Books like The Complete Enneagram — picked by fans

This book is one of the most effective guides to meaningful, lasting change.

James Clear explains how transformation happens through small adjustments practiced consistently over time. His philosophy aligns with a core belief in my own life and work: growth is created by what you do daily, not occasionally.

Clear breaks down the power of systems, discipline, and identity-based habit building. The book proves that success is rarely about dramatic breakthroughs. It is the result of steady, intentional actions that accumulate into extraordinary impact.

Mastering the next right step is the foundation of personal and professional excellence.

This book changed the way I think about individual food behavior and the current obesity epidemic.

Many of us think our food choices, how much we eat, and our weight are all consequences of willpower (so much guilt!!!). This book shares how instinctive brain circuits are paramount for our appetites, food choices, and body weight. 

I first read Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture (published in 1977) in high school.

In Bringing It to the Table, Berry shares excerpts of his essays exploring what has shaped farming and food in the last four decades: the declining state of American agriculture, the dangers of industrialized food farming, and the importance of farming to the human community – for body, mind, and soul.

This book cuts deep into food, one of the most important issues of our century because it impacts climate change, resource depletion, financial insecurity, and health issues created by poor food choices. 

Published in 2005, some parts of this book feel un-PC in light of the body positivity and beautiful-at-any-size movements.

With that said, I live in Paris and the food behavior and mindset observations that Mireille Guiliano shares are mostly true about French women. Whereas, American women are feeling worried/guilty about the next food they might eat, French women are daydreaming about the next food pleasure they will experience.

This book is easy to read because it tells an engaging story about her experience as a high school exchange student in the United States and how she gained weight. When she returned to France, her mother and the family doctor put her on a food regime and this led her to try to distill the essential French mindset about food and eating behaviors that allow people to enjoy food, eat well-balanced meals, and maintain a healthy lifelong body weight. 

There are literally thousands of life-coaching books on the market right now, but I found this particular title in a charity shop many years ago.

It gets to the point, offering concise solutions to combat irrational thinking. I love a psychological ‘life dictionary’ and although it was published in 1993, I believe that the given solutions would be much the same if it were re-written today. 

Using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator as the framework, this book offers deep insights into why we think, feel, and function the way we do.

I first read this book years ago and still find myself referring back to it on a regular basis when new issues come up in my life, such as a potential career change. This book truly does help me to understand myself better as well as to understand significant others in my life.

How I’m wired affects how I work, the work I’m drawn to, and how I interact with others. This insight, I have found, is crucial if I am to help make the world a better place. 

I resisted the enneagram, thinking that it wasn’t scientific enough, but now that I understand it, I haven’t looked back.

Knowing how understanding yourself is an essential part of avoiding burnout, I was looking for a personality typology that didn’t just put me in a box but gave me a path to growth and development. This book does just that for me, with tailored development areas for each personality type.

A writing group provides invaluable help for aspiring writers. I participated in a group for several years, which helped me hone my first two manuscripts that were then published as the start of the Billy Boyle WWII mystery series.

All Write focuses on how to organize a group and includes tips on writing and constructive critiquing. Mandel, with her background as a writer, copyeditor, writing group member, and psychotherapist, offers concrete how-to advice on how to maximize the effectiveness of a writing group for all members. This book is packed with writing tips, lessons, and group exercises that can be immediately put to work. 

(Full disclosure: the author is my wife.)

Dorothy Rowe’s books I discovered by accident in a Winchester second-hand bookshop, placed in the psychology section. A woman of considerable wisdom gained through her psychotherapy practice and her experience of the vicissitudes of life, Beyond Fear deals with something we all have to encounter, yet which so few of us properly understand and therefore disempower. Rowe explains in this life-changing book how fear manifests through various conditions, such as depression, a subject on which she is an acknowledged expert. I love it that she refused to simplify life, confronting it in all its difficult complexities. Life isn’t easy—we all discover that.

I love Yalom's books of what might, in lesser hands, be termed “case studies.” I say that because Yalom is constantly writing about his work with his patients, but they never feel like a “case study” - something plodding and formulaic and one-sided. In Yalom's hands the case studies are never mere discussions of the pathologies of his patient, but rise into a magical interplay between two equals, two human beings yearning for a way to connect and heal through authentic presence, honesty, and love. If there is “classic Yalom” it is probably these books. Creatures of a Day and Loves Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy are superb as well, and frankly, I tend to think of them all as parts of a whole, one big book of Yalom's shorter pieces in which he explores his work one-on-one with the hurting human beings who show up at his door.