The most recommended books about life satisfaction

I have such a passion for people that share powerful stories. Growing up was particularly rough for me due to the depression, anxiety, and isolation that I endured. When I wasn’t throwing myself into books to escape my reality, I wrote poetry. My love for mental health and cathartic stories didn’t start until about 2017 when I was trying to figure out the next chapter of my life. I had exited survival mode and entered into a thriving part of my life where my old habits and way of thinking did not serve me. I hope this list of book recommendations touches your soul as they have mine. 

After a decade writing advertising for airlines and beer, I found myself working as a freelance radio producer for thousands of radio broadcasts for Chuck Colson, Josh McDowell, Fathers.com, Heritage Foundation, and Voice of the Martyrs. Later, I reinvented myself as a national speaker and best-selling author of 25+ books including 52 Things Kids Need from a Dad, Don’t Take the Bait to Escalate, and What If God Wrote Your Bucket List? with sales approaching one million copies. My wife Rita and I live near Chicago, where we raised five awesome kids, loved on ten foster babies, and are cherishing grandparenthood.

During my fifth year teaching 7th grade, I found myself repeating the same lessons as prior years, participating in the same club events, marching in the same parades, etc. My students would inevitably reach the end of the school year and move on, while I was forever frozen in 7th grade. Herein my fascination with time loops was born. Over a decade later, I’m now happily teaching high school English while moonlighting as a writer of stories featuring temporal anomalies and time travel. I hope to spread my wings into dystopians and fractured fairy tales in the future, but until then…I may or may not have 22 clocks in my house.

I am not a historian but a journalist, and in writing the book I wanted to do what I have done in my political writing. Namely to cut through the lies, to bring accuracy to the distortions, and to point a finger at the politicians and pundits who would prefer that we wallowed in the phony nostalgia of our imagined past. Tackling fake history is like tackling fake news. You need not only to seek out the truth that lies underneath but also discover in whose interests myth-making works in the first place. That's why fighting fake history matters and that is why I wrote the book.

After decades of trial and error, reading hundreds of books and applying the lessons I learned, practicing thousands of hours of meditation & emotional integration work, landing in jail multiple times, battling 20 years of chronic fatigue, surviving a prolonged life/death illness, losing everything, becoming homeless, and rebuilding myself anew, I’ve seen a few things. When I emerged from the abyss, and without my conscious awareness of the fact, I had become transformed. I had become who I’d been seeking all along. Now I hold the space for my clients to express themselves unconditionally, access their deeply held suppressed emotional charges, and shatter the beliefs that keep them tethered to an outdated reality that is fast becoming obsolete in the New Earth.

I write books to make sense of the world  — this gloriously weird, sometimes heartbreaking, marvelous place we call home. Years ago, while visiting a museum in St. Louis, I heard a woman give a talk on charlatans (people who intentionally deceive others for their personal gain). It sparked a number of questions in me: Why do we believe the things that we do? What might we be willing to try to change our circumstances? Exploring these ideas was the starting point for my book, Miraculous, and its mysterious stranger, Dr. Kingsbury. I hope the stories you read in these pages fill you wonder as they did me.

Denise Kiernan is a multiple New York Times bestselling author of narrative nonfiction books including The Girls of Atomic City, the Last Castle, and We Gather Together. Throughout her career as a journalist and an author, she has explored underrepresented stories and characters and the impact they have had on history. These stories of the unsung offer fresh perspectives on historical tales we think we already know. At the heart of many of Kiernan’s nonfiction explorations are women from a variety of different backgrounds and time periods. She has devoted her last three books to the history of Thanksgiving and gratitude, writing separate books for all ages.

I am a licensed therapist who has been in the mental health field for over 15 years. I believe that God wants his followers to be mentally healthy! We are better witnesses to Him when we think and act in ways that reflect biblical principles. This is why I am a big fan of books that help me think and act more wisely and that also helps me follow God more deeply. Working through our mental ‘stuff’ and following God well are greatly intertwined. Whether in person or by recommending books, I love to be a part of that process with people.

I’ve been obsessed by the story of Anne Bonny and Mary Read since I heard about them in an Adam Ant song "Five Guns West". I know more than is good for me about pirates and wanted to share some of the fantastic books that inspired me when I wrote the novel Bonny & Read. Eighty years before Pride and Prejudice was written there were women armed with cutlasses roaming the Caribbean looking for ships to plunder – I want to give everyone the opportunity to learn more about this incredible hidden history.

Since I was a child I have been obsessed with the questions “how do we each live the best possible life and what does that mean?” I had the good fortune of having a family friend who was a philosophy professor from India. When I was in middle school, he shared books with me from his vast philosophical library which became the springboard for my eventual career as a writer and speaker about philosophy, ethics, spirituality, feminism, and religion. My greatest delight is talking with others who are sincerely trying to point their lives in a noble and sincere direction and are sharing their gifts to elevate the quality of life for all.