It’s so easy to get yourself in a tangle. Most of us will know that feeling: there are so many things you want to sort out, to be better at and to get right, it’s hard enough just to know how and where to begin. Fortunately, we have some good ideas on how to get going… start by reading the right book!
With our Unwind Your Mind Promotion, we at BB are bringing you the stellar advice you need. Here’s a selection of books, by prominent experts, that covers everything from negotiating and communicating to spirituality and self-love. Whatever it is that you’re looking to achieve, at least one of the books here will put you on the right track.
Take a look.
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before by Dr. Julie Smith
Do you ever feel that there’s just too much that you don’t know? Just too much that, for some reason, you were never taught? You’re not alone. A lot of us feel like this. Clinical psychologist and social media personality Julie Smith is aware of this. And that’s why she has brought us this book on improving resilience and maintaining positivity.
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before provides simple advice and practical solutions to the host of difficulties thrown at us by modern life. Whether you’re struggling with low mood, lack of motivation, self-doubt or self-criticism, Smith’s bitesize chunks of warmth and wisdom will help you get to where you want to be. Often enough, doing well is just a matter of knowing the right tricks – and this book provides them in spades.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Thinking, Fast and Slow, a consistent favourite and bestseller, transformed our relationships with our own thoughts by taking us on a tour of the human mind, introducing us to the two main systems that control the way we think. If you haven’t read it, now is a very good time to.
With this cornerstone of popular psychology, Kahneman lifts the veil on the many often-overlooked phenomena that control everyday life. As the book explains, most decisions fall into one of two categories: intuitive or rational ie. fast or slow. And this binary informs a lot of things we often overlook, such as why we often consider good-looking people more trustworthy or how the legal system operates differently before and after lunch. Most importantly, it demonstrates that, quite often, we think we are being rational and careful with our thoughts and decisions when in fact we are not. And who can’t relate to that?
Thinking, Fast and Slow will revolutionise how you make decisions for good.
How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Want to be more popular? Need to bring in more clients, keep customers coming back, be taken more seriously and maintain fulfilling practises? Yep, Carnegie can help you with that.
This one has been changing lives for more than eighty years. Numerous prominent personalities credit it with changing their lives. How To Win Friends and Influence People – despite it’s admittedly old-fashioned title – is simply about living a more rewarding life by improving the way you interact with people.
Carnegie’s immortal advice covers many of the things we still find difficult. Topics and advice cover: easily making and keeping friends, becoming more highly regarded by colleagues and clients, achieving prosperity, improving written and verbal communication skills, becoming more persuasive, and a host of other skills and wisdom for both business and life.
There’s a reason How To Win Friends and Influence People continues to occupy a prestigious position within a genre overflowing with fads and platitudes. Check it out.
Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
When things seem hopeless, it makes sense to consult a man who knows more about the nature of hope than most writers ever could.
Renowned psychiatrist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl has become beloved for his awe-inspiring philosophy of positivity and meaning.
Having lost his entire family to the Holocaust, he endured unspeakable horror throughout the three years he spent in concentration camps – one of them Auschwitz. He endured an event that we still don’t have the words to fully describe and came out the other side with much to teach us all.
Every one of us will struggle with the concept of meaning. It’s just a difficult aspect of being human. But Frankl’s steadfast argument that living is a spiritual artform and that all suffering can be transcended is just the ticket for easing that struggle.
Never Split the Difference by Chris Vos
You could say that life is just a negotiation. You could also say that negotiating is hard. If anyone knows this, it’s ex-FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss – whose hard-won experience and singular expertise can be applied to just about any situation, with a bit of practice.
Not only is Never Split the Difference packed with the knowhow you’ll need to transform your personal and professional life, it’s also thoroughly, grippingly entertaining. By sharing the nine key principles of high-stakes negotiation, Voss grants us the insight to cut through everyday noise to get to the critical heart of any undertaking.
Take instant action and gain control of whatever life throws at you.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
Much of 12 Rules for Life is given to keeping you upright; faced with the fact that life involves suffering, we have to choose to overcome it. It also takes a look at recent trends in parenting, the difficulties of doing what is meaningful versus what is easy, how best to treat yourself, how best to treat others and how to correct the complacency that comes with the way we live.
These twelve rules contain a lot of inherent sense and tend to build on principles that most of us carry to some degree, but they are positioned and developed in such a way that they might be used to get us back on track, to keep our idea of ourselves stable and to steady us against the onslaught of nonsense… all backed up with biblical, mythological and pop-cultural parallels.
Given its hard-hitting delivery, its combination of the personal and the ideological, its refusal to coddle and excuse… this is not your average self-betterment book.
…and here are our three favourites of the 12 rules:
- Treat yourself like you are someone you are responsible for helping.
- Make friends with people who want the best for you.
- Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today.
Read the book to find out the rest!
The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale
And finally for another long-lived classic.
Peale has been transforming people’s lives for more than half a century, and this is one of the most famous and enduring self-help books in existence – the book that spawned an entire subgenre of personal improvement.
The Power of Positive Thinking is a practical, direct-action application of spiritual techniques to overcome defeat and win confidence, success and joy. Norman Vincent Peale, the father of positive thinking and one of the most widely read inspirational writers of all time, shares his famous formula of faith and optimism which he developed himself by trial and error whilst searching for a way of life.
Millions of people have taken Peale’s teachings as their own simple and effective philosophy of living. His gentle guidance helps to eliminate defeatist attitudes, to know the power you possess and to make the best of your life.
Be Good to Yourself and, As Always,
Happy Reading!