Here are 100 books that Activate Your Life fans have personally recommended if you like
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My first true religion was being a boy alone in the woods and feeling a deep connection to nature in all its aspects. I felt a connection with all life and knew myself to be an animal—and gloried in it. Since then, I've learned how vigorously humans fight our animal nature, estranging us from ourselves and the planet. Each of these books invites us to get over ourselves and connect with all life on Earth.
What a weird and wonderful book. I've read and reread it several times now, and it always casts its spell. I've never been so willing—so eager—to suspend disbelief. It's Murakami's special gift.
The novel creates its own wondrous world out of what seems to be the stuff of this one—a young runaway, Colonel Sanders, alley cats, a beautiful librarian, a seashore painting, a demented old man—but the result is more magical than any fairy kingdom. I was completely carried along by the experience of an understanding beyond sense.
"A stunning work of art that bears no comparisons" the New York Observer wrote of Haruki Murakami's masterpiece, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. In its playful stretching of the limits of the real world, his magnificent new novel, Kafka on the Shore is every bit as bewitching and ambitious. The narrative follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his highly simplified life suddenly overturned. Their parallel odysseys - as…
I am an astrophysicist. I am a mother. I am an author. I am a cleaner of dishes, a cooker of meals. I am a daughter, a friend on the end of the phone, a reader of bedtime stories, and the one who hugs away the tears and kisses it better. But I am also just me. Emma. And the books I read are always to escape or understand the internal fight I have between identities and the feeling that pursuing one is failing all the others. Lift yourself above it all, breathe, and read yourself into a different world.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was a female astronomer who was prominent in the mid 20th century. Cecilia showed that stars are made predominantly of hydrogen, and thus that stars were not simply ‘hot earths’. This point of view was such a blow to the scientific establishment that she was laughed away and, in the end, added a sentence to her thesis saying her results were probably incorrect. Her results were quickly proved right of course... though she was given no credit. She loved astronomy, knitting, her children, her smallholding of chickens, and she wasn’t afraid to speak of the unfairness she faced… and so I feel some very faint parallels from which I drew strength from. Sexism in science has improved so much since her time, but there remain many, many challenges and so her writings are an inspiration.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin became acclaimed in her lifetime as the greatest woman astronomer of all time. Her own story of her professional life, work and scientific achievements is augmented by the personal recollections of her daughter, Katherine Haramundanis, as well as a scientific appreciation by Jesse Greenstein, a historical essay by Peggy Kidwell and, in this new edition, an introduction by Virginia Trimble. Payne-Gaposchkin's overwhelming love for astronomy was her personal guiding light, and her attitude and approach have lessons for all. She received many prestigious awards for her outstanding contributions to science and in 1956 became the first woman to…
I want to leave behind a body of work capable of transcending time and to write in as many forms as possible. I often blur the lines of genre and experiment with style and structure, known for breaking “rules,” such as with the poetry in the collection, but you can’t break rules until you learn them, and I’m set on breaking as many as I can before taking my last breath. Writing meaningful and lasting poetic prose requires reading meaningful and lasting poetic prose, and the books I have chosen for this list are fine examples of authors whose entire bodies of work will be dissected for years.
It’s difficult to choose a single book by David Mitchell, since everything he writes is painfully poetic, but The Bone Clocksis a favorite. The title is a derogatory term immortals in the story use for humans flawed with mortality because of natural aging. Six unique first-person perspectives; six timelines spanning past, present, and future. If underlining inspiring passages, in awe of their creation, most of the book would need underlining. Nearly every sentence is breathtaking for readers and writers alike. Mitchell is as literary as they get, but this novel dips into science fiction the way his novel Slade House dips into horror. All his works are connected by threads, including Ghostwritten, his debut that first made me want to become a writer.
The dazzling novel from the bestselling author of CLOUD ATLAS.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014
Run away, one drowsy summer's afternoon, with Holly Sykes: wayward teenager, broken-hearted rebel and unwitting pawn in a titanic, hidden conflict.
Over six decades, the consequences of a moment's impulse unfold, drawing an ordinary woman into a world far beyond her imagining. And as life in the near future turns perilous, the pledge she made to a stranger may become the key to her family's survival . . .
I am an astrophysicist. I am a mother. I am an author. I am a cleaner of dishes, a cooker of meals. I am a daughter, a friend on the end of the phone, a reader of bedtime stories, and the one who hugs away the tears and kisses it better. But I am also just me. Emma. And the books I read are always to escape or understand the internal fight I have between identities and the feeling that pursuing one is failing all the others. Lift yourself above it all, breathe, and read yourself into a different world.
