Most read Self-Help & Psychology books

An Andalusian shepherd sells his flock to chase a recurring dream of treasure at the Egyptian pyramids, and learns along the way to read the omens of his own life.

• quest

The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir by the iCarly and Sam & Cat star, about a childhood organised entirely around her mother's ambitions — auditions from the age of six, calorie restriction taught as "a secret between us," and the eating disorders, addiction and early fame that followed — and the disorienting grief and relief that came after her mother's death in 2013. Adapted from McCurdy's one-woman stage show and written with mordant, disarming humour.

• coming of age

Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is a counterintuitive self-help book that pushes back against the relentless positivity of the genre. Manson's argument is simple but bracing: caring about everything leaves you exhausted and anxious, so the real skill is choosing the few things that genuinely deserve your attention and letting the rest go. Drawing on Stoic ideas, blunt personal anecdotes, and the occasional pointed profanity, Manson makes the case that struggle is unavoidable and even necessary — that a good life comes not from escaping problems but from picking better problems to have. He examines how values shape our sense of success, why entitlement and the pursuit of constant happiness backfire, and how accepting responsibility (even for things that aren't our fault) restores a sense of control. Irreverent, funny, and deliberately unglamorous, the book reframes self-improvement around honesty, limitation, and the acceptance of death rather than affirmations and hustle. It became a global bestseller and a defining title of the modern "anti-self-help" wave.

This book explores how small, incremental changes can lead to remarkable results in personal and professional life. It offers practical strategies for building good habits, breaking bad ones, and mastering the tiny behaviors that shape who you are. Discover how to make big improvements by focusing on atomic habits.

This collection of poems explores the complexities of love, loss, and self-discovery. Through raw and honest verse, the authors delve into the experiences of young women navigating relationships, identity, and the challenges of growing up. It's a powerful exploration of vulnerability and resilience.

When Mitch Albom stumbles across a television interview with his old college sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz, he realizes how far he has drifted from the person he once meant to become. Sixteen years after promising to keep in touch, Albom—now a driven, workaholic sports journalist—reconnects with Morrie, who is in the final months of his life after a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). What begins as a single visit becomes a standing appointment: every Tuesday, Albom flies across the country to sit with his dying mentor for one last course, this one on the meaning of life. Over fourteen Tuesdays, Morrie shares hard-won wisdom on the subjects that matter most—love, work, family, aging, forgiveness, regret, and how to make peace with death—while his body steadily fails him. Published in 1997, Tuesdays with Morrie is a slim, deeply personal memoir that became one of the best-selling books of its kind. Its power lies less in plot than in the plain, unsentimental honesty of Morrie's lessons and the quiet transformation they work on the student who came to say goodbye.

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl draws on his survival of three years in Nazi concentration camps to ask why some prisoners kept their will to live while others gave up. His answer — that we always retain the freedom to choose our attitude — grounds logotherapy, his conviction that the deepest human drive is the search for meaning. A sober, humane, and quietly hopeful classic.

Carnegie's classroom-tested habits for dealing with people: how to criticize without breeding resentment, win agreement without arguing, and correct staff without humiliating them. Four parts, each built on short, concrete stories.

Susan Cain's "Quiet" delves into the power of introverts in a world that often undervalues their contributions. Through research and real-life stories, Cain argues that introversion is a strength, not a weakness. The book challenges societal norms and encourages a deeper understanding of different personality types.

Rupi Kaur's second collection is organized around the life cycle of a flower — wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming — using that arc to chart a passage through heartbreak toward growth. In spare free verse and accompanying line drawings, the poems move through the pain of a lost love and the slow work of recovery, then outward to larger themes: migration and displacement, the sacrifices of immigrant parents, ancestry and roots, womanhood, and the hard-won return to self-worth. Kaur honors where she comes from even as she reaches for who she is becoming. Warm, direct, and accessible, "the sun and her flowers" deepens the concerns of her debut into a wider meditation on loss, belonging, and renewal.

