Looking around the self-improvement world, you’ll find plenty of the best books on personal growth around. Over the years, there have been tons of brilliant minds talking about all kinds of different subjects.
With thousands of books available, we’ve decided to pick out some books that were published more recently to help you become a wiser person.
1. Emotional First Aid
The premise of this book is to help you learn how to stop ruminating on everything. While there are some benefits to thinking deeply, sometimes it doesn’t help you. Ruminating leads to overthinking and in some cases, it makes problems worse for you and can negatively impact your life.
Emotional First Aid is a book that’ll help with that by providing straightforward and readable advice on various topics—ones that can bring up feelings or even a lot of shame. There are several good lines to be found, and understanding yourself on an emotional level can help you become a wiser person.
Buy one of the best books on personal growth here.
2. How to Be Alone
On the note of emotional intelligence, being alone is another sore spot for people. There are many people who struggle with being alone or think that being alone is dangerous. This book explains that being alone isn’t all that bad for you.
No matter what stage of loneliness you are at, this book explains that it’s okay to feel the way that you feel during those moments. It’s okay to yearn for better relationships or that you’re lonely overall.
While this book isn’t quite a self-help book, being comfortable with being alone and dealing with tricky situations (e.g. cutting ties with someone that makes you feel unsafe or anxious around) is helpful. Having stronger emotional intelligence is one aspect of a wise person.
Buy one of the best books on personal growth here.
3. The Mind of the Leader
This is a book published by Harvard Business Review, and it is a powerful one—a truly inspiring piece that allows you to get into the head of a manager, specifically how a manager should be working. All in all, it’s a great book that teaches you how to manage with compassion, selflessness, and mindfulness.
Even if you’re not in a management position, having a grasp of how modern-day leaders and managers should work is big. The working environments have shifted a lot this year but have been changing even before then. You want to have newer tactics.
4. The Artist’s Way
Published in 1992, this book revolving around creativity is still a keeper. Despite the title suggesting this is for creatives only, it’s still recommended for those who are outside of that loop. Funny enough, it’s writers—professional creatives—struggle the most with applying some of these tactics. If you’re someone outside of that loop, you may find it easier and advantageous for you to use.
Buy one of the best books on personal growth here.
5. Crushing It!
This is the most recent of Gary Vaynerchuk’s published books at the time of writing it. It’s been out for a while, however, this book provides a strong blueprint for how you can be growing a business in this day and age. The book provides plenty of examples of creative ideas and has Gary’s own get-up-and-go motivation.
Whether you run a business now or are thinking of running one, this can make you into a wiser person. Nevertheless, Gary Vaynerchuk does put out some of the best books on personal growth and business to help you succeed.
6. How to Get Sh*t Done
Another common struggle for people is tackling that massive to-do list or marking things off the bucket list. There are tons of productivity books that you can look at, however, this one is one of the best ones out there.
As the title suggests, this book provides a helpful guide in getting things done in the best way possible. Even if the advice can be weird—such as the first step suggesting you give yourself a break—there are tons of research backing this up. All of the advice will help unload anything nonessential and shift your focus to things that matter most to you.
Buy one of the best books on personal growth here.
7. Tribe of Mentors
Tim Ferriss, famous for his work “The 4 Hour Workweek,” recently published a book providing various tips, tactics, and habits you want to have in your life. The information he shares stems from conversations he’s had with over 130 of the world’s top performers at the time. In it, he writes about their personal stories and how that can help you make better decisions, achieve your goals faster, and achieve more results in your life.
8. Becoming: A Guided Journal For Discovering Your Voice
In 2018, former first lady Michelle Obama published a memoir of her life and what it was like living in the White House. It’s also a book talking about how she was able to find her own voice and become who she is today.
Even if you didn’t get the chance to read that book, you don’t have to worry too much about that. Recently, there was another book published that can provide the same benefits. Retaining the same title as the previously published book, this book is more of a journal as the title suggests.
In short, this book can provide you with a transformational tool to help you discover values, passions, and overall purpose. This is crucial since many people who want to grab some of the best books on personal growth don’t often know what they want in life. This book provides direction.
