6 Amazing Self Development Books To Make You Mentally Strong

Self-awareness is a powerful tool that can help you wade through difficult times, face challenges, build self-confidence, and enable self-improvement. You, equipped with self-knowledge and the enlightenment that these self-development books offer, are enough to come out of any low that you encounter in life. No one can help you better than yourself and your mind. People can advise you and share their experiences. However, no one but you can find solutions that are most applicable to your life problems, and that will lead to your well-being. After all, it’s your life. You’ve got to device your journey!

Why do self help books work?

Of course, they do. These self-development books let us dive deep into the unfathomable depths of our minds. They give us a sense and vision of what lies deep beneath the surface of our minds and consciousness, which we are unable to understand on your own.
We get insights into our unhelpful thinking and practices. Our “biased” mind is not programmed to keep us in touch with our weaknesses.

Prolonged exposure to our reality and complete nakedness of our mind makes these books work. The book speaks to you in a way that you have no other alternative but to come clean about your thought process, habits, and behavior. We gradually drop the inhibitions about our truth. Reading about our unpleasant behavioral and thought patterns in a book is more acceptable than someone telling it to us on our faces. Moreover, reading it from a book doesn’t put us in the spot, and we know for a fact that there are others like us. Since there is no concern about judgments and opinions, we let go of the denial and work on things that need improvement.

So, here are 6 amazing self development books that are bound to make you mentally strong and relentless:

The Subtle Art Of Not Giving a F*ck

Think your mind requires some cleaning up? Then this is the book for you. Of this, I am pretty convinced that Subtle Art is the best self-development book for us millennials. Mark Manson has adeptly and boldly put together the fundamentals required to wipe out the inessentials from our lives. There’d be certain parts in the book that you’d be able to relate to better, and those will be the moments that will leave you flabbergasted and amazed at how well this guy has sorted things out for us. The best part about the book is he is very blunt about every hard truth. Mark Manson also kind of also tells that you suck. And he puts out pretty good arguments in support. Like for example, at times we get held up by our own biases and perceptions of what is correct and acceptable and start giving effs to things that don’t even matter to us. Trust me and just read it.

Feeling Good

David Burn’s tone is quite pleasing and his writing relatable. In this day and age, when anxiety and depression have become quite common, this book comes as a savior. Obviously, reading the book is not enough to recover from depression.  Actually practicing the steps and techniques explained in the book is what is going to help.  I read the book and tried out the techniques to see if the book is actually substantial, and yes, it is pretty effective and scientific in its take. It helped me understand myself better and move forward in the journey of self improvement.  (I guess I am much less sloppy at handling my life now. At least, my dog would vouch for it.)

Getting Unstuck

Pema Chodron is an American teacher(and disciple) of Tibetan Buddhism. This book by her is truly empowering and beautiful. Most of the times, the bad things in our lives are the self-created hooks and mental traps. At other times, the real difficult things become easier or worsen based on our treatment of them. I guess this sets a premise for the book. Getting unstuck is a short read yet truly inspirational and powerful. It is based on the Buddhist ideas of attachment and mindfulness. A regular(monthly/weekly) dose of this (audio/paperback) book will undoubtedly will help you focus better and be in the now and here.

How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

This book offers some timeless propositions. Most of us adults are pretty bad at managing our worries and this is where this book comes to our rescue. Dale Carnegie provides a very clear and straight forward understanding and steps on how to stop worrying. The book is an intelligent compilation and Carnegie draws from common sense, lives of people and inspirational messages of business leaders and philosophers. The good part is that all the steps are actionable and easy to implement.

Psycho-Cybernetics

It is one of the most impactful, transformational and relevant book you’ll ever come across. Usually, it is very difficult to know if a book is valuable in practical sense than just the intellectual knowledge it instills. However, this is a very pragmatic book and highly applicable in real life instances. Maxwell Maltz was a cosmetic surgeon and his observation that not every person’s life got transformed positively after the surgery (facial surgery to remove major “deformities” of face and hence leading to better aesthetics) led him to this book. Through this book, he proficiently operates on the inner workings of our  minds and helps us lead a fulfilling life.

The Road Less Travelled

This book is like wearing glasses when you have myopia or hypermetropia. In case you’re lucky enough to have a 6/6 eyesight, ask a person who wears glasses about how not wearing glasses feels. Reading this book is same for unaware mind(which almost all of us have) as is wearing glasses to a non-6/6 eyes.  We go through our lives unaware or with partial understanding, and all of a sudden a book like this clears all the mist. This book is going to introduce you to your own psychology and open the doors for self-examination and self-understanding. It puts forth the methods of coming out of denial, confronting and fixing our problems through mindful changes.

Did you like this list of self development books? Do you think I missed out on any self development books that you think falls in the category? Then please comment. In case the list resonates well with you, do like, share and subscribe.

Keep Reading. Chao!