Lori Gottlieb is a practicing psychotherapist whose days are spent helping other people untangle their lives. Then her own long-term relationship collapses without warning, and she finds herself doing something she has spent her career recommending to others: sitting on the other side of the room, in a state of crisis, seeing a therapist of her own. The book braids Gottlieb's sessions with her wry, unsparing therapist, Wendell, together with the stories of four of her own patients. There is John, an abrasive Hollywood producer convinced everyone around him is an idiot; Julie, a young newlywed forced to reckon with a devastating diagnosis; Rita, approaching seventy and haunted by regret; and Charlotte, a twenty-something caught in self-defeating patterns. As their lives unfold, the line between healer and patient blurs, and Gottlieb turns the same searching attention on herself. Funny, humane, and quietly profound, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is a memoir about the strange intimacy of therapy and a wide-ranging meditation on change, mortality, and meaning. It demystifies what actually happens in the consulting room and makes a persuasive case that self-examination, however uncomfortable, is where real change begins.

Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain and body. Drawing on more than three decades of work with combat veterans, abused children, and survivors of assault and disaster, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk shows how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control and trust. Blending clinical case studies with cutting-edge neuroscience, van der Kolk explains why traumatized people are haunted by intolerable sensations and emotions long after the danger has passed, and why talk therapy alone is often not enough. He then explores a range of treatments — from EMDR and neurofeedback to yoga, theatre, and mindfulness — that can help the brain to "rewire" itself and reactivate the innate capacity for healing. The Body Keeps the Score is a landmark work on the science of trauma and recovery, arguing with clarity and compassion that by understanding how trauma lives in the body, we can find genuine paths back to wholeness.

In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never met, Susanna Kaysen was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and sent to McLean Hospital. This memoir recounts her two-year stay in the psychiatric hospital, offering a candid look at the lives of the young women she met there. Kaysen navigates the blurred lines between sanity and madness, reflecting on her experiences and the nature of mental illness.

Part memoir, part practical handbook, On Writing is Stephen King's account of how one of the world's most successful authors became a writer — and what he learned about the craft along the way. King opens with a candid, often funny recollection of his childhood, his early struggles, the stacks of rejection slips, and the years of poverty and addiction that preceded his success. The second half turns to the work itself: King's no-nonsense advice on grammar, vocabulary, the "toolbox" every writer needs, the danger of adverbs, the importance of reading widely, and his conviction that plot should be discovered rather than imposed. Threaded throughout is the 1999 accident that nearly killed him and the role writing played in his recovery. Honest, direct, and free of mystique, On Writing has become one of the most widely recommended books on the writing life — as much a portrait of an artist as a manual for aspiring ones.

Four creatures share a maze and a daily supply of cheese, until one morning it vanishes. Two mice go looking at once. Two little people wait, blame each other and starve, until one of them has to step into the maze alone.

Explore the two distinct systems that shape human thought: the rapid, intuitive System 1 and the deliberate, logical System 2. Through engaging examples, this book reveals the extraordinary power of quick thinking, the influence of emotion on our choices, and the pitfalls of cognitive biases. Learn when to trust your intuition and when to engage in deeper reflection, gaining practical insights for both personal and professional life.

In this candid memoir, actor Matthew Perry looks back on his life on and off the screen: the boy from Ottawa and Los Angeles who dreamed of stardom, the sudden overwhelming fame of playing Chandler Bing on one of the most beloved sitcoms in television history, and the decades-long addiction that ran alongside it all. With dark humor and unflinching honesty, Perry recounts the highs of Hollywood success and the far greater struggle happening behind the scenes — the hospitalizations, relapses, and near-death experiences, and the hard-won lessons of recovery. He writes frankly about what fame could and could not fix. "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing" is a raw, funny, and sobering account of survival from a performer who made the world laugh while fighting for his life.

