Fans pick 100 books like Become The Most Important Person in the Room

By Rose Rosetree,

Here are 100 books that Become The Most Important Person in the Room fans have personally recommended if you like Become The Most Important Person in the Room. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Sensitive Is the New Strong: The Power of Empaths in an Increasingly Harsh World

Sydney Campos Author Of The Empath Experience: What to Do When You Feel Everything

From my list on for empaths and highly sensitive people.

Why am I passionate about this?

I always sensed I was from another planet, here to help create a new world by nature of my heightened sensitivity and ability to perceive beneath the surface of our supposed reality. After decades of struggling and nearly dying through addiction to mute my sensitivity, my healing path led me to see how being an empath is the greatest gift, once we learn to take care of ourselves and refine our abilities. My book The Empath Experience is the guide I wish I had when I was born, that tells my story and guides life-changing practices to master your energy and harness your empathic gifts as the superpowers they are.

Sydney's book list on for empaths and highly sensitive people

Sydney Campos Why did Sydney love this book?

I love this book from Anita – it feels like it resonates a lot with the messages in my original book on the empath experience yet includes some other stories and anecdotes that can relate to an even broader audience. I appreciate her core thesis that empaths are really the world’s healers especially at this time – here to teach empathy, compassion, and true connection simply by being who they truly are.

By Anita Moorjani,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sensitive Is the New Strong as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The New York Times bestselling author of Dying to Be Me returns with “a gorgeous and powerful field guide to the empath living in today’s wild world” (Laura Berman, PhD, author of Quantum Love) and how they can fully embrace their gifts of intuition and empathy.

Empaths not only sense other people’s emotions, but also absorb them—sometimes to their own disadvantage, often leading to overwhelming sensory overload and feelings of confusion or low self-esteem. Their willingness to help and please others might make them prey to opportunists or cause them to give away more energy than they can afford.

But…


Book cover of The Empath's Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People

Melody Wilding Author Of Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work

From my list on to thrive as a highly sensitive person.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a human behavior professor, award-winning executive coach, and trained therapist, I’ve spent the last decade helping thousands of high-achieving, highly sensitive professionals discover ways to enjoy their success without self-doubt, stress, and emotional overwhelm. I’m a highly sensitive person myself, so I intimately understand what it’s like to navigate the world as a deep thinker and feeler. Trust Yourself is the actionable guide I wish I had had as a big-feeling, driven person trying to find my way in my career and figure out how to believe in myself in the process.

Melody's book list on to thrive as a highly sensitive person

Melody Wilding Why did Melody love this book?

Highly sensitive people (HSPs) have more active mirror neurons, which means they can more acutely sense other people’s emotions. I have found that my empathy can be a tremendous gift, but without the right tools, feeling others’ energy can be draining. I enjoyed that Dr. Orloff’s presented a comprehensive toolkit, particularly for navigating relationships at home and work. This book isn’t a one-time read. It’s the type of book you reference and revisit over time. 

By Judith Orloff,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Empath's Survival Guide as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What is the difference between having empathy and being an empath? "Having empathy means our heart goes out to another person in joy or pain," says Judith Orloff, MD. "But for empaths it goes much further. We actually feel others' emotions, energy, and physical symptoms in our own bodies, without the usual defenses that most people have." With The Empath's Survival Guide, Dr. Orloff offers a practical tool set to help sensitive people develop healthy coping mechanisms in our high-stimulus world-while fully embracing the empath's gifts of intuition, compassion, creativity, and spiritual connection.

This practical, empowering, and loving book was…


Book cover of The Intuitive Way: The Definitive Guide to Increasing Your Awareness

Sydney Campos Author Of The Empath Experience: What to Do When You Feel Everything

From my list on for empaths and highly sensitive people.

Why am I passionate about this?

I always sensed I was from another planet, here to help create a new world by nature of my heightened sensitivity and ability to perceive beneath the surface of our supposed reality. After decades of struggling and nearly dying through addiction to mute my sensitivity, my healing path led me to see how being an empath is the greatest gift, once we learn to take care of ourselves and refine our abilities. My book The Empath Experience is the guide I wish I had when I was born, that tells my story and guides life-changing practices to master your energy and harness your empathic gifts as the superpowers they are.

Sydney's book list on for empaths and highly sensitive people

Sydney Campos Why did Sydney love this book?

This is one of my favorite books for learning about how to utilize your intuitive gifts. The way it’s written is so beautiful: in a friendly tone where it feels like you’re speaking with an old friend. It includes great practices for awakening your intuitive abilities and working with your empathic gifts as well which naturally give way to intuitive prowess.

By Penney Peirce,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Intuitive Way as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A renowned intuitive and visionary shows you how to know what you need to know just when you need to know it.

