100 books like Tao

Most ancient wisdom texts require a lot of effort. I love the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Buddhist Discourses, Dogen, Plato, Krishnamurti, and so on. But to read them, I have to take some time out of my day.

This book is a scroll of 81 aphorisms. I can pick any one, spend a little time with it, and get on with my day.

Plus, it starts with a bang: “The Way that you hear about is not the real Way.” I am invited to be confused! That takes all the pressure off me to figure it out. 

This book takes the wisdom of Tao into the world of sports, combining Chung-liang Al Huang’s calligraphy and insights as a T’ai Ji master with sports psychologist Jerry Lynch’s use of Tao principles to coach professional, Olympic, and recreational athletes. Offering lessons from the enduring wisdom of Tao, along with exercises, affirmations, and encouragement, this book helps readers transcend the limits of Western dualism to discover a new path of joy and meaning in their athletic endeavors, careers, and personal lives.

John Heider’s book takes the wisdom of Tao into the world of leadership, offering timeless wisdom and practical advice for leaders. Readers will learn about the power of presence in relationships, as well as how to pay attention, trust the process, and stay centered in the midst of challenge and conflict to become more effective and inspiring leaders.

For starters, the title caught my attention; I was in a lot of emotional pain and doubted many of my decisions. I didn't realize I was seeking outward contentment and happiness for many years.

This book was written after I read The Secret. So, it was in the same genre of books I had started to read. I listened to Wayne Dyer on YouTube and loved his talks, and when I heard of the book, I felt it wouldn't hurt to read it.

I was drawn in with his simple way of pointing out that maybe we are the reason for our misery, and we, along with faith, can turn our lives in a different direction. Start by loving ourselves enough to know that we don't deserve misery. And no matter what someone else did to us in the past, forgiveness is possible, and healing starts right then and… show more.

Writers often struggle to think of themselves as “writers” because the world has us believing that we can only carry that title if we are successfully published, and of course words such as “success” and even “published” can be fraught with subjective controversy. One of the lessons I learned from Brenda Ueland, among other great thinkers, is that we need to focus first on our own authenticity and only much, much later dare we think about what the world might have to say. This allowed me to let go and move on and trust myself on my writing path. It wasn’t easy, but as emphasized in If You Want to Write, we will be all right if we believe in our inner richness.  

This one didn’t change my life, but it did provide me with a no-nonsense guide to pesky things like conjunctions and clauses, superlatives and synonyms, prepositions and pronouns, and, obviously, alliteration. Ha. 

What I liked most about this book is that it isn’t written like a textbook. I read what is widely considered to be the writer's bible, The Elements of Style by William Struck and E.B. White, and considered giving up on my dream of becoming a writer because the book made me feel as if only someone with an Einstein-like intellect could write. 

But, as Mr. King wrote, the story is what matters; everything else is just dressing. But in saying that, being able to string together sentences helps (I think my jokes are funny, but no one else does), and this book gives a simple explanation of how to make your copy sing.

We’ve all got one of those life stories that we end up telling over and over again. Research has confirmed that those stories hold power. Meg Files in Writing What You Know offers us a path to transform those stories from the telling onto the page, and just maybe into the larger world. I credit Files’ workshops for helping me refine work that was later published. While you might notice that she draws on her teaching, conference creating, and publishing experience, she also writes with the voice of a supportive, nurturing friend. She reminds us not to be too self-critical, gives us the questions to get started, and challenges us with many opportunities to be “Jumping into the Abyss.”

Writing professor Gabriele Rico knows how to take the fear out of writing, which is why this book became such a powerful best-seller and why I love to read and recommend it. Among the many strategies and techniques she offers in Writing the Natural Way, one of my favorites is her brainstorming strategy called clustering, which gives us permission to wander and bypass the critical censorship we are often hindered by. In turn, this fuels creativity and prompts us to make associations among ideas, memories, and feelings that are otherwise seemingly diverse or disorganized. She also firmly believes that, although writing can be a painful process, it’s not what hurts us that matters but rather it’s how we deal with the pain, and it’s through an honest expression of our truth that we can grow and heal.

Erin Lebacqz is an experienced business writing teacher, and her practical and practiced bent shows in this book. It offers solid advice for clear and effective writing, covering topics like word choice, sentence structure, and more. The numerous examples will serve people new on the job as well as those who simply want to sharpen their skills and tighten their prose.

Even as someone who writes about writing, I found fresh approaches and ideas in this book. For example, Lebacqz suggests that as writers, we should act like “hosts” for our readers. I love that. 

When I sat down to write my first novel I knew I wanted to model my characters on George’s Lynley and Havers but I couldn’t even start writing because I had no idea how to structure a novel, particularly a mystery. As fate would have it, George released her book on writing, Write Away, around that time. In it, she described her process with examples from her own books and it was exactly what I needed. This book provided the essential tools I needed to write.