For the longest time I had been skeptical about life lesson books. Reading about self-help and mental health felt far away, and not enjoyable. Until, I stumbled upon a few books that teach life lessons, that redefined purpose, loss, success, failure, motivation, and what it took to get there.
With frequent lessons on resilience, identity and courage, it was getting easier to accommodate gratitude. While I tend to oscillate between swearing off and indulging in self-help books, I remain a vague in-between. Yet, I must admit that the following books gently guided me when I felt more than a little (hopelessly) lost. Here’s a list to lead the way:
1. James Clear’s Atomic Habits
What to expect: Think game-ifying your life into a structured system to help you accomplish a small goal every day.
Major takeaway: Failure is often tied to a recurring pattern of (bad) habit. To change a habit means to change its underlying system.
Why read: An easily digestible version of what it takes to make and break a habit, with evidence from biology, psychology, and neuroscience.
Read if/when: You need to reshape perspective surrounding ideas of success and progress. Or, you just need to be 1% better than yesterday.
2. Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic
What to expect: It provides bite-sized insights into following the spiritual path carved by the Stoics.
Major takeaway: The Stoics believed in the simplicity of being disciplined to achieve happiness. They imparted lessons on perception, action, and will.
Why read: The one-lesson-a-day format is easy to follow and practical. Repetitive lessons are useful as they help in building and understanding life.
Read if/when: If you’re struggling with purpose and meaning. If you wish to dip into the philosophy of Stoicism.
3. Simon Sinek’s Start with Why
What to expect: Sinek dives into the “WHY” of difference: in why some people might be more influential, or succeed more often.
Major takeaway: Following the key aspects of inspired leadership, using several real-life stories, the reader can understand “WHY” we do what we do.
Why read: Unconventionally optimistic, Sinek is attempting to build a world that inspires to lead, and is led by inspiration.
Read if/when: You feel discouraged or unmotivated, especially relating to Business or Leadership roles. A good appetizer into entrepreneurial professional development.
4. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
What to expect: A sensible, spiritual guide to balance fear and curiosity that inspiration engulfs. Passionate in its mindful approach to a creative life, Gilbert’s non-fiction opens to the wonders of self-development.
Major takeaway: Creative expression requires no permission. Above all, it neither demands nor deploys judgment. It purely exists for its own sake.
Why read: There are some books that will appeal to you, and if you did stumble upon this, you have chanced upon such magic, too. It offers an honest exploration of what it means to truly cultivate a deep meaningful relationship with what you create.
Read if/when: You are stuck or afraid to create anew. Feeling uninspired and needing a little nudge to get you going, creatively or otherwise.
5. Russ Harris’ The Happiness Trap
What to expect: Challenging the illusion of happiness, this non-fiction offers a glimpse into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Focusing on behavioral change, ACT favors acceptance of negative human experience/thought/feelings instead of fighting them.
Major takeaway: While this kind of “advice” is not one-size-fits-all, it might just be a doorway into eliminating negative self-talk.
Why read: Works on the central theme of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): the non-elimination of pain, and the relief upon its acceptance. An approachable entrance into what therapy might offer, if you let it.
Read if/when: You think happiness is overrated. Or, you need to add to your list of books to read during rough times.
RELATED READING: How To Read Free Books On Kindle – The Complete Guide
6. Ali Abdaal’s Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You
What to expect: At its core, it’s about the science surrounding feel-good productivity. It streamlines into topics like procrastination, burnout, and feeling happier in the process of work.
Major takeaway: The secret to productivity and success is much simpler. When you make work feel good, productivity naturally follows.
Why read: This most-followed productivity expert was once an up-and-coming study YouTuber. Working his way through decades’ worth of psychological study, Abdaal’s insights encourage productive self-help.
Read if/when: You’re feeling burnt-out but you need to get things done. Or, if you want to feel fulfilled rather than simply accomplished when you finish a task.
7. Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich
What to expect: This seminal work is prescribed as an antidote for what followed after the Great Depression. Apart from its positive philosophy surrounding relationship with money, it also extends into providing specifications to acquiring wealth.
Major takeaway: With much regard for mindset and manner surrounding wealth, we’ll have you warned that the book also engages with the mystical unknown. It maintains the idea of “getting what you want” more than “getting rich.”