Despite the title, I think that any gender can draw something from this book. It is the sequel to her phenomenally successful book “How to be a woman”, which quite frankly changed my life and made me decide to have children. This new book can be read as a stand-alone and charts Caitlin’s thoughts on her late 30s and 40s. It begins with her usual hilarious and irreverent tone, speaking about the pressures put on you by children, parents, work, best friends, basically everything. It suddenly becomes very serious in a way I didn’t expect though, and the message of balance is one that is important for anyone to read in this way. I rarely say this and mean it but… it made me laugh and it made me cry.
'Exceptionally brilliant and powerful' Marina Hyde
'This book is a hilarious memoir, a passionate polemic, and a moving manifesto on how to be a decent person and try, in the face of countless stresses, to live a full open-hearted, joyous life' Sunday Times
A decade ago, Caitlin Moran thought she had it all figured out. Her instant bestseller How to Be a Woman was a game-changing take on feminism, the patriarchy, and the general 'hoo-ha' of becoming a woman. Back then, she firmly believed 'the difficult bit' was over, and her forties were going…
I’m a psychologist in Los Angeles specializing in helping people identify their blind spots and break the cycles of their past by retraining their mindset about the future. I developed a new treatment called Future Directed Therapy and I’ve been helping people build better lives for over 15 years. I’m very passionate about empowering my clients to find practical skills and tools for taking charge of their emotional health and achieving the things they want in life. I recommend these books to my clients on a regular basis and find inspiration in them for my own blog Living Forward which I write as a featured expert for Psychology Today.
I recommend this book to many of my clients because you create your life based on your perceived self-concept about who you are in the world. If you don’t feel good about who you are it’s hard to build a good life. This book is great because it applies the well-researched principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy to overcoming the inner critic and building a positive view of one’s self, creating the much-needed platform for transforming your life.
Circumstances and status can affect self-esteem-many factors can contribute to the way we see ourselves-but the one contributing factor that all people who struggle with low self-esteem have in common is our thoughts. Of course we all have a better chance of feeling good about ourselves when things are going well, but it's really our interpretation of our circumstances that can cause trouble, regardless of what they are.
This revised and updated fourth edition of the best-selling Self-Esteem uses proven-effective methods of CBT and relevant components of ACT to help you raise low self-esteem by working on the way you…
As an emeritus professor of philosophy now working as a licensed therapist, I feel uniquely qualified to span the two worlds of philosophy and psychotherapy. In addition to dozens of academic articles which no one has ever read, I’ve published books on modern China, ancient Greek Stoicism, Bob Dylan, and the TV show The Sopranos, which at least a few people seem to have picked up.
The best way to characterize Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is: if Victor Frankl (above) and Jon Kabat-Zinn (the father of the modern mindfulness movement) had a kid, it would be Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. ACT is one part mindfulness and one part the belief that a meaningful life is one that is based on values. It is in this second part of ACT, the emphasis on values and the belief that happiness consists in the virtuous life, that the authors owe an unacknowledged debt of gratitude to Aristotle, while of course, we can thank the Buddha for the mindfulness practices that flourish today.
Since the original publication of this seminal work, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) has come into its own as a widely practiced approach to helping people change. This book provides the definitive statement of ACT--from conceptual and empirical foundations to clinical techniques--written by its originators. ACT is based on the idea that psychological rigidity is a root cause of a wide range of clinical problems. The authors describe effective, innovative ways to cultivate psychological flexibility by detecting and targeting six key processes: defusion, acceptance, attention to the present moment, self-awareness, values, and committed action. Sample therapeutic exercises and patient-therapist dialogues…
I am a clinical psychologist who was surprised to realize that I am both Autistic and an ADHDer in my late 40s. I have always been fascinated by psychology, and now Autism and ADHD have become my areas of “special interest” (“spin”). I have been reading widely to learn more about myself, find practical ways to alleviate the chronic sense of overwhelm I experience and recover from burnout. Most of my clients are also late-diagnosed neurodivergent adults who have complex mental and physical health problems, so the reading I’ve been doing has given me fresh insights to share and helpful strategies we can test out together.
This beautiful book makes offering yourself compassion simple and achievable. I have been recommending this book for a long time because I love how Laura captures all the key skills of self-compassion and explains them in a way that is practical and easy to follow.
So many books about self-compassion are very long, theoretical, and unnecessarily complex, and I find them hard to read. This book is grounded in what researchers have shown can help (it’s evidence-based), but it doesn’t get bogged down in theory.
