Best Self-Help Books For Transforming Your Life

By Jennifer Collins

Published April 11, 2022 | 9 min read

If you’re ready to transform your life, these self-help books will help guide you.

Okay, so let’s face it—I’m a self-help junkie.

Been that way for years.

Coming from a rough, chaotic background, it’s probably saved my life a time or two.

It’s remarkable how books can make you feel like you’re not alone in your struggles.

Even if the author isn’t there personally, reading their words makes it feel like they’re in the room with you.

It feels like they understand you.

Like they are nudging you forward with wisdom, patience, and faith.

At least, that’s been my experience.

Fortunately, and probably thanks to these folks (among many others), I’ve come out on the other side of my own life journey.

These days, things are much easier, more peaceful, and more fun than ever before in my life.

They even led me to write my own personal empowerment book.

Let the gratitude shine forth!

Here’s my list of the Top Nine Best Self-Help books.

Enjoy!

Don’t forget to also check out our collection of book quotes and sayings for more inspiration.

Best Self-Help Books For Transforming Your Life

The Drama-Free Way: A Thought-Management Guide to Navigating Chaos and Thriving, by Jennifer Kern Collins.

Okay, so that’s me.

But to be honest, I’m still using it as my own manual for living.

My years of personal struggle, education, and experience as an addictions counselor helped me understand trauma.

Now, as a life coach, my mind is packed with stories, informational content, exercises, and knowledge from books that explain the science behind how we become addicted to drama in our own minds.

I have a deep understanding of how that influences our outer world experience.

We have collectively co-created a culture that is addicted to drama.

The path it is leading us down as a human race is, frankly, unsustainable.

As we each take personal responsibility for our own thought patterns and “feeling good,” we become less dependent on our circumstances.

We learn to rely less on other people making us happy.

This allows us true freedom to create, to live, to express our authentic spirits.

It helps us live our greater purpose, to play, and to just be.

This book provides the how to of managing your thoughts and energetic states to live in alignment with your spirit and effectively work with the law of attraction to create your most flowing, joyous, harmonious life.

best self help books for personal transformation

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, Don Miguel Ruiz.

This book is simple and easy to read.

My brain likes simplicity.

There’s a lot of repetition in this book, which continuously reinforces the concepts.

The author gives us four simple things to focus on to be more peaceful and productive in life: making no assumptions, speaking with integrity or being impeccable with your word, not taking things personally, and always doing our best.

He elaborates on all of these concepts with examples that make these lofty ideals practical and understandable.

The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict, by The Arbinger Institute.

You would think it was a novel, except that you’re learning concepts of creating true peace along the way.

What I love about this self-help book is that it tells a great story with interesting characters who demonstrate the concepts the reader is absorbing.

The setting is an addiction treatment camp for adolescents.

They go off into the wilderness for their recovery process.

The parents stay at the camp’s base to learn from the owners how to engage with their kids in healthy, supportive ways when they get home, to create new patterns and habits, lest their teens fall back into old patterns of substance abuse.

What’s brilliant is that all the teachings of creating peace are applied to work relationships, marital partnerships, and parenting, and also seen from a global level, as the camp owners are two men: one Israeli and one Palestinian.

Diagrams, images, progressive presentation.

All make for an entertaining and highly useful read.

You might also like these psychology books about living with meaning.

Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It, by Kamal Ravikant.

So, here’s the dude perspective on self-love.

To my knowledge, there’s not a lot of that out there.

Kamal is extremely forthcoming and raw in his account of his journey.

He walks us through suffering physically, emotionally, and professionally to healing, wealth, and abundance through a very simple (again, love simple) approach to practicing self-love.

This self-help book explains one of the most powerful energies there is.

And it’s only 57 pages long.

But don’t let that or the large font point size and widely-spaced paragraphs fool you.

This book packs a punch.

It is one of the most powerful little collections of thoughts I’ve ever read—when translated and applied to my own life.

You have to take it to that level.

But only if you want to experience the miracles of transformation available to you.

One Day My Soul Just Opened Up: 40 Days and 40 Nights Toward Spiritual Strength and Personal Growth, by Iyanla Vanzant.

Okay, so this is one of those books that truly saved my life years ago in my early twenties when I was in the midst of my deepest pain.

My copy is highlighted, written in, scribbled on, post-it-noted, earmarked—the works!

It is well-organized and simple to follow.

Iyanla has it broken into sections of “phases.”

Within that, each “day” has a lesson or point of focus presented in only a few short pages of teachings and insights about universal concepts.

There is also a “workbook” segment to do your own processing, reflection, and discovery.

She offers definitions, commentaries, affirmations, and personalization.

The wisdom in these pages is presented in a relatable, easy-to-follow manner, with personal stories and examples to enhance the reader’s understanding and ah-has.

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert.

There are a lot of authors out there, but Liz Gilbert is a true writer.

Her prose is poignant, creative, and playful, with clever metaphors and skillfully sculpted imagery.

Her books read like you’re sitting there having a cup of coffee with her.

Big Magic strikes a beautiful balance between offering stories, insights, laughter, and wisdom while calling the reader forth into their own creativity.

She brilliantly speaks about the energies of creativity that are out in the ethers in the form of ideas circulating about the planet, looking for a human to partner with to become manifested or expressed in physical form.

Her experience and examples give us permission to listen to our creative urges.

They encourage us to take risks by putting our “work” out there.

While a standard bookstore might not categorize this as a “self-help” book, to me, it gets that job done.

She paints a new picture of how to interface with our fears to more effectively live our higher purpose and let our souls be expressed through us.

When we are living that path, we cannot help but grow and expand—the true essence of healing.

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, by Michael A. Singer

Deep, man…deeep. And yet easy to read and follow.

Somehow, Michael Singer has managed to take some serious Buddhist-like teachings and wrap them into simple language and relatable stories.

This book took me several months to read, as I would pick it up and process it for a few days and then come back to it when I was ready for more.

It explores how the world we inhabit inside ourselves has to be reformed, healed, and upgraded before we can experience the peace and happiness we truly desire.

It’s another one that leads us to change our lives from the inside out.

It looks at the over-arching themes that need to be addressed in order for us to grow into who we are capable of becoming.

Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person, by Hugh Prather.

One day, this treasure showed up in the mail right when I was in the midst of deciding whether or not to get married or call off the wedding.

It’s not your standard self-help book. It’s really just a series of notes.

Oftentimes, it is via the insights that come through another’s struggles we can gain some footing toward our own awareness.

Our spirits can speak to us through the words on the page as we awaken to our truth.

That’s what this book was for me.

I transcribed dozens of passages into my “quotes collection” journal, and then I referred back to them over and over again in the dismal moments.

It’s a timeless classic and can be revisited at any stage of life, in any circumstance, along the journey.

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, by Brene Brown.

Full permission to be human.

That kind of annoyed me at first, being the world-class perfectionist that I am.

Demanding absolutely no errors or screw-ups from myself or others makes for a narrow life.

The juice is in the messiness, so I’ve found.

That’s where the growth is.

Brene Brown’s work has opened us up to letting the eff-ups be exactly what they are.

We can even find value in them (egads!).

Somehow, this is all so liberating.

This book offers a look into “wholehearted living,” focusing on our innate worthiness, which is not contingent on our performing, proving, or earning.

We are each valuable exactly as we are and where we are in our journey.

It gives us tools to cultivate courage, compassion, and connection and to be vulnerable, which allows the true riches of life to permeate our beings and take us to a new level of feeling alive and expressing our soul’s essence.