10 books like The Dark Side of the Light Chasers

Learning to communicate in a way that creates a win-win situation for everyone is a skill. Often we get what we want to the detriment of others or the other way round. Nobody wins and the ultimate consequence is nobody is happy. I really like how practical this book is and how it taught me to speak in a different way entirely! It’s all well and good to know the theory of how negative language can destroy relationships but knowing how to communicate differently is what really matters. I like books with exercises I can put into practice as well as the theory that underpins them. This is what gets me to pick this book up and go through it again twenty years after I first bought it.  

I picked up this book about 12 years ago. Being a psychotherapist I love, love learning. I love attending workshops (pre-covid) and learning new ways of thinking. New ways of looking at issues. New ways to look at how we get stuck in our relationships and life. Reading this book gave me tools that have transformed my therapy practice and how I work with couples. How I interact with my husband, my sons, and my close friends. It helped me by giving me insight into who I want to be in a relationship and it gave me self-worth as well. I have all the couples I work with read this book and it speeds along our therapy work. 

Norman Doidge is a Canadian psychiatrist and award-winning science writer, currently on the Faculty of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and Research Faculty at Columbia University. In this book, he provides a fascinating synopsis of the current revolution in neuroscience with an emphasis on neuroplasticity. Essentially, Doidge cites many case histories illustrating the power of positive thinking in healing neurological diseases.

Doidge’s focus as the seat of the problem is always the brain. His book is highly readable and holds out hope for many people with neurological impairments.

Originally written as a tennis coaching text – the wisdom of this approach transcends the world of tennis and carries an important message about how changing our thinking can release the latent potential in us whatever we are doing.

The focus is on the importance of self-talk – what our outer self is telling the inner self and in doing so chimes beautifully with what we know about our unconscious mind. We know that more than 90% of our behaviour is driven by our unconscious and it hears everything we say to ourselves – so consider the impact of critical self-talk and the potential damage to our confidence and performance.

The book is summarised in the formula: Potential minus Interference = Performance

We achieve at our best when we manage the ‘Interference’ we impose on ourselves!

My mentor Peter Block taught me that the ultimate act of being an adult, the ultimate act of taking responsibility for your own freedom, was making choices. Some choices of course are easy—I’ll have a double espresso, please—but plenty are difficult. You don’t have all the data, it’s too close to call, and you can feel the combination of anxiety and guilt that can come with committing. This book adds some structure and discipline to how to make the best possible choice, and by doing so makes it easier to be more courageous and bold.

After being transformed by The Power of Now at a time when my whole world came unglued, I was delighted to go further into Eckhart’s work with this book. It’s done wonders to help me recognize and release ego when it shows up. I thought I’d “done” my ego work but realized how much my ego still controls my life. I come back to this book when I need tools to help me soften. I’m someone who likes being right (and believes I am most of the time!), but knowing this is just ego allows me to let others have their experiences without me correcting them! Every time I read this book, I feel a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, and experience more compassion for myself and others.

Moon realizes that certain words are particularly helpful and powerful in making conversations better (all conversations, not just coaching ones). It’s one short word per letter (“Difference”, “Might”, and “Yet” are three of my favourites), and this feels like a collection of twenty-six precise tools that can help any type of discussion more elegant, more curious, more filled with potential and more useful.

In The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene, an outstanding book that will no doubt remain a classic for a very long time. Those who wonder why it is that certain sub-cultures in the business world, Hollywood, the entertainment industry, politics, finance appear to be incurably cynical, amoral, unethical, corrupt, and untrustworthy would do well to read it, provided they are able to resist being persuaded by its brutal philosophy.

Greene, who has other similarly-oriented best-selling books on business success, is considered a guru by the music industry, and has been embraced with special enthusiasm by hip-hop moguls. What is remarkable about his 48 laws is how completely they discard all ethical virtues, as if fairness, honesty, integrity, responsibility, respect, and trustworthiness were irrelevant to the topic of power.

In fact, the five most important laws of power are… You must prove your worthiness to hold power by your manner… show more.

While Olga’s live-wire, imperfect mothering fuelled me with a sort of righteous approval — or recognition — Rose, the mother in Hot Milk, left a metallic distaste in my mouth. Rose is limp and passive. She is the apparent sufferer of a mysterious bone disease. Her 25-year-old daughter, Sofia, has been lassoed along as “an unwilling detective” of this ailment, as well as her mother’s primary caregiver.

Sofia is her mother’s laundrywoman. Her walking stick. She dares not protest even when her mother rests her head on her shoulder, which is burning from a jellyfish sting. Admittedly, it’s not the mother that tugs me into this book, but Sofia herself. As Sofia explores her own individuation, her own eros, her own obsessions, the story grows increasingly hypnotic and propulsive.

Step one in treating yourself better is to cease focusing on what isn't going well and to put your attention on what is. Be truly thankful for your blessings. No matter what challenges or situations you are facing, there are things you can be grateful for. You have air to breathe and water to drink, for example. Start there. The more you focus on the positives in your life, the more good things you will attract. This book guides you through a month of gratitude activities that will have you feeling better about every aspect of your life.