My favorite books for overcoming stress and getting unstuck in life

There is this myth that with a perfect system, strategy, or set of habits, you can live a stress-free life; the trouble is, we adapt to any situation and still find ways to become stressed when the world inevitably changes around us.

I love this book because it starts by acknowledging this point rather than promising that we will never find ourselves overwhelmed. The author, Susan David, does a masterful job in providing practical and engaging anecdotes and advice for learning to pivot with life’s changes, acknowledging the inevitable upsets that occur, and then being intentional about how we can channel our efforts into activity that gets positive emotions flowing once more.

It is a great read for anyone feeling overwhelmed and stuck by the everyday.

Prof. Ethan Kross already had a strong reputation in the world of academic psychology for his work on that little voice inside our head and how it both gives us a sense of purpose but also drives us to despair at times. This book is essential reading for those interested in how to better understand the connection between mental habits and one’s state of well-being.

We so often forget when the voice inside our head recites criticisms and worries; we can easily be in the driver’s seat and direct these conversations. The voice inside our head is part of us, even if it seems deeply informed by the collection of critics we have met in the past. Our challenge, then, is to be a bit more intentional about how we cultivate this inner voice, when do we give it our attention, and how do we respond to the inevitable negative side of our personal narrative.

Informed by decades of research and written with engaging, good humor, this book is an awesome foray into our internal narrator and our potential for claiming our role as authors in writing the story of our lives. 

All-star researcher and physician Judson Brewer, MD PhD has taken the best of cognitive neuroscience, modern medicine, and Eastern philosophy to write a truly original book that integrates ideas from all three disciplines to help us understand why we get addicted so easily, especially to things that aren’t good for us!

In clear, research-backed prose, Brewer helps us to understand the difference between the idea of liking something and actually enjoying it and how easily our brain gets locked into expectation without really sticking around to process whether our most compulsive behaviors are truly rewarding.

If you really want to understand why your bad habits can easily take over your life, read this book! It not only beautifully illustrates the mechanisms of habit formation, but it also shows the surprisingly simple process by which paying attention can help unlock habits and give us greater control in daily life.

It’s hard for me to explain just how important this book has been in Western culture. Part autobiography, part meditation manual, this book is what popularized the modern mindfulness movement, beginning with Jon’s first forays into teaching ‘secularized’ mindfulness practices in the basement of a medical school building in the late 1970s.

Rather than staying in that basement, Jon’s combination of scientific training, deep commitment to understanding the mechanisms of the mental joy and suffering, and passion for helping others came together to create one of the first and most influential Western meditation training programs: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. This program has been the foundation for decades of scientific research as western culture as come to appreciate the importance of training ourselves for mental health and wellness.

This book is the story of that program, it takes you firsthand through the rationale and practices that have helped so many people, acting as a skilled teacher and companion for anyone who wants to seriously study the sources of their own stress and suffering, and who is willing to put in the mental work to explore a way to thrive through it all. I can’t recommend this book enough for a person who is ready to find change in their life. 

This book may seem out of place in a list of psychologically-minded self-help recommendations. And it is long, and hard to read. Don’t even get me started on the use of end-notes in a work of fiction. But it is quite simply one of the best books written in the past 100 years and it is all about people who have gotten stuck, trapped by habit or circumstance, and are yearning for a way to find meaning in life.

To me, this book is a self help book because it is written so powerfully (in a not-so-distance fictional future) that as the characters are inevitably transformed and sometimes freed from their assumed destinies, Wallace somehow illustrates how we too can be transformed in our daily routines and interactions by finding moments of clarity and meaning right where we are, rather than being saved by some outside force that promises liberation but often just ends up building another cage around us.

It is brilliant, frustrating, teasing prose, but if you can get through it, I believe that you will see more space around your own assumptions and perceptions about what makes life worth living, and that’s a journey worth making.