Intuition is not a rare gift that only a gifted few possess but an innate human capacity that can be enhanced and developed. Synthesizing insights from psychology, East- West philosophy, religion, metaphysics, and business, this hands-on workbook in the tradition of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, can teach anyone to achieve a heightened state of perceptual vitality and integrate it into daily life. Intuition, writes Penney Peirce, is “not the opposite of logic,” but rather “a comprehensive way…


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Book cover of Today Was A Good Day: A Collection of Essays From The Heart Of A Neurosurgeon

Today Was A Good Day By Edward Benzel,

My book is a collection of monthly Editor-in-Chief letters to the readership of World Neurosurgery, a journal that I edit. Each essay is short and sweet. The letters were written for neurosurgeons but have been re-edited so that they apply to all human beings. They cover topics such as leadership,…

Book cover of Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing

Sydney Campos Author Of The Empath Experience: What to Do When You Feel Everything

From my list on for empaths and highly sensitive people.

Why am I passionate about this?

I always sensed I was from another planet, here to help create a new world by nature of my heightened sensitivity and ability to perceive beneath the surface of our supposed reality. After decades of struggling and nearly dying through addiction to mute my sensitivity, my healing path led me to see how being an empath is the greatest gift, once we learn to take care of ourselves and refine our abilities. My book The Empath Experience is the guide I wish I had when I was born, that tells my story and guides life-changing practices to master your energy and harness your empathic gifts as the superpowers they are.

Sydney's book list on for empaths and highly sensitive people

Sydney Campos Why did Sydney love this book?

This book is so genius in its ability to straddle so many different dimensions of experience – from science to medicine to intuition to energy healing and everything in between. I love Carolyn Myss as a great example of what’s possible in bridging worlds – her story of bringing medical intuition into more mass consciousness is brilliant and endlessly inspiring. This book helped me to affirm what I was already sensing as an energy healer – that all dis-ease and pain is rooted in an underlying spiritual or energetic issue. This book provides great precedents for how we can truly heal and recover from seemingly hopeless ailments by actually getting to the root of our supposed problems and meeting them with love, grace, and acceptance.

By Caroline Myss,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Anatomy of the Spirit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Encoded within your body, teaches Caroline Myss, is an energy system linking you directly to the world's great spiritual traditions. Through it, you have direct access to the divine energy that seamlessly connects all life. On Anatomy of the Spirit, Myss offers a stunning picture of the human body's hidden energetic structures, while revealing its precise spiritual code and relationship to the sacred energy of creation.

Our most revered wisdom traditions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism, hold in common essential teachings about seven specific levels of spiritual development, the stages of power in life. These seven great truths also grace…


Book cover of The Presence Process: A Journey into Present Moment Awareness

Why am I passionate about this?

Fascinated with consciousness, spirituality, and the power of mind, I started reading books by Thich Nhat Hahn, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Alan Watts as early as 5th grade. But I was also infatuated with math and logic, which led to a degree in mathematics at UC Berkeley. Knowing there was more to understanding truth beyond logic, I balanced out my worldview with an M.A. in transpersonal psychology. For more than twenty years, I have passionately devoted myself to the study and practice of transformation. As a certified coach using expertise in interpersonal neurobiology, design thinking, and Conversational Intelligence®, I have provided thousands of transformative experiences for individuals, executives, teams, and organizations. 

Amy's book list on personal growth books that use more logic and science than New Age thinking to overcome self-imposed limitations and flourish

Amy Eliza Wong Why did Amy love this book?

This is one of those books you don’t find–it finds you. At least, that’s what happened to me. When my friend first recommended it, I remember reading part of the first chapter captivated. But for whatever reason, I failed to continue reading it.

Years later, it fell off the shelf while I was trying to decide which of the books on my bookshelf was the one to read. Boy, did it catapult me into a wildly evolved level of consciousness. It ripped me open (in a gentle and inviting way) cleared me of fears and beliefs I didn’t even know I had and transformed me from being a human being reaching for spirituality to a spiritual being reaching out to humanity. 

By Michael Brown,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Presence Process as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Why is it so difficult to simply be present? The reason is that our deeply suppressed emotional imprints from childhood -- which Eckhart Tolle calls "the pain-body" -- distract from an awareness of the present moment. We're not broken and don't need to be healed but rather, our discomfort needs to be integrated. The Presence Process is a journey that guides readers into taking responsibility for our emotional integration. It is a way to consciously grow up and become responsible for determining the quality of our personal experience. The book teaches readers how to exercise authentic personal responsibility in a…


Book cover of A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume

Tama J. Kieves Author Of This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love

From my list on to help you stay true to yourself and your calling.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am moved by the deepest potential in all of us. Having graduated from Harvard Law School and working as an unfilled attorney, I finally left everything to follow my true desire to write. So, I know how vital it is to have support for our inspiration instead of our fears. That’s why I’ve written 5 books to champion visionary minds, creative souls, freedom junkies, and more. And as a TEDx speaker and USA Today featured visionary career coach, I am always reading for my own growth and for my students. I recommend these books because they helped me to trust in greater possibilities. I hope they support your dreams. 