9. Burnout
For those feeling overwhelmed with everything, this book can provide a staggering amount of relief. The sister duo of Amelia Nagoski DMA and Emily Nagoski Ph.D. go into great detail on dealing with burnout— a phenomenon that both men and women struggle with a lot.
Inside, you’ll find tactics on overcoming stumbling blocks, external challenges, and pushing back burnout. These tactics don’t apply exclusively to professional lives but also to personal lives.
Buy one of the best books on personal growth here.
10. Can’t Hurt Me
Written by David Goggins—a man who overcame depression, became part of the US Armed Forces, and has great athletic achievement—this inspirational book will aid you in overcoming mental and physical obstacles.
The overall message of this book is clear: mindset is everything. If you have the right attitude, you have better chances of overcoming the odds against you.
Even if your mindset isn’t a defeatist mindset, we often keep ourselves back at various points in time. According to Goggins, most people tap into only 40% of their own abilities. This book could be a gateway for you to unlock the other missing piece and help you strive for something higher.
11. Edge
To those who have made it past a large obstacle, one of the first questions people ask is, how was that possible? What’s the secret? Those questions come up especially when you are comparing yourself to others and wonder what they have that you’re lacking.
Instead of wondering about that, it’d be wise to look at this book as it provides a lot of answers. The truth is that those who have made it aren’t perfect people, and we can never be like them. Instead, it’s those same people who have looked at adversity in their lives and leveraged it. Thanks to this book, you can do the same.
12. Everything Is Figureoutable
It’s uncommon to run into hardships or challenges that dictate how much success and happiness you can get from them. For many people, whenever there are roadblocks, we tend to protect ourselves in various ways—be it victimizing ourselves, blaming others, or even giving up entirely.
To avoid those kinds of scenarios, this book provides personal stories from the author, Marie Forleo, and other readers. The goal is that through these stories and actionable insights, you’ll realize that everything in life is “figureoutable.”
13. Stillness Is the Key
One great thing about Ryan Holiday is the incorporation of philosophy into his work. Since he passes this on to his readers, you can receive a nice dosage of philosophy into your daily life with one of his best books on personal growth.
This book is grounded on Buddhism and Stoic philosophy as Holiday introduces readers to remaining steady during times of strife and chaos. Holiday calls the concept “stillness” and points to many historical figures who maintained stillness.
Overall, this is a book to help you defend and be prepared for more emotional turmoil around yourself.
14. The Values Compass
Two big questions in life are “what are your values?” and “are you living in a way that reflects them?” It’s two big questions that people may not know the answers to upon careful reflection. This book in particular brings those questions up to the surface but does so in a unique way—by traveling to 101 countries that live in harmony with their values and tell you how they live their lives.
This takes you on a journey to a wide variety of places and from those places, Dr. Mandeep Rai takes insights and explains them in a way that you can apply in your own life. Considering the extensive journey, these chapters are very small making it one of the more easily digestible books on personal growth to get into.
15. Tiny Habits
Change is an inevitable part of life, but most people tend to resist it, especially when change is massive and in your face all the time. Whether it’s something that’s forced on you or you’ve done this to yourself, this book allows you to look at those big changes—or desires to change—and make them a reality.
How the book does it is by encouraging you to focus on the smaller habits and breaking goals into smaller and more manageable steps.
Even if this is something you do, you may still find this book helpful as the book teaches you how to identify small adjustments you can make to your existing habits to make them develop further.
Final Thoughts
The list of best books on personal growth is expanding all the time with more books published every single day. This industry is filled with all kinds of insights and ideas to help you grow and become a wiser individual. No doubt, if you pick out any of the books from this list, you are in for a treat and enlightening experience.
More Books on Personal Growth and Development
- 25 Best Self Improvement Books to Read No Matter How Old You Are
- 7 Personal Development Books That Will Empower Your Life
- 20 All-Time Best Motivational Books to Inspire You
Featured photo credit: Joel Muniz via unsplash.com
