The Best Self-help Books You Must Read: Updated 2020

book on desk
by CJ McDaniel // May 10  

No matter who you are, you’re going to face troubles at some point in your life. There will be obstacles you may not know how to traverse. Life can be difficult at times, but you don’t always have to face those problems on your own. No matter the circumstance, there most likely exists a remedy to your problems. In this article we’ve compiled the best self-help books just for you.

Perhaps that remedy comes in the form of a self-help book. Most situations aren’t 100% unique to the person. Someone else has gone through that previous and survived well enough to tell the tale. The answer usually lies with the person taking responsibility for themselves. They must create healing from the inside. With that comes the self-help (or self-improvement) genre.

What Did These Self-help Books Do To Qualify For This List

Any time you are ranking the best of something the results are usually somewhat subjective but we have did our best to come up with a list the readers of the self-help genre will truly like. To come up with this list we took into account:

  • quantity and quality of user reviews
  • sales data
  • public perception
  • opinions of readers of this genres
  • commercial success
  • and of course personal opinion

Take a look at the best Self-help Books you can read right now:

Best Adventure Books

 

Here are the best Self-care books by the experts:

1)Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be by Rachel Hollis

  • Best Self Help BooksBook Summary:With painful honesty and fearless humor, Rachel unpacks and examines the falsehoods that once left her feeling overwhelmed and unworthy, and reveals the specific practical strategies that helped her move past them. In the process, she encourages, entertains, and even kicks a little butt, all to convince you to do whatever it takes to get real and become the joyous, confident woman you were meant to be.
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2)Best Self: Be You, Only Better by Mike Bayer

  • Best Self Help BooksBook Summary:By working through each of the seven SPHERES of life – social, personal, health, education, relationships, employment, and spiritual development – Best Self is an accessible and interactive audiobook that distills all of Coach Mike’s wisdom into a compact, focused guide that will ignite anyone’s desire for change. Best Self will empower you to embrace your authenticity, acknowledge what is holding you back, and break through to live a passionate life to the fullest, forever.
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3)Declutter Your Mind: How to Stop Worrying, Relieve Anxiety, and Eliminate Negative Thinking by S.J. Scott

  • Best Self Help BooksBook Summary:Feel overwhelmed by your thoughts? Struggling with anxiety about your daily tasks? Or do you want to stop worrying about life? The truth is we all experience the occasional negative thought. But if you always feel overwhelmed, then you need to closely examine how these thoughts are negatively impacting your lifestyle.
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4)The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz

  • Best Self Help BooksBook Summary:In The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.
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5)Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World by William H. McRaven

  • Best Self Help BooksBook Summary:On May 17, 2014, Admiral William H. McRaven addressed the graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin on their Commencement day. Taking inspiration from the university’s slogan, “What starts here changes the world,” he shared the ten principles he learned during Navy Seal training that helped him overcome challenges not only in his training and long Naval career, but also throughout his life; and he explained how anyone can use these basic lessons to change themselves-and the world-for the better.
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6)Becoming Whole: A Healing Companion to Ease Emotional Pain and Find Self-Love by Bruce Alan Kehr M.D.

  • Best Self Help BooksBook Summary:Filled with warmth, empathy, and hope, Becoming Whole systematically teaches you how to ease emotional pain in your life and in the lives of those you care about. Powerfully illustrated by “Sessions”–stories of patients in treatment–and for the first time unveiling what goes on inside the heart and mind of a psychotherapist as they heal a patient’s tangled heart
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7)How to Make Sh*t Happen: Make more money, get in better shape, create epic relationships and control your life! by Sean Whalen

  • Best Self Help BooksBook Summary:Is your daily life chaotic and out of control? Do you struggle with work/life balance? Does it feel like there are never enough hours in the day to accomplish all your goals? Does it feel like no matter how hard you try it’s never good enough? Are you looking for a simple yet executable roadmap to create the life you’ve always desired? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you need…HOW TO MAKE SH*T HAPPEN
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8)Zen as F*ck: A Journal for Practicing the Mindful Art of Not Giving a Sh*t (Zen as F*ck Journals) by Monica Sweeney (Author)

  • Best Self Help BooksBook Summary:The road to serenity is ahead, and it’s paved with a f*ck-ton of profanity. When quiet meditation and peaceful mantras aren’t enough to cut through the bullsh*t and brighten your day―hold close the pages of Zen as F*ck. On each and every page, you can give the good around you a warm f*cking hug and kick the bad on its ass. Journal your way through positive affirmations and cathartic-as-f*ck activities on your liberating journey toward something pretty close to happiness.
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9)It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered by Lysa TerKeurst

  • Best Self Help BooksBook Summary:ife often looks so very different than we hoped or expected. Some events may simply catch us off guard for a moment, but others shatter us completely. We feel disappointed and disillusioned, and we quietly start to wonder about the reality of God’s goodness.
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10)Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins

  • Best Self Help BooksBook Summary:For David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare – poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a US Armed Forces icon and one of the world’s top endurance athletes. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events, inspiring Outsidemagazine to name him The Fittest (Real) Man in America.
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Best Self-help Movies

If you enjoyed the best self-help books, why stop there? Take a look at our list of best self-help movies and witness these inspirational films from the big screen.

