Change your life with the best self-help books ever. Self-help books range dramatically in quality, and I did the work of reading dozens of them so you don’t have to. In my experience of reading and implementing the teachings of dozens of popular self-help books over about two decades, I’ve narrowed down the ones that actually worked for me and shared them with you below.
You’ll find a curated genre book list with specific recommendations for which type of person should read each bestseller to make it easy for you to decide. So whether you’re working on your reading goals or something else, you’ll find what YOU need here. You’ll also get a free printable PDF checklist to track your reading of these transformative books, so let’s get literary!
Top 5 Inspirational Self-Help Books
To get started, these self-help books are some of the bestselling books in any genre. To put their sales in perspective for you, selling a few thousand copies can land a book on a bestseller list, and selling one million copies is incredibly rare.
The Alchemist: about 150 million copies
How To Win Friends & Influence People: about 30 million copies
The Secret: about 20 million copies
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: about 40 million copies
Who Moved My Cheese?: about 28-30 million copies copies
What are the best self-help books ever?
Here’s a quick list with personal recommendations:
- 10% Happier: for improving anxiety
- The 5 Love Languages: for improving your love life
- The 5 Second Rule: to finally take action
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: for personal and professional growth
- The Alchemist: to follow your true purpose
- Atomic Habits: to form a new habit
- Big Magic: to develop your creativity
- Braving the Wilderness: to improve your communication skills
- Four Thousand Weeks: to improve your time management
- How To Win Friends & Influence People: to be more persuasive
- Lean In: for women to improve their careers and for men to support them
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: to get organized
- Never Split the Difference: to negotiate more effectively
- Quiet: to harness the power of introverts
- The Secret: to get what you want through the law of attraction
- Set Boundaries, Find Peace: to set better boundaries
- The Tipping Point: to analyze social human behavior
- The Total Money Makeover: to get control of your finances
- Who Moved My Cheese?: to adapt to change
- You Are a Badass: for a minimalist’s guide to self-help
Reviews of My Favorite Self-Help Books To Read For Personal Development
10% Happier by Dan Harris
My Review: 10% Happier is both a memoir and self-help book by the famous ABC news journalist Dan Harris, whose mental health was crippled by anxiety and restored through meditation.
It helps you feel “seen” and encourages you to try meditation.
Reading Tip: For more, check out Harris’s website, Meditate Happier, for podcasts, courses, meditations, and more. My sister swears by it!
The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman
My Review: The 5 Love Languages gives you the keys to transforming your relationships by understanding how people perceive love: physical affection, words of affirmation, acts of service, time spent together, and/or receiving gifts.
By recognizing another person’s love language, you can act in ways that support it and/or understand their acts of love. You can also better understand and communicate your own needs.
This is a book I refer to in my daily life, considering my husband’s (and even my cats’!) love languages as I relate with them. It easily deepens your relationships.
Related Post: Review of The Five Love Languages
The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins
My Review: The 5 Second Rule has a simple premise that has the power to change your life. I know this because it changed mine!
It forces you out of your head (and its limiting thoughts) and into tangible action–fast. After all, nothing changes if nothing changes.
I used the teachings of The 5 Second Rule when I started this website as a hobby/side hustle, and now it’s my full-time job!
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey
My Review: Considered the most influential business book of the 20th Century, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People presents a principled approach to personal and professional growth. It teaches readers to cultivate habits like proactivity, prioritizing important tasks, and fostering collaboration to achieve long-term success. The book also emphasizes aligning personal values with professional goals.
Readers continue to cherish its timeless wisdom and empowering mindset. It pleasantly surprised me, too! It’s highly psychological, strongly emphasizing emotional intelligence, and remains relevant years after its release. There’s a lot to digest here, so take notes!
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
My Review: The Alchemist is one of the bestselling books of all-time. It’s a beloved fable about following your dream centered on an Andalusian shepherd boy, Santiago, who travels from his home in Spain to the Egyptian desert searching for buried treasure. He ultimately discovers treasure within.
It’s a quick read that’s mystical and wise, with lush writing and buried universal truths about the importance of our dreams and listening to our hearts. This “self-help” book is far from hokey or surface level. It’s soulful and spirited, with purpose, meaning, and transformative power.
Related Post: The Alchemist Summary
Atomic Habits by James Clear
My Review: Atomic Habits is one of the most popular self-help books of recent years because it completely changes how you perceive the concept of habits.
It cuts right to the heart of the matter and gives advice that is not just motivational but also extremely practical and actionable. This helps you create habits that stick. It’s worked for me daily with both big and small new habits I’ve formed, from when I brush my teeth to getting my workouts in!
For these reasons, it’s also an excellent book to start a reading habit.
Related Post: Atomic Habits Quotes
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
My Review: Are you looking to finally write a book, open a paint studio, or learn to play guitar this year? Big Magic draws upon the Eat, Pray, Love author’s experiences with creativity: how to get started, what works, and what doesn’t, to help your creativity grow.
It’s so good that I know numerous people who read it yearly. I, too, still remember many of the anecdotes she shared and refer back to them in my creative life.
Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown
My Review: Braving the Wilderness is about “The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone.” Brown, a renowned shame researcher, uses her trademark folksy communication style to offer authentic advice on being yourself and connecting with others, particularly in a divisive world.
While she views this book as about stopping disconnection, I see it more as a guide to communication. It’s a book I always return to when the news is polarizing and social media feels out of control.
Related Post: Braving the Wilderness Summary
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
My Review: Four Thousand Weeks is an interesting take on time management. We all know time is limited. We all have endless to-do lists. And we are all presented with “life hacks” for managing it all. But is this the best way to view our time?
