From Finding Confidence to Navigating Parenting, These Self-Help Books Are Worth a Read

It’s always a good time to set goals for yourself. Maybe you’re hoping to form new habits, become more confident in your career or relationship, curb anxiety, or simply feel happier and fulfilled in your life. The best self-help books can help get you on your way to achieving your aspirations.

Self-help books can be used to stimulate personal growth in a wide variety of areas and can be used in tandem with or separately from other forms of personal therapy depending on the area of focus. “Certain times the very issue that you’re struggling with might determine whether or not self-help books would be good for you,” says Chloe Carmichael, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and author of Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety. “Certain types of issues might require more of the accountability of an actual person.”

With this in mind, it’s not advised to use a self-help book to help you work through a mental health problem. “Self-help books can be very helpful, but my experience is that you cannot read your way out of a problem or area of distress with a book alone,” says Peter Gradilone, M.A.T., L.M.S.W., a therapist trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and Jungian analysis. “Self-help books can serve as an amplification towards the search for answers. Personal therapy in concert with readings can be most effective.”

How we chose the best self-help books

We consulted Carmichael and Gradilone for their self-help book recommendations, we combed through countless reviews, and did our own research to compile a list of the most effective, highly-rated self-help books available.