1)Minimalism: a Documentary About the Important Things

Starring: Dan Harris, Ryan Nicodemus, and Joshua Fields Millburn
Directed by: Matt D’Avella

Movie Summary:How might your life be better with less? Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things examines the many flavors of minimalism by taking the audience inside the lives of minimalists from all walks of life-families, entrepreneurs, architects, artists, journalists, scientists, and even a former Wall Street broker-all of whom are striving to live a meaningful life with less.

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2)Southpaw

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker, and Naomie Harris
Directed by: Antoine Fuqua

Movie Summary:Jake Gyllenhall stars as boxer Billy “The Great” Hope who turns to a retired fighter (Forest Whitaker) to help him turn his life around for one last epic fight.

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3)The Greatest Showman

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams
Directed by: Michael Gracey

Movie Summary:Hugh Jackman stars in this bold and original musical – inspired by the ambition and imagination of P.T. Barnum – celebrating the birth of show business and dreams coming to life.

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4)Happy

Starring: Sonja Lyubomirsky and Richard Davidson
Directed by: Roko Belic

Movie Summary:Happy combines cutting-edge science from the new field of positive psychology with real-life stories of people from around the world whose lives illustrate these findings.

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5)Living On One Dollar

Starring: Chris Temple, Zach Ingrasci, Sean Leonard
Directed by: Chris Temple, Zach Ingrasci, Ryan Christoffersen, Sean Leonard

Movie Summary:Four young friends set out to live on just $1 a day for two months in rural Guatemala. Armed with only a video camera, they battle hunger, parasites, and extreme financial stress as they attempt to survive life on the edge.

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Best Self-help Audio Books

Now that you’ve seen our list of the best self-help books and movies, I’m sure you’ll be interested in trying out more of the best self-help books in audio!

1)Managing Oneself by Peter F Drucker

Book Summary:“Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves – their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.” -Peter F. Drucker
Throughout history, people had little need to manage their careers – they were born into their stations in life or, in the recent past, they relied on their companies to chart their career paths. But times have drastically changed. Today we must all learn to manage ourselves.

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2)Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns

Book Summary:The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self-esteem, and other ‘black holes’ of depression can be cured without drugs. In Feeling Good, eminent psychiatrist David D. Burns, M.D. outlines the remarkable, scientifically proven self-help techniques that will immediately lift your spirits and help you develop a positive outlook on life.
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3)Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh

Book Summary:In the rush of modern life, we tend to lose touch with the peace that is available in each moment. World-renowned Zen master, spiritual leader, and author Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how to make positive use of the situations that usually pressure and antagonize us. A ringing telephone can be a signal to call us back to our true selves. Dirty dishes, red lights, and traffic jams are spiritual friends on the path to “mindfulness” – the process of keeping our consciousness alive to our present experience and reality. The most profound satisfactions, the deepest feelings of joy and completeness lie as close at hand as our next aware breath and the smile we can form right now.
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4)The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

Book Summary:In The Power of Habit, award-winning business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. Distilling vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives that take us from the boardrooms of Procter & Gamble to the sidelines of the NFL to the front lines of the civil rights movement, Duhigg presents a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential. At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. As Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.
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5)How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Book Summary:You can go after the job you want…and get it! You can take the job you have…and improve it! You can take any situation you’re in…and make it work for you!
Simon & Schuster Audio is proud to present one of the best self-help books of all time, Dale Carnegie’s perennial classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, presented here in its entirety.

For over 60 years the rock-solid, time-tested self-help advice in this audiobook has carried thousands of now-famous people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives.
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Conclusion

What do you think about our list of best self-help books? If you have another genre that you prefer to read we have probably compiled a list of our favorites for that genre too. So if you are looking for something other than the best self-help books you can find other genres here.

About the Author

CJ grew up admiring books. His family owned a small bookstore throughout his early childhood, and he would spend weekends flipping through book after book, always sure to read the ones that looked the most interesting. Not much has changed since then, except now some of those interesting books he picks off the shelf were designed by his company!