Here are 100 books that The Adversity Hack fans have personally recommended if you like
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On Jan 30, 2013, I was sacked for "insubordination." No notice, no severance. My bosses threatened the other employees with dismissal if they talked to me. I'd been at the company for decades, rising from entry level to the executive team; after years of striving, it was a devastating blow. Once I picked myself up, I realized I’d leaned in so far, I’d toppled over. So I set off on a new path. Today, I have a master’s degree in Eastern classics, four leadership books, and one historical novel, and I’m committed to helping high achievers—women, especially—find their own paths to happy success: paths beyond “lean in.”
I am an anxious achiever. In fact, I’m an overachiever with a diagnosed anxiety disorder.
The great thing about this book is that, while it’s no substitute for the medications and therapy we anxiety sufferers may need, it helps us see that we’re not alone; moreover, that we can succeed not just despite our anxious personality, but because of it.
Good things happen, says Morra Aarons-Mele, “when we learn to manage anxiety and take advantage of its hidden gifts.” In other words, we can lean in (to our fear) and conquer. If you’re like me, well versed in the ways of an edgy brain, skip straight to Part Two, which offers a powerful toolset for managing anxiety at work.
A timely and compelling guide to managing the anxiety that comes with succeeding and leading-from entrepreneur, mental health advocate, and top-rated podcaster Morra Aarons-Mele.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses in the world. But in our workplaces, anxiety has been a hidden problem-there in plain sight but ignored. Until now.
The Anxious Achiever is a book with a mission: to normalize anxiety and leadership. As leadership expert and self-proclaimed anxious achiever Morra Aarons-Mele argues, anxiety is built into the very nature of leadership. It can-and should-be harnessed into a force for good.
On Jan 30, 2013, I was sacked for "insubordination." No notice, no severance. My bosses threatened the other employees with dismissal if they talked to me. I'd been at the company for decades, rising from entry level to the executive team; after years of striving, it was a devastating blow. Once I picked myself up, I realized I’d leaned in so far, I’d toppled over. So I set off on a new path. Today, I have a master’s degree in Eastern classics, four leadership books, and one historical novel, and I’m committed to helping high achievers—women, especially—find their own paths to happy success: paths beyond “lean in.”
If you want to be happy, the first thing you need to do is put happiness first.
“But what if I’m a type-A achiever who wants a big title and salary?” you ask. That’s great! People find happiness in all sorts of things, and maybe a corner office is your jam. The point, says Dr. Tal Leead, is to prioritize the purposes, activities, and relationships that bring joy to your life.
We can’t always avoid doing stuff we don’t enjoy, but we can make a mental shift to create our unique, soul-deep definition of happiness—and pursue it. This simple shift to a Happier Being mindset has helped me more than all the to-do lists, success seminars, and exhortations to “lean in.”
On Jan 30, 2013, I was sacked for "insubordination." No notice, no severance. My bosses threatened the other employees with dismissal if they talked to me. I'd been at the company for decades, rising from entry level to the executive team; after years of striving, it was a devastating blow. Once I picked myself up, I realized I’d leaned in so far, I’d toppled over. So I set off on a new path. Today, I have a master’s degree in Eastern classics, four leadership books, and one historical novel, and I’m committed to helping high achievers—women, especially—find their own paths to happy success: paths beyond “lean in.”
It may seem strange to include a jobseeker’s guide in a list of leadership books, but Agile Unemployment is the resource for anyone faced with the hardest leadership task of all: leading yourself through a time of trial.
Sabina Sulat has been there—on both sides of the HR desk for “that conversation”—and she offers her well-earned wisdom with deep candor, much-needed encouragement, and straight-shooting practicality. In my early career days, I always found the “What color is your parachute” genre pretty useless, not to mention incredibly depressing. I wish I’d had Sulat’s sound guidance back then; it would have helped me lean in, out, up, down, and sideways with far more grace and optimism.
Lost your job? Struggling to figure the future out?
Agile Unemployment is the book for you. Losing your job can be harrowing, but it is a temporary state and does not define you. Cast aside your doubts and develop a new mindset to carry you through those down moments and rebuild your life how YOU see fit. Agile Unemployment is your guide to working through the job searching process and learning how to pivot your mindset to build resilience as you develop confidence and find the job of your dreams.
