Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2017, as a summer reading list for 2017. Joan Didion died in December 2021, but the text refers to her in the present tense. The health claims of Bruce H. Lipton and Joe Dispenza, such as thoughts healing illness at the cellular level, are disputed by mainstream science. This article is not medical advice.
Summer is here, a time of year when we can find a bit of extra time for reading. It is also when you most often ask me which books I would recommend: books that are entertaining and useful at the same time.
This time, my reading recommendation for the summer is five books that I think can change the way you think and considerably improve your life if you apply what you read.
5 recommended personal development books
Just so there is no doubt: these are books whose message is backed by science. In other words, none of them tells you that if you want something badly enough and think positively, the universe will grant it to you. Here is my selection.
1. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol Dweck
The psychologist Carol Dweck answers many questions you have probably never even asked yourself. Among others: why do people act the way they do, and how should you act to improve your life dramatically?
She talks about the two mindsets we have, the fixed mindset and the growth mindset, and explains how to get rid of the fixed mindset and focus on the growth mindset, which is the only one that can lead you to success. A useful book on both a personal and a professional level.
2. The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
A book as short as it is hard. In it, the novelist and journalist Joan Didion tells us about the year in which she had to come to terms with the sudden death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne. Eighteen months later, she also lost her daughter.
Grief is something we will all go through. We are going to lose family members, and let’s just say this book gives you a different view of how to get through that time when nothing seems to make sense.
It is not a book I would have chosen to read, but it is one I am now glad I read.
3. The Biology of Belief, by Bruce H. Lipton
This is a book everyone should read before reading any self-help or personal growth book, to understand the importance of our thoughts and beliefs. From a scientific point of view, it explains how your thoughts can create changes in your cells at the molecular level. In other words, you can make yourself ill or you can heal yourself.
The mind and biological effects are linked. A must-read to fully understand what people mean when they tell you “change the way you think or you’ll end up badly”, and I repeat: from science, not from “fairy tales”.
4. You Are the Placebo, by Joe Dispenza
With a message very similar to the previous book, though not the same, Joe Dispenza, again from a scientific point of view, asks a question: “If an empty pill with no pharmacological power (a placebo) can work miracles in your body, what would happen if people believed in themselves instead of believing in external factors?”
Throughout the book, using numerous examples and explanations, Dispenza tries to get you to apply what he calls the science of transformation. Your mind can do incredible things. Highly recommended, just like Bruce H. Lipton’s book.
5. Antifragile, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Many agree that it is not an easy read and that it can feel heavy going, but it is also true that if you grasp much of what it says, you can learn to navigate in the middle of chaos and even benefit from it.
Nassim has devoted his whole life to studying luck, probability, uncertainty, mathematics… He is the author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, both very interesting. In this one he basically talks about how to benefit from disorder, chaos, uncertainty and so on.
What’s more, if we take in what it says, we will even welcome hard times, because that is when, with the right mindset, we can gain a great deal if we become “antifragile”.
See also: Which books to read to become smarter and make better decisions
Featured image: David Shankbone, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