Tama's book list on to help you stay true to yourself and your calling

Tama J. Kieves Why did Tama love this book?

I recommend this book because this spiritual text helped me—more than any other—to see and choose from love instead of fear in my own life. When I left my prestigious law job, I had a storm of fears weaken my creative dreams. This book helped me to find and trust my own inner authority. It also helped me to feel more secure in life, no matter what was going on. At first, I found the language off-putting because it “sounded” religious at times. But this path is not about any religion, other than the love and infinite power in all of us. There are gazillions of spiritual books on the market, but this one is a powerhouse, a classic, and a gamechanger.    

By Dr. Helen Schucman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Course in Miracles as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the edition of "A Course in Miracles" ("the Course") that its two scribes, Drs. Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford, authorized for publication by the Foundation for Inner Peace in 1975. It is now available in translation in 27 languages and is widely used by students in thousands of Course study groups around the world.
"A Course in Miracles" is a unique spiritual self-study program—a course in mind-training—designed to undo the illusion that you are separate in any way from God or your fellow humans. At the level of the mind we are all united as one. When we…


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Book cover of Currently Away: How Two Disenchanted People Traveled the Great Loop for Nine Months and Returned to the Start, Energized and Optimistic

Currently Away By Bruce Tate,

The plan was insane. The trap seemed to snap shut on Bruce and Maggie Tate, an isolation forced on them by the pandemic and America's growing political factionalism. Something had to change.

Maggie's surprising answer: buy a boat, learn to pilot it, and embark on the Great Loop. With no…

Book cover of One-Liners: A Mini-Manual for a Spiritual Life Hardcover

Joan Budilovsky Author Of Sages of Young Ages

From my list on new moms to listen and laugh with their children.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve taught yoga and meditation for decades to children from ages 3 to 93. My Doctorate is in Education from the University of Illinois at Chicago. I love to experience personal development and child development has a very special place in my heart. I learn so much from them! It is particularly fun to watch children discover and explore life. Everything old is new again! Sages of Young Ages can open our eyes if we simply open our ears to each child’s unique spoken truths.

Joan's book list on new moms to listen and laugh with their children

Joan Budilovsky Why did Joan love this book?

"Don't take yourself so personally" says Ram Dass. His humor, his insights, his ability to capture great lessons and truths in one line. This book made me think and laugh at the same time = quite a feat! I so appreciate his fun look at life with his deep sense of spiritual understanding. Fantastic read.

By Ram Dass,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked One-Liners as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One-Liners is a collection of over 200 penetrating and pithy spiritual instructions from spiritual guru Ram Dass, who describes it as a 'distillation' of the lectures he has given over the last couple of decades. His insightful quotes cover topics such as Love and Devotion, Suffering, Ageing, Planes of Consciousness, Death and Dying, Service and Compassion, Psychedelics, Social Awareness and Liberation.


Book cover of Be Here Now

Raven Digitalis Author Of The Everyday Empath: Achieve Energetic Balance in Your Life

From my list on empaths and emotionally sensitive souls.

Why am I passionate about this?

I remember experiencing a true nervous breakdown once in high school. I had to leave campus in tears, filled with familiar sorrows and emotions I didn’t recognize as my own. Something was happening and I couldn’t put my finger on it, and it was utterly disorienting. Luckily, a spiritual mentor lived right down the street. She was quickly able to diagnose my experience. “You’re a very strong empath,” she said. I had to learn what that meant, so I devoted many years to learning as much as I could about the empathic experience from psychological, physiological, anthropological, and metaphysical lenses alike. 

Raven's book list on empaths and emotionally sensitive souls

Raven Digitalis Why did Raven love this book?

This book is the number one book I’d bring along if stranded on a desert island. Like my magickal friend Stephanya once said, “I rejoice that such a beautiful thing can spring from the brain of a human being!” I couldn’t agree more. This book begins with a story documenting the author’s psychedelic research as a Harvard professor (then known as Richard Alpert), as well as his adventures in India, where he met his mountaintop Guru, Neem Karoli Baba. Ram Dass would soon become a Guru himself and help introduce Western spiritual seekers to deep mysticism and Eastern philosophy.