Turn losing your job into a moment of opportunity. Agile…
On Jan 30, 2013, I was sacked for "insubordination." No notice, no severance. My bosses threatened the other employees with dismissal if they talked to me. I'd been at the company for decades, rising from entry level to the executive team; after years of striving, it was a devastating blow. Once I picked myself up, I realized I’d leaned in so far, I’d toppled over. So I set off on a new path. Today, I have a master’s degree in Eastern classics, four leadership books, and one historical novel, and I’m committed to helping high achievers—women, especially—find their own paths to happy success: paths beyond “lean in.”
LaPora Lindsey's key message, that we can make a profound positive impact no matter how little formal authority we have, is the leadership message for our time.
And her key metaphor—"life at the bottom of the food chain," whence all energy originates—is a brilliant way to express it. I’ve come to realize that this perspective on careers isn’t just for entry-level youngsters; it’s also for us oldsters with top jobs and/or years of experience.
We imagine it’s our bird’s-eye strategies and top-down direction that count, but oftentimes, it’s our earth-bound energy and support that make the biggest difference. When we say, “Yes, good idea, I’ll get behind that. Here’s how I’ll help,” we gain more power than we know.
Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino is the founder of The Best Ever You Network and co-founder of Compliance4. Through these companies, she has helped individuals and organizations around the world be their best and achieve world-class excellence with gratitude-based behavior and belief systems. She is one of America's foremost personal and corporate development consultants specializing in mindset, change management, strategy, leadership, and taking action. Elizabeth is also the author of the award-winning personal development book PERCOLATE - Let Your Best Self Filter Through (Hay House) and multiple children’s books as a contributor and author. Elizabeth lives her daily life with life-threatening food allergies. Elizabeth and her husband live in Maine with their four sons and three rescued cats.
This is a very relatable book from everyday people who have created change for good. I firmly believe that the practice of change starts with us individually and this book supports that concept. I believe that to be our best and live our best lives, we must solidly and whole-heartedly look within.
John Maxwell and Rob Hoskins have invested their lives as champions of change. Maxwell's organizations EQUIP and the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation have transformed communities by training more than five million leaders from literally every country in the world. Hoskins's One Hope has transformed the lives of more than one billion children and youth in 120 countries around the globe.
Now, for the first time, these two leaders have partnered to write a book about how anyone, anywhere, can transform their world. Offering practical principles based on solid research and real-life experience, the authors teach how to recognize where and…
I started this book in 2007. It was a compilation of stories from my experience as a parent; there was no structure to it at all. When my second husband passed in 2017, an ad appeared in Facebook for Author Academy Elite (AAE). I knew it was my late husband giving me that one final push to get the book done. As a (non) perfect parent of three children, I felt my experience could benefit others as I am continuing my journey along my Path to Perfection. As a person who has struggled with depression for her entire life, I can honestly say that parenting is hard. We are all doing the best we can with what we have. And that’s why I think you’ll enjoy these books!
As a parent, we all struggle with self-care. The book is relatable. Real-life stories highlight the struggles many moms go through. The author talks about how we put so much on ourselves as moms and yet we still feel unworthy.
With the help of this book, moms can evoke self-care for themselves - in as little as 10 minutes a day. There is a course you can take along with it if you want.
That being a mother is much harder than they anticipated.
That they don’t feel good enough and are forgetting who they are or what they like because every waking moment is spent taking care of everyone but themselves.
It can be an overwhelming and underappreciated job...
Even if it's the best job title in the world.
It is common for moms to have a million tabs open in their mind at all times and to therefore feel burned out and overwhelmed.…
I’ll admit it: I love the domestic arts. As a natural klutz, I knew sports would be out and I focused on organizing, cooking, gardening, cleaning, and decorating. My mother knew all the old-fashioned tricks and I collected the new ones. Today I have several thousand followers on my youtube channel, where I share life hacks, housekeeping hints, and even motherly advice as the Youtube Mom. One of my sons said that none of his buddies knew how to do laundry, cook, iron, etc., and suggested I have a channel to fill in the gaps for Millenials. Having hosted a TV talk show in Los Angeles, this appealed to me right away. And, you guessed it, lots of moms and grandmas write in as well, saying they never knew those tricks themselves. It’s truly gratifying to share these time-and-money-saving ideas.
This is a large, hardback coffee table book, unlike my other picks. Nice to browse through for the beautiful photos and the advice from a woman we’re all familiar with, who has elevated housekeeping to an art form. For example, for those with a “no shoes” policy, Martha advises putting pretty stones from a garden center in your mud room, so people can place their footwear on the stones to allow snow, etc. to drain through.