Mel Robbins builds her book around a two-word phrase her daughter Sawyer used to talk her down while she was micromanaging her son's prom night: "Let them." The first half of the practice is about releasing the urge to manage what other people think, say or do. The second half, "Let me," redirects that energy toward what you can actually control: your own choices and reactions. Co-written with Sawyer Robbins, the book applies the mantra across friendship, family, comparison and anger, in the practical, repeatable style of Robbins's earlier books The 5 Second Rule and The High 5 Habit.

Elizabeth Gilbert's blockbuster memoir of a year spent rebuilding herself after a shattering divorce: pleasure and food in Italy, devotion and silence in an Indian ashram, and balance—and unexpected love—in Bali. Candid, funny, and searching, it became a defining book of modern self-discovery.

In All About Love: New Visions, cultural critic and feminist theorist bell hooks argues that our society's confusion and cynicism about love stem from a failure to understand what love truly is. Rejecting the idea of love as a mere feeling, she insists that love is an action — a practice rooted in care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and honesty — and one that cannot be separated from justice. Across a series of clear, personal, and searching essays, hooks examines how a culture shaped by patriarchy, consumerism, and domination distorts our capacity to love, from childhood and family to romance, friendship, community, and spiritual life. Blending memoir, criticism, and ethics, All About Love is both a diagnosis of a loveless culture and a hopeful blueprint for change. It is the first book in hooks's Love Song to the Nation trilogy.

After suffering a series of devastating personal losses, a young woman embarks on a solo, 1,100-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. This journey pushes her to her physical and emotional limits, forcing her to confront her grief and ultimately rebuild her life. It is a story of resilience, self-discovery, and the healing power of nature.

• survival
• quest
• coming of age
• redemption arc

This is a charming collection of drawings and simple, profound words about a boy's journey. He encounters a mole, a fox, and a horse, and together they share gentle conversations about life, hope, and friendship. It's a lovely reminder of the power of kindness.

• found family

Learn the financial secrets that have made 'Rich Dad Poor Dad' a bestseller for over two decades. This guide challenges common money advice, stressing the importance of financial literacy and acquiring assets. It's essential reading for anyone aiming to build wealth and achieve financial independence.

• mentor figure

Structured as five nights of debate between a philosopher and a skeptical young man, this international bestseller introduces the psychology of Alfred Adler. Its provocative claims — that the past need not determine us, that all problems are interpersonal, and that real freedom requires the courage to be disliked — build toward a vision of living courageously in the present. Accessible, argumentative practical philosophy by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga.

Neuroscientist Matthew Walker lays out what decades of sleep research have found: that too little sleep damages memory, mood, the immune system and long-term disease risk in specific, measurable ways. He explains how deep sleep consolidates memories and clears toxic waste from the brain, how REM sleep processes emotion, and what caffeine and alcohol actually do to both. The book closes with concrete steps for sleeping better.

At twenty-four, novelist Matt Haig's world caved in and he came close to ending his life. This bestselling memoir is his frank, hopeful account of living through severe depression and anxiety and slowly finding his way back — part personal story, part reflection on mental illness, and part reassurance, addressed to anyone in the dark, that things can and do get better.

Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Randy Pausch, dying of pancreatic cancer, gave a final lecture titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". This book, written with Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Zaslow, expands on that talk. It pairs episodes from Pausch's life with the lessons he took from them, written as advice for his three young children.

Explore the timeless strategies of power and influence with Robert Greene's essential guide. This book draws on historical examples and philosophical insights to teach you how to navigate social dynamics and achieve your goals. Understand the hidden rules of human interaction and master the art of power.

Matthew McConaughey invites you to explore the lessons and philosophies that have shaped his extraordinary life. From his Texas roots to global stardom, he shares candid stories and unconventional wisdom. Discover how to navigate life's challenges and find your own 'greenlights' for a more authentic existence.

• coming of age

Jenny Lawson, a celebrated humorist, invites readers into her world of mental health struggles with "Furiously Happy." This book offers a candid and often hilarious look at confronting depression and anxiety, finding moments of joy amidst the chaos, and learning to embrace life's messier aspects. It's a testament to finding strength in vulnerability and celebrating the unique quirks that make us human.