Top Personal Development Books on my List

“Personal development is a major time-saver. The better you become, the less time it takes you to achieve your goals.”

Brian Tracy

I know that I have mentioned this many times before, but I love personal development books. I have many of them, I have read many of them, and I have many of them left to read.

When I am writing a blog post, I am most often sitting in my bed – on my husband’s side he would tell you – gazing diagonally across my computer screen at my two book shelves. I love to look at my shelves, however one day I noticed that I have a lot of personal development books that I have yet to read. Those books are on my shelf, staring back at me, wondering when I will pick them up. I keep whispering to them that I will read them .. just .. in time. (I actually just finished Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, so I am due to pick up my next personal development read ASAP – there just isn’t ever enough time.)

So, while those books are patiently sitting on my shelf waiting for their turn to receive my attention, I thought they may serve a bigger purpose and help someone else. Someone who could engage with the text sooner and maybe even advise me to make time for that particular book, before much more [time] passes. However, in order for that to happen, you need to know that the book even exists. Enter, me. And while I have openly attested to the fact that I have never read these texts, I think that I am enough of a book connoisseur to speak for them and what I do know of them.

In no particular order, here is a handful (oh yes, I have even more than those listed here) of the personal development books on my book shelf, that I have yet to find the time to read:

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

This is high on my ‘to read‘ list. I mean, who doesn’t want to be recognized for having grit? From what I can gather, this text spends time breaking down grit into passion and persistence. There is no limit to the audience for this read – anyone who is working towards goals and dreams would find benefit in interacting with this book. For someone like myself who is trying to grow a blogging community, it sounds right up my alley!

Little Things Matter: 100 Ways to Improve Your Life Today by W. Todd Smith

Todd Smith is an entrepreneur and he writes about so many things that I find important. Our lives and our world are built up from many, many little things. So often we spend our time thinking about the big picture, in order to achieve what we want to accomplish in life. However, that big picture is just a culmination of LITTLE pictures. If we simply start where we currently happen to be, and make minute changes, we would end up in the place we want to be (and that place would feel infinitely more possible).

The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth by John C. Maxwell

I mean, who can create a list of personal growth books and NOT include John C. Maxwell?! Truth be told, I am about 1/2 way through this book, but I have yet to finish it so I included it on this list. I really like the idea of this text because Maxwell breaks his ideas of growth down into 15 “laws”. Presenting it this way, makes the laws and what you are learning along the way, more palatable. This book teaches you why it is important to know yourself and how to find value in yourself, as well as what it looks like to find other people to model your behaviors from.

The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living by Meik Wiking

This is such an obscure little book that I saw mentioned somewhere, and I ended up placing it in my Goodreads account on my ‘want to read’ shelf. Luck will have it that a year or two later, I was in a local salvage store, and looking at me from the shelf was this little book. I was so excited! And yet I still haven’t read it, haha. But at least it now sits on MY shelf so it is ready when the time is right.

The Little Book of Hygge was written by the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen (I seriously think I need to work there some day!) and it consists of all the ways that you can make your life better. Depending on where you are looking for the definition, hygge, in its simplicty means coziness. And who in the world does not want to be cozy?!

P.S. Now that I have written out this snippet, I have re-reminded (is that even a word?) myself as to why I wanted to read this so badly. It is absolutely going to the TOP of my list now.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Here is another addition to the concept ‘you can’t have a personal development list without ..’, Malcom Gladwell. I have yet to read anything by Mr. Gladwell, but in fairness, I hear he is not for everyone. However, the people that do read him, swear by him.

The Tipping Point seems to consist of how things grow. How ideas take off and spread through massive groups of people, and how you can harness those ideas to use for your own growth. Gladwell relates this concept to the growth of an epidemic, and how epidemics spread. (I currently find that slightly ironic as we are now living in the world of COVID-19.)

Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It NOW by Jane B. Burka, PhD & Lenora M. Yuen, PhD

This book, comically enough, was purchased for me by a student – it was his parting gift to me when he moved on from the eighth grade.

I am a HUGE procrastinator (and the student from the opening above is too). I definitely feel I work best under pressure, and it usually seems like there are just so many priorities, that I am chasing my tail to get them all done. I would guess that many of us feel that way.

This read came about due to procrastination workshops that were conducted, and it discusses why we put off tasks in the first place, and how to grow and become better at not waiting until the last minute. I mean, who doesn’t need that?!

Potatoes Not Prozac by Kathleen DesMaisons, PhD

This text is going to be a little bit different from the texts above, but I bet it is something that all of us can use – it is a program developed to get you off sugar!!! Sugar, as we know, is incredibly addicting – more so than even some drugs – and people seriously struggle to eradicate it from their lives. I mean, chocolate is life for me (although, MUCH less now than ever before, but still). This book gives us solutions for our sugar sensitivity and even explains why we feel the way we do, and why it is so hard to wash our hands of this little “drug”.

Now that I am thinking of it, maybe I should move this book up the list as well.

A Brief History of Anxiety [Yours & Mine] by Patricia Pearson

So, all of us have anxiety. We all have things that make our heart race (not in a good way) and make us feel incredibly stressed and uncomfortable. For some, it may be public speaking, or the act of driving, or even thunder storms. But what our society has seemed to move away from, is recognizing anxiety as a natural occurrence and educating us on how to deal with that occurrence. This text does not only seem to offer you some of those solutions, but it also teaches about the history of anxiety. I can think of many people from my own life, who would find value in this read.

Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin

I have read Rubin’s The Happiness Project, and Happier at Home is one of two additional books [by her] that I have on my shelf. This text is set up by months, and each month (from September until May) she tackles an element that brings greater happiness to her home, for she and her family.

Perhaps this would be an interesting required read for all homesteads.

And Two Honorable Mentions:

**I am listing these two as honorable mentions simply because they have more of a ‘business feel’ than all the rest listed above do.**

The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy

I am part of a multi-level marketing company that shares a product that I whole-heartedly believe in (and consume) and this book came out of my connection with that company.

Darren Hardy is the publisher of SUCCESS magazine and within this book he offers a deeper look at how all of the decisions that we make, shape our lives. So much of what I write about or think about or employ within my own life, stems from paying attention to those little moments and little decisions (like I mentioned above with Little Things Matter). I really do love learning more about breaking things into smaller bites in order to improve our lives, and in a way that we don’t feel so overwhelmed.

Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin

Malcolm Gladwell introduces this book – which I think is a neat anecdote – and the gist seems to stem from how you get people to market ideas for you. Again, I put this book down below as an honorable mention since it is more business minded, but this text does still seem to discuss persistence and how to use people to better your situation (whatever that situation may be).

So after all of these texts, I do want to reiterate one final note: I recognize some of these books can feel more like a business development text, as opposed to a personal development text, but I would argue that they can be read for either purpose. All of the qualities that you need in business come from first making yourself better. So even if a book is marketed for business or located in the business section, like say, Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis (which I have read) you can still take the lessons learned and apply them to your personal life.

Everyone has dreams, and everyone needs to set goals [within their personal lives] in order to achieve those dreams. Any and all of these texts will assist in creating the life that you want – personally or otherwise. You simply have to be willing to put what the texts’ teache you, into practice.

In closing, I am going to leave you with this fun fact (I was curious so I had to count) – I have 20+ additional books on my shelf, that fall under the genre of personal development (some that I have in fact read, and still many more that I have not). Maybe some day I will feature the rest of these in an additional blog article.