Lit List: Top Ten Self-Help Books To Help Make A New Start In The New Year

Lit Top Ten Self-Help Books That Help Make A New Start In The New Year by Julie Sara Porter, Bookworm Reviews

January is the perfect time to make goals and resolutions towards the New Year. Maybe to get that dream job, spend more time with the family, stop smoking, live a healthier lifestyle or be more spiritually involved. Maybe we don't always follow through those goals or the results aren't what we expect. But each new year brings a promise to start again and become a different person.

I have made a list of 10 of the best Self-Help books to improve our lives. Some offer practical advice and applications on how to get along in the world. Others are more spiritual and esoteric offering inner possibilities in how to feel attuned with one's inner self. Some may work and some may not. The true test of any Self-Help book is within the Reader and whether it works for them. It all depends on you.

10.The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle

Sometimes we get overwhelmed by the guilt from the past and the anxieties of the future. Eckhart Tolle's book suggests that it's too late to change the past and too early to plan for the future, so what we can change is our consciousness, to live in what Tolle calls "The Now."

In his introduction, Tolle writes that this book's Genesis began when a depressed Tolle contemplated suicide. He thought that he couldn't live with himself, then pondered that sentence. There must be two beings Tolle and the "I" Tolle could not live with. The "I", Tolle realized was the Ego, the part to Tolle's soul that contained all of his doubt, skepticism, thought, selfishness that kept him grounded in despair.

Tolle's writing tells Readers that to truly live in the present time, "The Now" without past guilt and future worries, they must slowly remove the doubt and superficial worries and emotions from the mind. Once they ascend to higher consciousness then the spirit can achieve Enlightenment.

Some of Tolle's writing is very esoteric and hard to follow. He helps by formatting the book into a Q and A style. Tolle gathers questions from Readers and students and answers them such as "Nobody's life is entirely free of pain and sorrow. Isn't it a question of learning to live with them rather than trying to avoid them?" Tolle answers "The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind ruins your life." Human pain develops because of the intensity of negativity caused by the Ego's control over the present, making the person think that the pain is insurmountable. The Questions and Answer-format makes Tolle's work a How-to book to achieving Enlightenment.




9. The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F$#k: A Counterintuitive Approach To Living A Good Life by Mark Manson

By it's title alone, The Reader can certainly infer that Mark Manson's book is different from the rest of the books on this list, indeed most Self-Help books and they would be right. It is a parody of most Self-Help books but it also gives equally good advice about how we can learn as much through failure as we can with success.

Manson uses humor to maintain his various points such as warning of the dangers of childhood lessons of being told 'you're Special" leading to a sense of entitlement. He cites a friend, Jimmy, who would talk a good game about motivation and business ventures, always positive, but at heart he was a thief, a lecher, a con artist and a deadbeat. Manson sums up the lesson : "Don't be a Jimmy."

While the suggestions like "Don't Try", "The Values of Suffering" and"Failure is the Way Forward", one would think Manson's book is very cynical, but in a way it is just as uplifting as the other books on this list. It acknowledges what most books don't. Sometimes we will fail. Sometimes even when we get what think we want there will be difficulties. (Getting married will lead to a lack of privacy, the dream job could come with weird hours or a toxic work environment.) 

The key isn't to ignore the failures and setbacks, but to accept them and learn from them. Sometimes Manson says, it is the failures and our responses to them that make us better people.




8. The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel Ruiz-

The Toltecs were a group of artists and thinkers who lived thousands of years ago and studied wisdom outside present Mexico City  Even though they went into hiding because of the conquistadors, the generations passed that wisdom by Masters called naguals.
Ruiz, a Nagual from the Eagle Knight lineage shares that wisdom in this brief but simple book about the Agreements one must make with the Universe to be free of suffering and filled with true happiness.

