Content created in partnership with Penguin
Let’s face it, New Year’s resolutions are trash. No one wakes up on January 1 and finds themselves suddenly transformed into a new person by magic; to make impactful change in your life you need tools. These four books will challenge the way you think and arm you with valuable insights and learnings to take with you into 2023. Think of these books as your starter tool kit for making sense of yourself and the people around you.
These are not your average self-help books, there’s no ‘woo woo’ or promises of an instant fix here, and there certainly isn’t any dieting advice. Instead, these books offer insight and inspiration to those interested in self-reflection and meaningful change, providing them with new coping mechanisms amongst other tools in the kit. And after the past few years, who doesn’t want to enter 2023 as well-equipped as possible?
Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones
James Clear
Atomic Habits has been described as revolutionary in its approach to making tiny changes in order to transform your life. The author, James Clear, is living proof of his own theory – after copping a baseball bat to the face at high school, it took Clear nearly a year to recover. In order to get his life and his baseball playing back on track, Clear began to use tiny daily habits in order to keep moving towards his goals, and six years after his accident was declared the top male athlete at his college and named to the ESPN Academic All-America Team.
Clear’s advice isn’t just meant for would-be athletes though, these are tiny changes anyone can make to achieve any kind of goal. This attainability is what makes Clear’s book different from others in this ‘be your best self’ genre. Even though it’s about improvement of self, the change is in the way you do things rather than changing any core part of yourself. This makes for a kinder and more inclusive learning experience.
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
Dr Julie Smith
It’s surprising they don’t sell this book at Mitre 10 given just what an effective toolkit it is. Clinical psychologist Dr Julie Smith designed the book to work as bite-sized pieces of advice that can be dipped into as needed, or read cover to cover as a workbook with tables for notes. Written in 2022, it takes into account the stress and grief that accompanied the pandemic, offering ways to move through emotions in a healthy way.
The book is built on the insights and exercises that have worked for Dr Smith’s patients, the ones that have made them exclaim out loud ‘why has nobody told me this before?’. It’s almost a choose-your-own-adventure of mental health – the chapter On Self Doubt breaks down the different impacts self-doubt can have on you, and then offers ways to counter these feelings. Or if self-acceptance is an issue, you can try a Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) exercise in the chapter about Being Enough. These small exercises and thought experiments break big problems down into manageable chunks, allowing the reader new ways of looking at things.
Atlas of the Heart
Brené Brown
Beloved author, podcaster and academic Brené Brown wrote this gorgeous tome to give you an actionable framework to build and invest in meaningful connection. Part reference, part coffee table book, Brown has created a roadmap through 87 emotions that define us as humans.
Known for her ability to connect with an audience through her own experiences and those of others, Brown blends research with storytelling in a way that feels personal yet universal. In the chapter ‘Places we go when we compare’, Brown travels through all the emotions associated with feelings of comparison, running the full gambit from admiration to Schadenfreude, finally breaking down the reason comparison can be such a stumbling block: ‘Comparison says, “Be like everyone else but better”’.
Mapping out these difficult emotions and experiences provides us with the ability to properly navigate them. As Brown says, “If we want to find the way back to ourselves and each other, we need language and the grounded confidence to tell both our stories, and to be stewards of the stories that we hear.”
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
Gabor Maté
An expert on addiction with four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to believe that our toxic culture is making us sick. The inability of Western medicine to look at the whole person as well as the toxicity of the social structures and values around us has led to soaring rates of chronic disease and mental illness.
Beautifully readable, full of fascinating stories from his patients and Maté’s own vignettes, the author is as likely to talk about an Indigenous Canadian patient in his practice as he is to relay a conversation with a Nobel Prize- winner, or with a best-selling author or even a conversation about addiction with Dave Navarro. The breadth of voices in the book is astonishing and feels truly global, as do the studies and statistics cited. Maté’s discussion of how women are traditionally stifled and the traumatic effect this can have on them is particularly insightful and will have many women readers nodding along in recognition.
Other great titles to start your year off right:
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Transformation of Trauma
Bessel van der Kolk
A sympathetic exploration from a renowned trauma expert on the causes of trauma and its impact on the whole person.
Dr Hinemoa Elder
Daily wisdom guide by Hina, the Māori moon – the follow up to Aroha: Maori wisdom for a contented life lived in harmony with our planet
In this body: A Book About Self-love and Acceptance
Ruby Jones
A celebration of the human body in all its forms, full of reminders to be kind to ourselves.