This book draws upon the teachings of psychologists and philosophers to provide a different kind of time management guide focused on living a meaningful life, mindful of the limitations of traditional views of time and time management. It’s worth thinking about!
How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
My Review: How To Win Friends & Influence People teaches timeless principles for building positive relationships through empathy and active listening. Carnegie emphasizes the power of influencing others by focusing on their needs and desires while cultivating mutual respect.
This book influenced me in my early career as a lawyer, in which I was trained that talking louder and more was the key to success. It forced me to take a step back and learn there may be more to be gained in the opposite.
It’s considered a classic in the genre and works particularly well for those in sales or other areas of influence.
Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
My Review: Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In became an instant catchphrase empowering women. She draws from her own experience as an employee of the world’s most successful businesses and opines how women can make small changes in their work-life that can effect change for working women on a universal scale.
It also makes an excellent book for graduates!
Reading Tip: It pairs well with her follow-up book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, in which she adjusts some of her advice based on the tragic death of her husband. This pairing shows that nuance can be part of self-help teachings.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
My Review: Since I still use the organizational advice taught in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I can confirm it lives up to its name.
It’s the “kick in the pants” we all need to eliminate the clutter we don’t need and store what remains in ways that make better sense. The advice is simple and practical to implement in real life, making it a fan favorite.
Reading Tip: Pair it with the Netflix series of the same name. It’s totally binge-worthy!
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
My Review: Never Split the Difference offers negotiation advice from someone who couldn’t afford to lose– a hostage negotiator from the FBI. His stories are suspenseful and memorable, but the real magic in this book lies in how he pulls actionable tips from his “war stories” that can be applied to everyone else’s everyday life.
I recommend it as a good book for men to read, but it works well for women, too. It just happens that I so often see it deemed one of the best self-help books for men, especially when I was a lawyer. My husband also considers it to be a must-read for any sales team.
Quiet by Susan Cain
My Review: Quiet doesn’t just help introverts feel seen. It also helps extroverts understand our superpowers! Cain challenges society’s preference for extroversion, revealing how much we overlook the strengths of introverts and what’s at stake. Through stories and research, she shows how introverts thrive and can be appreciated for their quiet power.
For so long in my early career days, I felt “not good enough” as an introvert. Now, I understand and can convey that my worth is not in being the loudest person in the room, and I can better convey what I do offer.
Related Post: Quiet Book Review
The Secret by Rhona Byrne
My Review: The Secret became all the rage when it was featured on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show. It’s basically the concept of a vision board in book format. It helps you leverage the powers of creating a vision and taking steps in the direction of achieving it in order to actually achieve it. This is the law of attraction: like attracts like.
It’s sometimes dismissed as faulty in that you can’t just will or wish something like winning the lottery to happen, but in my humble opinion, those critiques are missing the point. If you read it from the perspective of designing your dream life, you can get a lot out of it. I’ve used this book to “go confidently in the direction of my dreams” for over a decade.
Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab
My Review: I call Set Boundaries, Find Peace “The Boundaries Bible.” It’s helped me set healthy boundaries that work in all aspects of my life without guilt.
I know I’m not alone in this need because every time I mention this book, it becomes insanely popular with readers of The Literary Lifestyle. If I could scream from the rooftops about one self-help book, this one would be it. The title says it all!
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
My Review: The Tipping Point explores the moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold and then tips, spreading like wildfire.
Through a series of compelling narratives and case studies, Gladwell introduces concepts such as “The Law of the Few,” “The Stickiness Factor,” and “The Power of Context” to explain why some ideas soar and others sink.
A few of my favorite takeaways are the power of being a networker and the concept of “sticky” ideas, which can be applied in your business life.
Reading Tip: Already read it and loved it? Then, check out 2024’s Revenge of The Tipping Point. It’s the same concept, but with updated narratives.
Related Post: Malcolm Gladwell Book Order
The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
My Review: The Total Money Makeover completely changed how I managed my money early in my career.
It’s a great “starter” book for those working on paying off debt and building their savings for a more secure future, particularly by budgeting. It was so instrumental in my life that I still use Ramsey’s budgeting app, Every Dollar, daily.
Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
My Review: Who Moved My Cheese? is a short and sweet parable that bestows business advice about the need to adapt through the story of mice whose cheese is moved and their different reactions to it.
Change is hard. And it’s often said that we must adapt or die,” particularly in business. The mice in this one of the best self-help books ever make the need to change memorable long after it’s read.
You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero
My Review: You Are a Badass doesn’t really offer anything new in the self-help genre, but it does a great job of rehashing what’s already out there. As a bonus, it does so with humor and readability!
I recommend it for the basics of self-help and for minimalists who don’t have the time, need, or desire to read many self-help books.
Printable PDF Self-Help Book Checklist
Recap
GET STARTED WITH THE TOP 5 BEST SELF-HELP BOOKS EVER
- The Alchemist: to follow your true purpose
- How To Win Friends & Influence People: to be more persuasive
- The Secret: to get what you want through the law of attraction
- The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: for personal and professional growth
- Who Moved My Cheese?: to adapt to change
remember, it’s a good day to read a book. – jules
Thank you for this great information!! I’m a self-help book junkie and I haven’t heard of the one you highly recommended. It’s on my list now! Have you heard of “Let Them” by Mel Robbins? I’m not sure if it’s out yet, but it looks good to me.
Yes, I have! Oprah recommended it, so I put it right on my holds list at the library.