Instead, Laura’s simple worksheets, written exercises, mindfulness, and visualization scripts gave me new skills to tackle self-criticism and put self-compassion into action. I have even used exercises in the book with my clients and they’ve loved them too.
Practice deep self compassion with a wide range of strategies.
Today's the day to start loving yourself. How to Be Nice to Yourself makes it simple to start practicing self compassion with a wide variety of techniques and strategies that anyone can learn.
Filled with easy-to-use advice drawn from a variety of sources―including meditation, mindfulness, and acceptance and commitment therapy―this book will help you find the right way to start feeling good about yourself.
How to Be Nice to Yourself: The Everyday Guide to Self Compassion includes:
Proven Strategies―Learn a variety of ways to practice self compassion daily―with meditations, writing…
I’ve always had stronger and more intense emotions than my peers. In childhood, I spent hours poring over medical textbooks to try to figure out exactly what was wrong with me. At 28, after years of navigating the mental health industry, I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Now, as a writer, my lived experience informs my passion to educate others about the disorder and show the world that people who live with BPD aren’t all bad—in fact, there are many unique gifts people with the disorder possess. I hope this reading list helps others who are on similar journeys.
This book by Daniel J. Fox took my understanding of my own BPD symptoms to a deeper level. I loved how much this book allowed me to reflect on my attachment styles, triggers, and distortions. It helped me uncover my personal motivations to work toward positive change and recovery.
Introducing a breakthrough, integrative approach to managing your borderline personality disorder (BPD). If you've been diagnosed with BPD you may feel a number of emotions - including shock, shame, sadness, abandonment, emptiness, or even anger. Even worse, you may be tempted to research your diagnosis online, only to find doomsday scenarios and terrible prognoses everywhere you click. Take a deep breath. You can get through this - and this workbook will help guide you. Despite what you may have read or been told, BPD is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Like many mental health issues, it…
As a clinical psychologist, I listen to thoughts all the time. I’m also having my own, constantly. We rely on our thoughts to help us navigate the world. However, our thoughts can also be a source of suffering. At times, they're not such reliable guides or helpers. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a way of thinking about thinking. ACT captured my imagination early in my clinical career. I trained with ACT’s originator, Steven Hayes, in the early 1990’s. I’ve come to believe that being more aware of our own thoughts, and our relationship to them is key to creating positive change and living a life grounded in our values.
Dr. Hayes is the originator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, an innovative approach to addressing human suffering based on examining and changing our relationship to our thoughts.
This book looks at the many ways that our capacity for evaluative and judgmental thought leads to suffering. Then, it offers a map for changing how we relate to and respond to those thoughts.
It offers tools for shifting away from struggling with our internal narratives toward taking action based on our values.
"In all my years studying personal growth, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is one of the most useful tools I've ever come across, and in this book, Dr. Hayes describes it with more depth and clarity than ever before."-Mark Manson, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Life is not a problem to be solved. ACT shows how we can live full and meaningful lives by embracing our vulnerability and turning toward what hurts.
In this landmark book, the originator and pioneering researcher into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) lays out the psychological…
I'm a yoga therapist, health journalist, and author, and my passion is helping people harness the powerful medicine of movement. In my work with hundreds of yoga students and yoga therapy clients, and in my own life—facing some serious health challenges—I’ve found that taking yoga off the mat and into daily life with these simple practices is a powerful way to relieve stress and find ease in body and mind. In our busy, hectic lives, Yoga Sparks offers a welcome chance to pause, breathe, and connect to our inner wisdom. They will help you pay attention and move mindfully through your own precious life.
My copy is the sixth edition, but this groundbreaking workbook now offers a seventh edition and is based on the authors’ decades of clinical experience working with clients suffering from varied symptoms of stress including insomnia, worry, hypertension, poor digestion, depression, and anger. This hefty book offers a comprehensive compilation of stress-reduction strategies—including techniques for relaxation, managing time, dealing with stressful thoughts and feelings, and effective communication. The workbook format provides helpful guidance to create a personal action plan for stress reduction.
Now in its seventh edition-with more than one million copies sold worldwide-The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook remains the go-to resource for stress reduction strategies that can be incorporated into even the busiest lives.
The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook broke new ground when it was first published in 1980, detailing easy, step-by-step techniques for calming the body and mind in an increasingly overstimulated world. Now in its seventh edition, this fully revised and updated workbook-highly regarded by therapists and their clients-offers the latest stress reduction techniques to combat the effects of stress and integrate healthy relaxation habits into every…
