10 of the best self-help books to improve your life, diet and home environment
If Help! by the Beatles is your default theme tune, there is probably a self-help, or self-improvement, book for you.
Want to boost your brain power and enhance your happiness, survive a dysfunctional family, be lucky in love, make heaps of cash or beat depression? Just open the right book. The field is so extensive that a single volume can sometimes constitute its own subgenre, but general themes are often discernible.
The 10 recently released books here align vaguely, or obviously, with veganism, anxiety, and minimalism and decluttering. Or: eat, smile, chuck out your junk. If your problems prove too intractable, you might still need professional advice. In the meantime, help yourself.
Their manifesto also explains that not all vegans are "a**holes [...] outspoken about their veganity". Other "amazing, compelling reasons to eat vegan" include not having to join "some weird cult" or look like a "pencil-necked hipster". But approachability aside, they pull zero punches in describing standard meat industry secrets, which include ripping "the testicles off conscious piglets without anaesthetic" and "cows having their throats slit while fully conscious and screaming". Burger, anyone?
Unsuccessfully tested for a seemingly entire medical textbook of mental and other disorders, New York native Stern was prey to an amorphous, nameless and therefore untreatable condition until, at 25, panic disorder was finally diagnosed.
Her chronological memoir is concurrently fascinating and excruciating in its mundane details of the life of a child supposedly "deficient", "defective" and "learning disabled"; and of a more hopeful adult, who once considered herself "the flaw in the universe", now coping with her affliction and showing how it's done.
With no off-putting jargon but plenty of clear advice on how to meditate your way beyond "the primary causes of pain and confusion", this road map to enlightenment promises the keys to "ancient wisdom" and an antidote to self-loathing, inadequacy and sex and money problems.
Burkett writes that "Zen is no longer flourishing in its motherland, China", but is alive and well in the capitalist United States. How spiritually fitting would it be, in the helter-skelter modern world, for a Western devotee to take it home?
It emerges that the darkest thoughts are no strangers to the far side of the couch, but Gask shows fellow sufferers that they can learn to think positively, even if they "consider [themselves] completely worthless" and if, like hers, their early but still-resonating years were scarred by "a fear that something terrible was going to happen". As both doctor and patient, Gask realises that "being an expert in depression doesn't confer immunity".
Forest bathing, a term invented in 1982, amounts to communing with woodland through all five senses (but doesn't mean skinny-dipping in a secluded lake, or hiking). Qing says a "wealth of data" shows that forest bathing results in increased energy, reduced stress, improved cardiovascular health, weight loss, better sleep and perhaps diminished cancer risk. That the secret power of trees to make us healthier and happier is also a campaign ploy to protect forests means it's a win-win.
Advice includes: "Accept the limitations of the space you have," "You don't need a bigger house" and, "Grab a donate box." Also, as Hongkongers will know, and White points out, space is money. So, how much are you willing to pay to store that third (insert item of choice)? This decluttering guide is the only one you'll need; any more would just get in the way.
The big answer sought, of course, depends on who is being asked, but Burnett's real quest is to understand "the activity of the working brain". This leads him into a shadowy bar to talk fetishes with a sex blogger and to an understanding of why comedians who see "comedy as an escape" seem prone to "depression and anxiety", and the possibility of "constantly facing criticism". Still, says Burnett, "you've got to laugh".
A former conflict-resolution expert, she has conducted meetings around the world in all manner of settings, with everyone from Indian villagers to United States federal officials, and has the anecdotes to prove it. Heed her advice, so that next time you're invited to a crayfish party in Stockholm, you'll know how to behave (expect to down schnapps).
A shamanic healer and former advertising copywriter, he encourages followers to let go and chill out (also by joining workshops or retreats). This how-to book suggests that enlightenment can be achieved by "the natural way to say F**k It [...] to illness and disease", to your job, fame, money and even the weather. "The most advanced relaxation method you'll ever find," writes Parkin, "is not caring and not wanting " saying, F**k It." Amen.
His journey also includes controversial detours into consultancy work with the CIA and the US Army, as well as corporate clients. Seligman's various skirmishes bolstered his creed of resilience (in the face of sustained character assassination), but as he himself would say: feeling good " it's all in the mind.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2018. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