Why read: Very infomercial presentation of information, but you’ll see why it worked (especially in the 20th century). Alas, it is no further from the truth that carries the “a quitter never wins, and a winner never quits” quote.
Read if/when: You need a monetary life lesson. Especially recommended for those skeptical about quick-rich schemes!
8. Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements
What to expect: Deemed a modern spiritual classic, The Four Agreements stands as testimony to the tenets of Toltec wisdom. It does have concepts that encourage self-awareness, or simply provide new perspectives. Merging spiritual philosophy and personal development, this non-fiction challenges living up to simple truths.
Major takeaway: Prejudice from others and self-victimization does more harm than good. Proposing a code of conduct to inspire self-transformation, this book honestly examines the sources of pain and suffering caused by limiting beliefs.
Why read: The true essence of this text need not be realized only through mysticism. It works as a functional metaphor when applied to everyday work, society, and relationships.
Read if/when: Looking for valuable insights to overcome limiting beliefs. Or, wanting to take more control of life. (If you’re up for a challenge, this is a top pick!)
9. Jack Kerouac’s On The Road
What to expect: A story of a man determined to redefine life, success, and what it means to have everything.
Major takeaway: A classic among travel fiction, this book symbolised what it meant to take action rather than consider it passively. Proposing the idea of “be your own cool,” Kerouac’s work has been deemed “a lost metaphor for the American Dream.”
Why read: For an insight into first-hand experience among the “beat” lifestyle, in its complete youth and vigor.
Read if/when: To be reminded of the human spirit. And, to honor what freedom means when self-defined.
10. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
What to expect: Post-apocalyptic America. A father and son on their journey to the coast. In this lawless land, they have a gun. And each other. In a future without hope, will love be enough?
Major takeaway: There has to be a time when someone asks if love is sustainable. This book reads like an attempt to answer that. Father-son dynamics have been explored, in words and in silent conversations.
What makes it cool: Recommended among the fiction books with life lessons and horror dystopias, it encapsulates what it means to stay alive in the face of complete devastation. If love cannot triumph all, it is still undeniable.
Read if/when: To be reminded of the connection, and of what love stands for in humanity. A reason for continuation, to show up even when it’s gray.
RELATED READING: 15 Beautiful Books On Friendship To Gift Your Besties
11. Gillian Butler and Tony Hope’s Managing Your Mind: The Mental Fitness Guide
What to expect: This book works as an extensive guide to improving mental health, and actively pursuing personal development. It outlines techniques, and lays out simply useful advice, relating to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and more.
Major takeaway:
What makes it cool: This application-friendly self-help guide carves a no-nonsense path to success, personally or professionally. Offers good, practical exercises that, when followed, prove helpful.
Read if/when: Top-pick if you’re skeptical about mental health books, and generally dislike self-help but you want to try! In the least, it’ll change your approach to life.
12. Carol S. Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
What to expect: This book challenges the idea that mindsets are innate and cannot be developed. As part of a bigger puzzle, it focuses on real application in areas like parenting, business, relationships, school and more.
Major takeaway: Offers the fixed vs. growth mindset as its main concept. Useful in education and business leadership, this profound idea sets out to build transformation beyond personal life.
Why read: The latest edition of the book also points out the “false growth mindset,” expanding further out from the individual once the deeper truth has been realized.
Read if/when: You are afraid of lack of approval from others. You are worn-out because you’re unsure of your success.
13. Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning
What to expect: Simply put, it is an ode to the act of living. It focuses on the theory of logotherapy: human drive is rooted in meaning, rather than in pleasure. It is a memoir-biography based on Frankl’s experience and about patients in Nazi death camps.
Major takeaway: The book encourages a conscious effort in being devoted to oneself via meaning. It places more importance on the idea of self-fulfillment over something enjoyable to define meaning.
Why read: An intersection of personal narrative and psychological inquiry, this reads as an unflinching testimony to the terrible violence in Jewish camps. To the shifting nature of meaning in human life, Frankl proposes the need for a constant creation of meaning for sustenance.
Read if/when: To understand the evolution of human beings, from logotherapy’s perspective. When you need a call to action, or are struggling with feelings of loss and hopelessness.
14. Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
What to expect: A non-fiction about mental health and philosophical self-help. Above all, this is the ultimate real-talk book on personal development. A much-needed slap-in-the-face read pick among books for young adults.
Major learning: While the suggestions are not completely original, its relatability helps with the self-revaluation. Dry humor might just enable another perspective in itself, but when used against negative experiences and harsh self-talk, this will get you laughing.
Why read: To begin with, it makes a lot of well-articulated pointers that are not everyone’s cup of tea. If a snarky attitude and crass humor is up your alley, this self-help might be calling to you.
Read if/when: You’re afraid of change, but you cannot spend one more day living the same. To have someone look you in the eye, and tell you what to do, or not!
15. Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
What to expect: While not self-help, this fiction book is about recently-retired Harold Fry’s urgent journey from Kingsbridge to Berwick-upon-Tweed. His urgency to hand-deliver his response to Queenie Hennessy teaches us a lot about life, if not to reflect.
Major takeaway: It’s hilarious how easy it is to overlook the small joys in life when other “important” things get in the way. By grasping something different, with a simple belief for a larger cause, we might just walk ourselves to new places.
Why read: Fry’s pilgrimage is a journey where he brings himself along. His walk to Berwick-upon-Tweed wasn’t something he was required to do, and yet. If that isn’t perspective enough, then I don’t know what is.
Read if/when: You need to be reminded of all what love is – the heart, the cracks in it, and the glue that holds it. This is a solid pick among books that change your perspective. .
RELATED READING: 15 Underrated Books With Plot Twists That Will Shock You (No Spoilers)
16. Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie
What to expect: Albom revisited his old professor and mentor, Morrie Schwartz. Professor Schwartz was older, and dying of ALS (a motor neuron disease). Their rekindled relationship ended in Tuesday lessons on living life and morality.
Major takeaway: Here’s another slice-of-life self-help emphasizing the importance of love. While the book itself may not be life-changing, it will certainly inspire you to soften up and focus on things that matter most.
Why read: This biography memoir makes you realize the importance of staying grounded. While also providing insights into ALS, it offers a helpful reassessment of what it means to prioritize things in life.
Read if/when: You wish to return to embracing life fully. To take things for granted less, and learn to devote yourself to relationships and life.
17. Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist
What to expect: This mysticism meets self-discovery sets the tone for a coming-of-age, fantastical, philosophical tale. Tracing Santiago, a shepherd’s yearning for worldly treasure, we consider if it is his dreams we follow instead.
Major takeaway: Proposes the idea of the “personal myth” and how one must be brave enough to follow one’s calling. A man might end up as a shell of himself if he sacrifices his ability to pursue greatness for the sake of conformity.
Why read: While The Alchemist might not appeal to all, the simplicity of the story and the plot is evident in its language. Combining wisdom and philosophy, it urges one to test the waters and see what it’s like to have dreams come true.
Read if/when: Need a reminder that the world is not out to get you. Or, that your dreams might be on the other side of comfort.
18. Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
What to expect: Four unlikely friends, and important life lessons. This philosophical graphic novel is among top Children’s books that teach important life lessons.
Major takeaway: An anthropomorphic glimpse at kindness, self-esteem and friendship, Mackesy’s characters will leave you sobbing. With every one of them holding a special place, every spread offers something special.
Why read: Giving you zero chances to dislike it, Mackesy’s work offers itself as a warm mug of cocoa on a cold day. All it takes is empathy.
Read if/when: You need/want to share love and/or encouragement. We recommend you read this with a loved one!
Conclusion
It is not easy to consider introspection when you feel empty inside. Healing begins when we search for meaning and add purpose to life. To entertain oneself is to starve off longing and make room to buy life lesson books. We hope this curation extends the same to you!
FAQs
1. Which is a better book to learn life lessons- fiction or non-fiction?
While this is a personal choice, both genres offer its own flavor of life lessons.
2. What life lesson books should everyone read?
Choices among life lesson through stories include The Alchemist, Man’s Search for Meaning, and Atomic Habits.
3. Do life lesson books help change your life?
Yes, life lesson books do change perspectives, approach, and ultimately life itself.
23 Best Books Set In London To Experience The City Through Stories
