Best Books to Boost Your Mental Health
A collection of the best mental health books. I've been rescued countless times by these books. The structure is based on the incredible Lost Connections by Johann Hari.
You can find a link to each of the best mental health books below. You'll also find many of these summarised in this collection of book summaries.
I'd love to hear your suggestions on LinkedIn too.
📚 Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope
📚 Story Driven: You don't need to compete when you know who you are
📚 Ego is the Enemy: The Fight to Master Our Greatest Opponent
📚 Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues
📚 Billy No-Mates: How I Realised Men Have a Friendship Problem
📚 Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think
by Johann Hari
Depression and anxiety are now at epidemic levels. Why? Across the world, scientists have uncovered evidence for nine different causes. Some are in our biology, but most are in the way we are living today.
Lost Connections offers a radical new way of thinking about this crisis. It shows that once we understand the real causes, we can begin to turn to pioneering new solutions - ones that offer real hope.
by David Schwartz
First published in 1959, David J Schwartz's classic teachings are as powerful today as they were then. Practical, empowering and hugely engaging, this book will not only inspire you, it will give you the tools to change your life for the better - starting from now.
by Bernadette Jiwa
Every one of us—regardless of where we were born, how we were brought up, how many setbacks we’ve endured or privileges we’ve been afforded—has been conditioned to compete to win. Ironically, the people who create fulfilling lives and careers—the ones we respect, admire and try to emulate—choose an alternative path to success. They have a powerful sense of identity. They don’t worry about differentiating themselves from the competition or obsess about telling the right story. They tell the real story instead. Successful organisations and the people who create, build and lead them don’t feel the need to compete, because they know who they are and they’re not afraid to show us.
by Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl was uniquely able to observe the way that both he and others in Auschwitz coped (or didn't) with the experience. He noticed that it was the men who comforted others and who gave away their last piece of bread who survived the longest - and who offered proof that everything can be taken away from us except the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances.
by Daniel Pink
Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people - at work, at school, at home. It is wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his paradigm-shattering book Drive, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and the world.
by Mark Manson
For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "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.
by Dr. Julie Smith
Drawing on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, online sensation Dr Julie Smith shares all the skills you need to get through life's ups and downs.
Filled with secrets from a therapist's toolkit, this is a must-have handbook for optimising your mental health. Dr Julie's simple but expert advice and powerful coping techniques will help you stay resilient no matter what life throws your way.
by Ryan Holiday
It's wrecked the careers of promising young geniuses. It's evaporated great fortunes and run companies into the ground. It's made adversity unbearable and turned struggle into shame. Every great philosopher has warned against it, in our most lasting stories and countless works of art, in all culture and all ages. Its name? Ego, and it is the enemy - of ambition, of success and of resilience.
📚 Spinning Threads of Radical Aliveness: Transcending the Legacy of Separation in Our Individual Lives
by Miki Kashtan
Here is a different story about who we are, why we got here, and what we can do to move towards our longings for a different world. In her debut publication, Spinning Threads of Radical Aliveness, internationally known thinker and trainer Miki Kashtan puts forth the bold vision that we can live with integrity, even in a world that has betrayed our deepest hopes for the future. The key she offers for opening the door to deep changes at all levels is to embrace a major transformation in our relationship with our deepest needs and values.
by Carole Robin, David Bradford
David Bradford and Carole Robin taught interpersonal skills to MBA candidates for a combined seventy-five years on their legendary Stanford Graduate School of Business course, "Interpersonal Dynamics". Now, in Connect, they share their time-tested strategies for developing the interpersonal skills that have become fundamental to success at work and in our everyday lives, such as building trust, giving feedback and navigating conflict.
by Dale Carnegie
Millions of people around the world have improved their lives based on the teachings of Dale Carnegie. In How to Win Friends and Influence People, he offers practical advice and techniques, in his exuberant and conversational style, for how to get out of a mental rut and make life more rewarding.
by Jonathan Taylor-Cummings, Dr Andrea Taylor-Cummings
The quality of our relationships impacts just about everything that really matters most. They impact how we “show up” and what we are able to achieve – at home, at work and in life. They impact our health and wellbeing, and ultimately, they determine the quality of our very lives. But successful relationships don’t just happen automatically. They take work. The problem is, often we have no idea what to work on!
by Max Dickins
When Max Dickins decided to propose to his girlfriend, he realised there was no one he could call on to be his best man.
He quickly learned that he wasn't the only man struggling with friendships. For decades, countless studies from across the world have confirmed that men have fewer close friends than women - and the problem gets worse the older men get. But what goes wrong? And what can men do about it? Dickins is going to find out.
by Paul Coelho
A global phenomenon, The Alchemist has been read and loved by over 62 million readers, topping bestseller lists in 74 countries worldwide. Now this magical fable is beautifully repackaged in an edition that lovers of Paulo Coelho will want to treasure forever.
Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book – a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life’s path and, above all, follow your dreams.
by Hans Rosling
The international bestseller, inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world, and make you realise things are better than you thought.
by Eckhart Tolle
To make the journey into The Power of Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle offers simple language and a question-and-answer format to show us how to silence our thoughts and create a liberated life.
Surrender to the present moment, where problems do not exist. It is here we find our joy, are able to embrace our true selves and discover that we are already complete and perfect.
by Mo Gawdat
One of Solve for Happy's key premises is that happiness is a default state. If we shape expectations to acknowledge the full range of possible events, unhappiness is on its way to being defeated. To steer clear of unhappiness traps, we must dispel the six illusions that cloud our thinking (e.g., the illusion of time, of control, and of fear); overcome the brain's seven deadly defects (e.g., the tendency to exaggerate, label, and filter), and embrace five ultimate truths (e.g., change is real, now is real, unconditional love is real).