money. The authors lay out a groundbreaking approach to getting control of your money so you can finally start building the life you’ve always wanted. The result of more than twenty years of intensive research, All Your Worth offers you a step-by-step plan that will let you master your finances—for the rest of your life.
The secret? It’s simple, really: get your money in balance. Warren and Tyagi show you how to balance your money into three essential parts: the Must-Haves (the bills you have to pay every month), the Wants (some fun money for right now), and your Savings (to build a better tomorrow). No complicated budgets, no keeping track of every penny. Warren and Tyagi will show you a whole new way of looking at money—and yourself—that will help you get your finances on track so you can enjoy peace of mind for the rest of your life.
Worth It: Your Life, Your Money, Your Terms
Worth It outlines the essential financial information women need—and everything the institutions and advisors don’t spell out. Steinberg gets to the bottom of why women are stressed and anxious when it comes to their finances and teaches them to stay away from strict budgeting and other harsh austerity practices. Instead, she makes money relatable, while sharing strategies she uses herself to build confidence and ease in her own financial life. Through her first-hand experiences and the stories from other women who’ve woken up, Steinberg’s powerful and encouraging advice can help women of any age and income view money as a source of freedom and independence—and create bright financial futures.
Health
The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution: A Proven 4-Week Program to Rescue Your Metabolism, Hormones, Mind & Mood
Weight gain, fatigue, brain fog, hormonal imbalances, and autoimmune conditions—for years, health practitioners have commonly viewed each as individual health problems resulting from a patient’s genetic bad luck, poor lifestyle choices, or lack of willpower. Patients, too, have turned to different doctors to alleviate their specific symptoms: an endocrinologist for a thyroid problem; a gynecologist for hormonal issues; an internist for weight, diabetes, and high blood pressure; a rheumatologist for joint problems, and even to therapists or psychologists.
While these ailments may seem unrelated, Dr. Aviva Romm contends that they are intrinsically connected by what she calls Survival Overdrive Syndrome, a condition that occurs when the body becomes overloaded.
The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution explains SOS, how it impacts our bodies and can lead to illness, and most importantly, offers a drug-free cure developed through Dr. Romm’s research and clinical work with tens of thousands of patients. In as little as two weeks, you can lose excess weight, discover increased energy, improve sleep, and feel better. With The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution, you can rescue your metabolism, hormones, mind and mood—and achieve long-lasting health.
You Can Heal Your Life
Excerpt from You Can Heal Your Life:
Life Is Really Very Simple. What We Give Out, We Get Back
What we think about ourselves becomes the truth for us. I believe that everyone, myself included, is responsible for everything in our lives, the best and the worst. Every thought we think is creating our future. Each one of us creates our experiences by our thoughts and our feelings.
Hashimoto’s Protocol: A 90-Day Plan for Reversing Thyroid Symptoms and Getting Your Life Back
Diagnosed with Hashimoto’s at twenty-seven, pharmacist Dr. Izabella Wentz knows first-hand the effects of the disease, as well as the value—and limitations—of medication. The key to improved health, she argues, involves lifestyle interventions. In Hashimoto’s Protocol, she outlines a proven treatment that has helped thousands heal and many others feel better—in as fast as ninety days.
Grounded in the latest science, Hashimoto’s Protocol is the first book to offer a proven protocol by an acknowledged expert in the field to treat this condition and help sufferers reclaim their lives.
Relationships
Women Who Love Too Much: When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He’ll Change
Inspiring, practical program for women who believe that being in love means being in pain. Presents a clear, comprehensive, 10-point recovery plan for women who are addicted to the wrong men for the wrong reasons.
The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts
Dr. Gary Chapman’s approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner—starting today.
The 5 Love Languages is as practical as it is insightful. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work.
What are your favorites? Leave a comment and let me know what I missed!
~ Michelle
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Seeking Joyful Simplicity is about living your best life after 40. I write about using a holistic approach combining herbal remedies, nourishing foods, and self-care to reduce overwhelm, manage our weight, and enjoy more vibrant health in our 40's, 50's, and beyond.
Great collection. Although these books have been listed for women, but many of them are relevant for men too. The Power of Habit is one of my personal favorites. It has really helped me to become a better person. You can also include “The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck”. That’s a wonderful book. I love it.
You are right, many of these are great for men too. I have “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” on my list to read, but haven’t gotten to it yet. Haven’t heard of “The Power of Habit”, but I will check it out. Thanks for visiting!