Inside these pages Martha shares all her best good things - the original life hacks for the home - to make your life easier, more fun, more delicious, and more efficient. These practical tricks cover all areas of Martha's domestic expertise, including cooking, crafting, gardening, organising, entertaining, and more. From clever ways to solve common problems (use lip balm to lubricate a stuck zipper) to time-saving tricks (label window screens to avoid confusion when they come down for cleaning) to stress reducers (colour-code kids' bathroom gear to make mornings less hectic), every one of these ideas will make you wonder,…
Matthew J. Van Natta is an author and podcaster who has been guiding people to Stoicism for over a decade. His focus is on the daily application of Stoic philosophy within the modern world. He writes fiction, drinks coffee, beer, and whiskey, and contemplates the human condition. His writings have been featured on SpiritualNaturalistSociety.org and Modern Stoicism.
Being Better is the best expression of the heart of Stoic philosophy that I have found in print. This is not a how-to book in the style of so many beginner’s manuals (including my own), but instead it is a meditation on the core principles of Stoicism. The authors challenge us to apply those principles in our own lives, so that we can join together in making the world a better place. Each chapter unveils a facet of the philosophy using the experiences of real people, both ancient and modern, as examples of how to apply Stoic thinking to hard problems such as the climate crisis, social justice issues, and economic excess. Being Better moves past simple life hacks to show us how Stoicism can function as a full philosophy of life.
Practical answers to the urgent moral questions of our time from the ancient philosophy of Stoicism
Twenty-three centuries ago, in a marketplace in Athens, Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, built his philosophy on powerful ideas that still resonate today: all human beings can become citizens of the world, regardless of their nationality, gender, or social class; happiness comes from living in harmony with nature; and, most important, humans always have the freedom to choose their attitude, even when they cannot control external circumstances. In our age of political polarization and environmental destruction, Stoicism’s empowering message has taken on…
At The Financial Diet, I’ve written and produced videos about money, productivity, and work/life balance for the better part of a decade. I’ve come to the conclusion that most of our commonly held beliefs about money and work are incorrect: your job shouldn’t be your main purpose, and money shouldn’t be the end goal in and of itself. I’ve also been a longtime nonfiction reader, and I lead a monthly book club for our Patreon members. This list is composed of my favorite selections from those meetings (a few of which I’d read previously), and I hope they invite you to question your own relationship with work and money!
As a rather Type A person who can get a bit preoccupied with schedules and to-do lists, this book was a much-needed reality check for me. I love the almost nihilistic approach to productivity here: this book is quite literally about how we are all going to die, yet we spend so much of our waking life trying to be as productive as possible.
This book forced me to interrogate how much unnecessary time I spend on work (the income-driven kind as well as the household chore kind) and got me thinking seriously about the reason for work in the first place: so that joy is a possibility.
"Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." ―Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal
The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.
Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of…
I could say I’ve had a hard life (and I have), but who hasn’t? Life is one adversity after another, and we need all the help we can get. Without that help, moods suffer, hope falters, and our souls are diminished. During my own personal journey through this quagmire called life, I have often been lifted up and out of the mud whilst reading the books I suggest below and more. These books either made me laugh and cry, made me think, or made me change the way I approached things. Quite often, they did all four at the same time. Their insights were invaluable.
The past has gone and can’t be changed; the future hasn’t happened yet. All we have is now. Yet so many of us pick over our pasts or spend far too much time worrying about the future and, in doing so, lose all those precious moments that make up the ‘now.’
The mainstay of therapy is bringing people back into the present to enjoy their lives more, and no book has done this quite so well as this one. It’s both thoughtful and therapeutic, philosophical and spiritual. Spirituality is considered a character strength in positive psychology (an attribute that, when used appropriately, can improve one's well-being and enhance one's resilience in the face of adversity).
It provides food for thought and a tonic for the soul. No small wonder then that it has sold so many copies and been translated into so many languages.
**CHOSEN BY OPRAH AS ONE OF HER 'BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH'**
The international bestselling spiritual book, now with a new look for its 20th anniversary. Eckhart Tolle demonstrates how to live a healthier, happier, mindful life by living in the present moment.
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'I keep Eckhart's book at my bedside. I think it's essential spiritual teaching. It's one of the most valuable books I've ever read.' Oprah Winfrey
To make the journey into The Power of Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart…
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