Fans pick 100 books like The 5 Personality Patterns

I’ve read this book over and over and highlighted something new every time. Somehow, through the lens of Nazi death camps, Frankl validates everyone’s suffering, including my own. I’ve always known that suffering is an inescapable part of the human experience, but this helped me understand that to the brain, it isn’t relative in the ways I always thought.

Furthermore, this book helped me understand that my coping mechanisms inform suffering’s hold on me. Stories are a coping mechanism, and I learned that redirecting my attention and creating my personal narratives around what is meaningful to me rather than the source of pain is key to the cage of suffering. This book changed how I understand the importance of purpose and the power of what I build my stories around. 

This book is the best book to get leaders to own the fact that unleashing an organization's creative power requires shifting its energy and culture and ripples from there. It all starts at the Top of The House. Through storytelling, it gave me two compelling insights.

First, it helped me see with clarity that we moved from living in a complicated world into a complex one; setting direction no longer works for leaders within organizations to thrive; now, it is required to shape context, and in return, your teams will feel safe to co-create.

Second, the authors very clearly define innovation in simple terms: Anything that is new and useful is innovative; it doesn’t have to be rocket science.

These insights gave me the courage to explore innovative ways to unleash energy within a system or organization. 

This book masterfully uses six archetypes to show that we are not just the Thinker and the Warrior at work and the Dreamer and the Lover at Home; we have these big four personalities within all of us, and it shows us a way to integrate them simply and sustainably.  

This book changed my life. The philosophy behind it helped me accept a holistic mindset and, with it, update my belief system. By integrating my Emotional and Spiritual  Energy with my physical and mental, I gained stronger access to my intuition and creative power. I started to become the writer of my own story, rather than others writing it for me. There is no such thing as emotional compartmentalization. When it comes to emotions, 

there is one switch: On & Off. When you turn off the “Lover” at work for a long and sustained period, you end up numbing all… show more.

Although this is a little dated, I love this book because it holds so much information for beginners on the path of healing. 

The diagrams in the book show, I believe clearly, how our auras are affected by different emotional states, there’s a fascinating comprehensive dowsing chart which is great for students who are less confident with their intuitive abilities, but every time I pick it up even now I get inspired with new aspects to bring to my courses and workshops. 

Another happiness book!? Okay, if a philosophical book on the “art” of happiness isn’t your cup of Tibetan tea, then how about the science of happiness? Dr. Martin Seligmann is considered the founder of positive psychology – a movement to understand not just what’s wrong with people but what’s right. 

Though Seligman has written a few books over the decades on the research of well-being, I think Authentic Happiness is the best introduction to the many studies helping us find more meaning, engagement, and joy. My favorite part is that Seligman seems like a “natural grouch” – like a guy who didn’t want to believe in positive psychology but couldn’t ignore the robust research showing that we can change our well-being. Reading this is like chatting with the gruff, 40-year-teaching-veteran who is chock full of stories, wisdom, and insights to look at and live life differently.

If I could have a crush on a balding conservative with bad teeth, I would have a crush on David Brooks. I may not always agree with his NYT opinions, but I can’t dispute that he is an author of deep curiosity and integrity.

As a journalist, his focus on making the other person feel seen, heard, and understood would seem to be part of his toolkit. But what I most appreciate about Brooks, the storyteller, is his ability to share himself not as an expert in the topic of listening but as a curious and resourceful guide.

The terrain here varies as he interviews practitioners in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, theatre, philosophy, education, and more. Throughout the book, he relays the mistakes and foibles in his own listening journey. I felt encouraged to learn and grow alongside him. David Brooks is a writer with immense stores of compassion,… show more.

Oh boy, this monumental book certainly expanded my empathetic mind! The greatest lesson? The fact that true empathy requires a compassionate response. That was an eye-opener! This book has really stuck with me. I remember being entrenched and enthralled with every page while on a writing retreat. I can’t thank the author enough for helping me fine-tune my own books about the empathic experience!

Similar in tone to her well-known The Language of Emotions, this book doesn’t dive too deeply into metaphysical perspectives. Instead, this book is primarily grounded in psychology, history, and science. That is the very reason why we highly sensitive souls benefit from books like these; we are admittedly gullible and easy to manipulate if our empathy is uncontrolled! Understanding our abilities through a grounded psychological lens such as this is crucial for our emotional understanding.

I can’t overstate how much I learned from this book. I used to avoid anger at all costs. I was suffering from “nice lady syndrome.” Now I have come to see anger as a terrific little alarm system, letting me know a boundary of mine has been crossed. Like all emotions, as well as being temporary and tolerable it is a guide. I can listen to it and learn from it. I recommend The Dance of Anger to clients who experience discomfort with anger in general, marital problems, stressful in-law situations… the list goes on. If anger has been a trigger for your addiction, or you wonder how to deal with anger in recovery, this book is for you. 

This book does a great job of reminding non-doctors that physicians are not robots or heroes but human beings who put their pants on like everyone else. 

Doctors are people with a full range of emotions, insecurities, and doubt. Ofri draws on stories from her own training and practice that show how feelings generate the necessary empathy needed in the practice of medicine, but if left unexamined, can also lead to terrible harm. 

I love this book because it gives adult daughters clarity on the generational trauma mom might be acting out with them when in conflict together. By looking at patterns of behaviors (criticizing, dismissing, avoiding), social expectations of each generation (i.e., stay home, be small, be a caregiver, be polite), and mom’s own trauma, adult daughters can look at mom with more awareness and compassion.

I loved the grandma-mother-daughter genogram exercise in this book, which maps out these patterns in such a powerful, visual way!