Books like How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

This isn’t a book about addiction, but it had a massive impact on the way I approached recovery.

James Clear believes changing your life doesn’t happen with one huge decision, but through the small choices you make every day. Getting sober was one big decision for me, but staying sober meant completely changing my routines and building habits that supported the person I wanted to become.

Working with my life coach, journalling, surfing, training, and taking time to sit with my thoughts might seem like small things on their own, but together they helped me rebuild my life. This book taught me to stop relying on motivation and start creating a routine that made it easier to keep moving forward even on days when I didn’t feel like it.

As a budding professional I was told not to be so kind to others, so I wasn’t taken advantage of.

Changing who I was and wanted to be didn’t seem like the right recipe for my success. Grant’s debut book has likely had the most impact on how I show up in my career and in life – that being a giver can be the key to our success and fulfillment. A must read for anyone who wants to do well while doing good.

This book completely reshaped how I think about courage, connection, and what it really means to live a meaningful life.

She challenges the idea that vulnerability is weakness and instead shows it as one of the truest forms of strength. The concepts are easy to understand but not always easy to practice. It gently pushes you to look at how you show up in your relationships, how you handle shame, and how often we protect ourselves by blaming, judging, or staying silent.

What I love most is how she blends deep research with so much humanity. She writes with scientific credibility but also with warmth, humility, and a feeling that she’s speaking directly to you.

Even though this book has been around for a while, its message still feels incredibly relevant. It’s the kind of read that stays with you and quietly changes the way you think, act, and connect.

This book has been a go-to for years, as I really appreciate Simon’s guidance to ALWAYS clarify the mission and purpose of any organization before digging deeper into the strategies and action plans to advance the mission.

All too often, my bias for action had driven me to jump into the work of creation and delivery. If every single player on the field with me wasn’t 100% bought into the game we were playing, why we were there, and where we wanted to be in the future, we wasted precious time and resources.

Simon Sinek taught me to pause and bring great intention to the enrollment in the mission of any venture. I also appreciate his insights into the stretch zone where people are most effective driving change. We don’t want to be cozy or panicked at work, but stretched in pursuit of meaningful change, and always better together.

If you want to create a career that is entirely in your hands, then Own Your Career Own Your Life is an excellent resource in helping you have complete control. I like how this book enables readers to develop a career vision that positions them for success in any industry. It causes you to reflect on the challenges holding you back, how you make decisions, and discover your purpose. Readers will come out on the other side feeling more confident about having a career that makes sense for their life and knowing how to evolve it when necessary. 

This workbook has a wealth of helpful tips on how to deal with overwhelming anxiety. It’s written simply with great illustrations that really help littles figure out the scary world that surrounds them. I love the example of worries growing like tomato plants. If we want the worries to stop growing, we stop watering them! At the time my daughter was four and we had a huge over-producing tomato garden so this was a perfect illustration for both of us. We set up a time to talk about worries and we kept to that time limit. It helped both of us go through the anxiety instead of getting overwhelmed by it. There is no cure for anxiety and medication is not really an option for small children so dealing with it head-on was the only way that worked for us. This book really gave us both tools. It’s practical and… show more.

Worms are slimy and wiggly, and you can’t tell their tops from their bottoms! *shudder* This is one of those books I want to immediately read at storytime because I know the room will erupt in giggles.

From the idea of a fierce tiger being terrified of worms to the physical humor to the hilarious dialogue, this book is full of laugh-out-loud moments. I also love how the ending flips this story on its head … or is it its tail!? 

I adore these images. Each is like a tiny memoir wrapped in a graph. Even beyond the puzzle-like pleasure of decoding them, I love Rial’s playful use of real objects. Coffee rings form a Venn diagram about coffee addiction. Floss traces a line graph on dental hygiene. Half-eaten cheese sticks become the bars on a chart of cheese consumption. A delicious book, in every sense!

I loved this book as it clearly separated the two areas of the brain associated with some of the most challenging feelings we experience (fear, worry, etc.) and how we can use this knowledge to truly overcome the most frequent presentations I see in my practice–stress and anxiety.

Having experienced crippling anxiety at points in my life, I found comfort in further understanding why we as humans are essentially programmed to be anxious–without these neurological systems, we would not have survived.

But we needn’t be slaves to the amygdala and cortex, and so, I like that this book also outlined many easy and practical techniques to get to grips with an anxious brain in a complex world. 

I found this book when I was at the end of my rope with anxiety, and the book was uplifting, to say the least! Though it didn’t address all my concerns as someone with an anxiety disorder, it did walk through Scripture and show me how God had an encouraging, fatherly response to our anxieties. It also reminded me that God is the only place of true rest for restless minds. If you’re looking for a biblically rooted resource for common anxieties, this book was just that.