Books like Rising Strong

I love this book and reread it often.

Why? Because it reassures me that I’m not alone in searching for greater peace of mind. Jon Kabat-Zinn combines stories from Buddhism and his own practice with humor and words of encouragement to remind me that it is up to me to wake up from the mindless rush of compulsive planning, worry, regret, and resentment that too often cycles through my mind like the voices on a talk radio station.

He also reminds me to be kind to myself, not to fall into shame or self-accusations, because mindfulness is an ongoing practice to become more centered, aware, and balanced.

I smile when I catch myself drifting away from being mindfully present, take a deep breath, and return to the here and now. And this process continues in my formal meditation practice each morning and my ongoing attempts to be more mindfully aware… show more.

This is the book that shapes how I show up in every relationship in my life—personal, professional, with friends, family, and the clients I coach.

I've built on these concepts even further in my own work, but the bones Rosenberg lays out are so solid that I credit them with genuinely saving friendships and relationships I care about.

And on the nights when a relationship still doesn't go the way I hoped, this is the book that lets me know I did everything I could. That's what actually helps me sleep at night. Truly.

I love this book for many reasons.

It reads like a novel, but it’s a true story, a story of a young boy raised in a dysfunctional family—his father was an alcoholic who couldn’t hold down a job, and his mother was suicidally depressed. Poverty, eviction, his mother’s repeated attempts at suicide—this was his life until one day, at age 12, he met a kind woman who taught him to meditate.

I won’t give away the details of the story, only to say that I felt personally connected to young Jim as he awakened to greater peace of mind, hope, and possibility. And in his quest, I saw my own quest to reach for something beyond what had been to what could be.

In this book, I found insight and inspiration, reminders to pursue my own mindfulness practice, to leave the past behind and open my heart to the miracles… show more.

I’d been saying, almost tentatively, that “sex is fun and pleasure is good for you” for years before I ever read this book.

So imagine my shock seeing that exact sentiment written in black and white, right in the introduction, by a renowned author. It was a genuine game changer. I finally had permission, in print, for something I already believed deep down but was scared to say out loud.

What this book did wasn’t JUST describe who my husband and I already were; it gave us language for it. It was the first time I ever heard of the word “polyamory," and my life has been forever changed. It’s often called the “bible of polyamory” for good reason, and I still recommend it to almost every client who walks through my door.

I also got to tell author Janet Hardy live on stage that their book changed my life… show more.

I read Shauna Shapiro’s Good Morning, I Love You when I was going through some difficult times, dealing with old abusive family patterns and trying to give myself the love and acceptance I hadn’t received as a child.

Shauna tells how she discovered the approach to mindful kindness and loving self-acceptance when she was also going through difficult times, and her therapist told her to say, “Good morning, Shauna, I love you.”

It took her a while to do this, and it’s taken me a while to follow her example. But her book was like a kind, supportive friend, reminding me that I’m not alone, that I can give myself the loving acceptance that I need and heal my childhood pain, one day, one small act of kindness, at a time.

This book has made a positive difference in my life.

I love this book because the gratitude practice has made me happier and brought me greater peace of mind.

Lately, I’ve been feeling stressed, dealing with an undercurrent of insecurity and anxiety, worrying about things that haven’t happened yet, wondering what to do about them. In his years of research, Robert Emmons has found that a simple gratitude practice can bring us happiness and make a major difference in our worldview. And I’ve experienced this for myself.

Pausing to think of three things I’m grateful for each day and pausing throughout the day to acknowledge what I’m grateful for is helping me shift from a stressed-out state to become more calm, more confident, more hopeful. I smile more often, realizing how gratitude helps me recognize life’s small miracles, shifting my attention from the shadows to the light.

I’m grateful for this book that showed me how. 

I've read this book at least three times through—and when I was working through a specific jealousy situation with a childhood friend as an adult, I hired the author, Dr. Susan Forward, to work with me directly. 

That's how much I trust what's in these pages. This book is my bible for moving relationships of every kind—friendships, family, romantic, professional—out of toxic and dysfunctional dynamics and into healthy ones. I recommend it to absolutely anyone who will listen.

I'm a recovering Catholic, and if you know, you know—a whole lifetime of guilt, shame, and seeking approval baked in from an early age, layered on top of some real dysfunction in my family of origin.

This book is what taught me to stop chasing approval from people, including ones who were never emotionally available to give it, and start looking within instead. I fell in love with Byron Katie's raw, honest origin story, and I still use The Work—her four questions—in my own life and in my work with clients to this day.

Advice by way of memoir, which I liked more as it went along. Maybe it was a slow start for me because she had seemingly lucky breaks, and I’ve had struggles. By the end, I was in LOVE.

She is frank, ballsy, unapologetic, kickass riotous, with an apparent ability to moonwalk, all of which is to say totally New York City in a way that I badly miss, having left 30 years ago.

I relived some of my youth. I learned things and laughed.

If you’ve ever felt the pull of resistance, and the frustration of knowing that there’s something that you really want to do, but then that little voice in your head steps up and stops you, then this book will 100% help you. It explains a very easy way of short-circuiting that discussion.

It’s another simple idea, which is what makes it so powerful and helpful. And if you enjoy listening to podcasts, Mel now has an excellent one, "The Mel Robbins Podcast," which you can find on all platforms.