The Four Agreements sound simple enough but Ruiz proves that sometimes the simplest answers are the hardest for Readers to see and to live by. The Four Agreements are: To Be Impeccable With Your Word (Speak with integrity and avoid hateful words and gossip), Don't Take Anything Personally (What others do is a projection of their own reality, so don't let their views bring your reality down), Don't Make Assumptions (Express yourself as clearly as you can. Find the courage to ask questions), and Always Do Your Best (Whatever the circumstances and your health, do the best you can.).

 Ruiz shows how people can relate to others and what long-term effects can form from  following or not following these Agreements For example, a mother angrily told her daughter that she couldn't sing. Using the mother's choice to not be impeccable with her word and the daughter taking what her mother said personally led to years of discomfort and the girl's fear of singing based on a few short angry words. A good example of following the Agreements is of a Guru Master telling his student that if he does his best by meditating four hours a day, he will achieve Englightenment in ten years. But any longer, say 8 hours and the man will forgo joy, life, and happiness-things that make life worth living and grow tired of only following a spirit-centered life.

The Four Agreements use such principles as honesty, kindness, strength, and courage to produce wisdom allowing Readers to communicate in a way that spreads true love and happiness in others and themselves.

7. The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life by  Deepak Chopra

We couldn't get through this list without mentioning at least one book by Deepak Chopra. The physician-turned-alternative medicine- advocate's books have been an inspiration to many people. The Book of Secrets offers various secrets that use both scientific and spiritual concepts to help Readers receive more fulfilling meaningful life.

In various chapters, Chopra uses his medical and scientific background to illustrate the more esoteric spiritual ideals. In the chapter "The World is In You", Chopra explains how the cells in the human body adapt, change, and work together to Illustrated how people can work with each other and adapt themselves to create a better world.

In another chapter, Chopra cites various mysteries in nature such as albatrosses locating their babies among similar chicks or identical twins separated at birth but living similar lives. He uses these natural mysteries to reveal the awareness around us and how we can use that awareness that comes from thought, instinct, history, and knowledge to receive Wisdom.

Matching Science with Spirituality, Chopra uses both sides of the philosophies towards the Universe and shows that the secrets of living a better more fulfilling life are all around us.





6. Sail Into Your Dreams: 8 Steps to Living a More Purposeful Life by Karen Mehringer

Some Self-Help authors have gone through such a transformation that they want to share it with their Readers in hopes they will learn from their experience and follow a path to happiness and fulfillment. Such an experience happened to Karen Mehringer, psychotherapist and author of Sail Into Your Dreams: 8 Steps to Living a More Purposeful Life. She and her husband, John left their corporate lives in Seattle to take a 6 month journey by boat. This journey and living in their preferred environments of the mountainous Colorado and the coastal California gave the Readers a beautiful journey to read and steps on how they can achieve their dreams.

Some of Mehringer's writing gives evocative descriptions of her voyage. A suspenseful night of sailing through the ocean away from the shores recalls the advice of leaving the Comfort Zone. A moment where she sees a bird on still water leads to advice on living simply without distractions provided by TV, cell phones, and the Internet.

The book isn't just about Mehringer's journey but all of ours as we seek to accomplish our goals. Mehringer includes exercises in which The Reader can account the many self-doubts, addictions, and nay-sayers that hold them back and visualizations in which they can project themselves living their dreams, happy and fulfilled.

Mehringer's book provides tools for Readers to follow their dreams and a beautiful journey to picture while they achieve it.

5. A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

Tolle's book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose is a continuation to his The Power of Now. The previous book identified the conflict between the Self and the Ego. A New Earth builds on that book. It gives us the various ways that the Ego tries to take control of our lives and how we can challenge it to discover our life's purpose.