So, why is this relevant to empaths, even those who aren’t into psychedelics? The reason is simple: every part of this book, most especially the profoundly artistic “brown pages,” deeply, acutely, and spiritually reminds us that separation is an illusion, that we are all one, and we need to live in…

By Ram Dass,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked Be Here Now as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Beloved guru Ram Dass tells the story of his spiritual awakening and gives you the tools to take control of your life in this “counterculture bible” (The New York Times) featuring powerful guidance on yoga, meditation, and finding your true self.

When Be Here Now was first published in 1971, it filled a deep spiritual emptiness, launched the ongoing mindfulness revolution, and established Ram Dass as perhaps the preeminent seeker of the twentieth century.

Just ten years earlier, he was known as Professor Richard Alpert. He held appointments in four departments at Harvard University. He published books, drove a Mercedes…


Book cover of Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing

Neal Allen Author Of Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic

From my list on books on spirituality for people who hate books on spirituality.

Why am I passionate about this?

Until my early 50s, I detested all things spiritual. These books showed up practically on their own, without dogma or jargon, mainly to convince me that the divine existed. They’re easy to read and open to interpretation. They tricked me into a spiritual life by making it seem logical and simply a place to explore at my leisure. I try to write things that are clear and simple, and these books persuaded me that the ineffable isn’t so hard to write about. Also, I could return to these books years later, and they still speak to me. Each is capable of opening something new to me later in life.

Neal's book list on books on spirituality for people who hate books on spirituality

Neal Allen Why did Neal love this book?

This guy tells rip-roaring stories while skewering all the spiritual hucksters you’re likely to meet. I was locked into a spiritual mystery school when a member of the group recommended McKenna as the real thing.

Most spiritual books are boastful; this guy comes off as completely ordinary, except he happens to have freed himself from emotional suffering. Most of the time. The rest of the time, he’s making fun of the bliss bunnies, chanters, philosophizers, charlatans, and sheeplike followers who populate the New Age landscape.

By Jed McKenna,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Spiritual Enlightenment as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From a spiritual master unlike any,
a spiritual masterpiece like no other.

AUTHOR, TEACHER AND SPIRITUAL MASTER Jed McKenna tells it like it's never been told before. A true American original, Jed succeeds where countless others have failed by reducing this highest of attainments — Spiritual Enlightenment — to the simplest of terms.

Effectively demystifying the mystical, Jed astonishes the reader not by adding to the world's collected spiritual wisdom, but by taking the spirituality out of spiritual enlightenment. Never before has this elusive topic been treated in so engaging and accessible a manner.

A masterpiece of illuminative writing, Spiritual…


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Book cover of Free Your Joy: The Twelve Keys to Sustainable Happiness

Free Your Joy By Lisa McCourt,

We all want peace. We all want a life of joy and meaning. We want to feel blissfully comfortable in our own skin, moving through the world with grace and ease. But how many of us are actively taking the steps to create such a life? 

In Free Your Joy…

Book cover of Original Blessing

Barry J. Robinson Author Of A Seagull Named Papa

From my list on thinking differently about yourself and the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have a passion for becoming a better human being and helping others to do the same. I spent 28 years in parish ministry attempting to remind people of the call of Jesus and the needs of the human heart. I left ministry and operated a private practice as a registered psychotherapist for almost 20 years. I am now retired and an author of three books. I'm still working at the task of becoming a better human being and helping others to do the same. The books I have recommended in my book list are all examples of people with similar mindsets.

Barry's book list on thinking differently about yourself and the world

Barry J. Robinson Why did Barry love this book?

Exploring a spiritual tradition that predates by many centuries the fall/redemption ideology of mainstream Christianity (which Gandhi referred to as a "Christianity without Christ"), Fox presents an alternative quest for wisdom based on the fundamental conviction that we are, each one of us, born into this world not as blotches on creation but as blessings, precious, beloved and of enormous worth and promise.

Fox's theology eventually won him the ire of the Roman papacy and eventually expulsion from the Catholic Church. His response? "Sometimes you have to take your praise any way you can get it!"

By Matthew Fox,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Original Blessing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Here is a reissue of the critically acclaimed bestseller, named one of the "20 books that changed the world" in New Age Journal's Annual Source Book for 1995. Maverick theologian Matthew Fox provides a daring view of historical Christianity and a theologically sound basis for personal discovery of spiritual liberation.

In this revolutionary work, Fox shows how Christianity once celebrated beauty, compassion, justice, and provided a path of positive knowledge and ecstatic connection with all creation.


Book cover of Sensitive Is the New Strong: The Power of Empaths in an Increasingly Harsh World
Book cover of The Empath's Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People
Book cover of The Intuitive Way: The Definitive Guide to Increasing Your Awareness

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Interested in spirituality, empathy, and new age?

Spirituality 320 books
Empathy 166 books
New Age 25 books