The chapters identify the various traps the Ego falls into such as attachment to things and the illusion of ownership ("Many people don't realize until they are on their deathbed and everything external falls away that no thing ever had anything to do with who they are."). Complaining, resentment, and jealousy are other traps that the Ego falls into because they fall into hatred and name calling. ("Name-calling is the crudest form of such labeling and of the Ego's need to be right and triumph over others.") Another is to carry previous pain and hurt with you to what Tolle calls the pain-body. ("Every thought feeds the pain-body and in turn the pain-body generates more thoughts. After a few hours, a few days it has replenished itself and returns to it's dormant stage ")

Once those Ego Traps are removed, Tolle writes that we can see our inner purpose and that we can use it to create A New Earth , not a Utopia Tolle insists. But to recognize your inner purpose is whatever gives a person fulfillment and can be passed on to others. The New Earth is created, Tolle believes when we recognize the spiritual self in ourselves and in others around us.

4. Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O'Donohue

The words Anam Cara mean "Soul Friend" in Irish. It is a beautiful concept in which one friend acts as a confidant and confessor to another. The friends share secrets, wishes, guilt, and desires. John O'Donohue captured the concept of "Soul Friend" to give wisdom to the Reader so they can be their own Anam Cara.

The book, Anam Cara, is filled with beautiful poetic wisdom that O'Donohue gathered from literature, folklore, and his own observations traveling through his home country. O'Donohue's writing is descriptive and fills the Reader with a spiritual connection to the words. In describing light on the dawn, he writes, "When you attend to the way the dawn comes, you learn how the light can coax the dark. The first fingers of light appear on the horizon, and ever so deftly and gradually, they pull the mantle of darkness away from the world."

The book explores the concepts of Friendship, The Senses, Solitude, Work, Aging, and Death in little passages that elaborate on the concepts. For example, The Senses chapter has sections which elaborate on the gifts of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. These passages make the Reader take a moment to explore the world around them with each sense.

O'Donohue also is familiar with Irish folk tales and uses them to illustrate his concepts. The tale of Fionn Macchumail gaining the gift of wisdom from a magical salmon that another man had been looking for for seven years shows how the linear mind can sometimes miss a gift. Sometimes the gifts come when we aren't looking for them.

Though a small book, Anam Cara is filled with beauty, love, wisdom, and gentle reminder on how to accept love around us.

3. The Creative Process: Reflections on Invention In The Arts and Sciences Edited by Brewster Ghiselin

Some Self-Help Books guide by teaching offering suggestions and advice on how to live a better life. Others guide by doing, showing how the author changed their lives thereby leading by example. The anthology, The Creative Process, falls into the latter category.

This informative book is filled with essays, letters, and excerpts from various people to show how they create. The chapters are written by mathematicians, scientists, composers, artists, novelists, and others who discuss how they created their works and how their minds worked in the process.

Some claim their creations came divinely inspired with little correction. In a letter to a friend, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said that he didn't know where his musical inspiration came from. He only knows that he heard a tune in his head and put it down to paper and that what he composed was never different from what he imagined.
Poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge says that the inspiration for his poem, Kubla Khan, came from a dream. He wrote most of the lines down verbatim from his dream. If not for a persistent and pesky salesman, he would have remembered more of the dream and wrote down more of the poem.

Some of the authors recount their creativity, not from Divine Inspiration, but from hard work and constant revision. In writing a poem, Stephen Spender, wrote of visiting a Confederate graveyard for inspiration. He then wrote of the details in determining the poetic form, word choice, and editing until he was satisfied.
In his essay, Henry Miller, wrote about how he refined his own writing talent by studying other writers. However that proved to be a trap when Miller tried to recreate Dovsteovsky, Mann, and Niestchze. He realized he needed to find his own style and his own voice to be a writer.

Among the best essays is that of Carl Gustaves Jung who analyzed the Creative mind. He believed that creative people were closer to the unconscious imaginative thoughts than most people. That creative people are able to tap into those thoughts to bring about those works.

This anthology proves that a person doesn't have to be a writer, artist, or a composer to be creative. They can use the advice from these essays to find their own voice and imagination to be creative thinkers and find original ideas in their own lives.

2. Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential by Caroline Myss

Some may only know archetypes through the writings of Carl Jung. Some may not know who they are. (For those that don't, they are figures who are common in film, literature, mythology.) We would never think that they exist in our lives but think about it. How many times has someone long-suffering been described as a Martyr? Or an adult with a child-like nature been called an Eternal Child? Or a flirtatious person been called a Don Juan or a Femme Fatale? Not only do they exist within us, but author, Caroline Myss says that every day we exhibit parts of our Archetypes and they can help us fill our Sacred Contracts, an agreement that our souls makes of who we are and what we want to be in our livesand how our lives influence others.

Myss uses the Archetypal lives of Jesus, Muhammed, Buddha, and Abraham, those Myss dubs The Masters, to show the various steps people go through when they encounter their Sacred Contracts: Contact, Heeding the Call, Renaming, Assignments, and Surrender.

While our Sacred Contracts may not be as world-changing as the Masters, Myss', writing suggests that the Contract is in play with our aspirations, whether we strive to be teachers, business people, writers, or even spouses and parents. The steps come through as we shape our lives as we work in the field that is our best fit and use that work to help others.

The most interesting part of the book is the Glossary which describes the various Archetypes and how they help and sometimes hinder us with their and our personality traits.

For example, The Artist Archetype inspires people to be creative whether it's in painting, writing, composing, or even being one that promotes such work-like a gallery owner, an arts patron or (ahem) a blogger/book reviewer. However, the dark or Shadow side of that Archetype is living with the mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety that are often found in creative individual or the fear of only being recognized after death. Readers will recognize the various Archetypes in themselves, thinking "Hey that's me and that, and that one too. Hey that one reminds me of my Mom. I work with someone like that."

Sacred Contracts explores the various parts of our personality and how they shape us, our careers, our relationships, and our placements in the world.

1. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons In Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey

The reason this book is number one on this list is because it combined practical and spiritual advice to provide a holistic approach on life. Stephen Covey's book encourages the Readers to live principle-centered lives and practice effective leadership to bring about change in themselves and the people around them.

Many of the principles are centered around our feelings towards others and how interdependent we are towards each other. In one of the most haunting exercises "Begin With the End in Mind," Covey advises the Reader to imagine they are at their own funeral and they are hearing speeches from a friend, family member, co-worker, and community member. The Reader is supposed to visualize what kind of person that the speakers will describe. It is a wake-up call so the Reader can live their lives in the most meaningful way possible.

Another exercise Covey suggests to compare the different centers of our lives: spouses, family, work, friends, and most importantly their principles. Covey suggests living accordineg to principles creates a self-respecting,  knowledgeable, and proactive individual who can show effective leadership.

Effective Leadership is different from Management, Covey writes. Management is putting together the workplace, arranging schedules, heading meetings, and making the products. Leadership is more internal relating to how people work together, whether they are in a business or a family. The habits include listening and understanding before giving an opinion or offering advice or visualizing outcomes that benefit all involved. They also involve working together in synergy and doing further things like writing, studying, and communicating with others to continue to be effective people.

Stephen Covey's book tells us how we can be better leaders, workers, and people. Those are some good habits to get into.





Honorable Mention: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, To Be and How To Be: Transforming Your Life Through Sacred Theatre by Peggy Rubin, Awareness: Exploring, Experimenting, Experiencing by John O. Stevens, Who Are you? 101 Ways of Seeing Yourself by Malcolm Godwin, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra, When I Say No, I Feel Guilty by. Manuel Smith, Key to Yourself by Dr. Venice Bloodworth, Learning to Love Yourself by Gay Hendricks, Co-Dependant No More by Melody Battle, What Color is Your Parachute by Richard N. Bolles, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield, Simple Abundance: A Day Book of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach, You've Got to Read This Book: 55 People Discuss the Books That Changed Their Lives Edited by Jack Canfield and Gay Hendricks.