The Best Self-Help Books That Actually Help You

These are the top books that have changed my life this year. I've read over 100 books in personal development in 2017, and gone through over 5 notebooks, and these are the most difficult and the most honest books for it requires you to make real internal changes and to learn the difference between root cause and symptoms. Tony Robbins is great and so are the countless other coaching books out there, but these books are about unveiling the subconscious, the part of you that's hidden or has been denied. If all it took was someone to cheer you along, we'd all be where we want to be by now. The problem, as we all know, isn't always clear. We operate between the subconscious and the conscious and for some of us, even different personalities that unveil itself at the most inconvenient times. Sometimes it's hidden by years of denial and that's what these books help you to unveil. It uncovers the subconscious so that books and programs by Tony Robbins and other coaches can actually help you. I always bought self-help books like How To Make Friends and Influence People or How To Be a Better You, but I realized those are all surface, manipulative changes rather than a real change of the heart. I hope that all of you can read these books and begin to become your true self. Thanks to these wonderful writers and publishers, all of us can heal and grow without having to shell out $100 per hour for a session on the couch with a therapist.

1. Healing the Child Within by John Bradshaw - uncovering your child within and the traumas that you experienced as a child
2. Focusing by Eugene T Gendlin - learning how emotions can be lodged and released in the body
3. The Completion Process by Teal Swan - healing from traumatic experiences and healing the emotions that are blocked in your body and your mind
4. Safe People by Henry Cloud and John Townsend - have you noticed that you keep surrounding yourself with the same kind of destructive or critical people? This book teaches you how to find safe people and how to become a safe person for others
5. Codependent No More by Melody Beattie - why people stay in loveless relationships. This book taught me the terms enabler, co-dependent, rescuer, gas-lighting, consequences, and more.
6. Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend - ever wonder why you're always running frantically from meeting to meeting or always doing everyone else's work? This book teaches you how to say yes when you mean it and how to say no when you mean it and to stick to it.
7. Boundaries in Dating Henry Cloud and John Townsend - really understand that dating is to get to know yourself and how to value yourself. They teach that in dating, you're really working on relational issues and character rather than common interests or physical attraction
8. Honoring the Self by Nathaniel Branden - understanding what self-esteem really is.

Here is an excerpt from Honoring the Self that truly explains what is selfishness:
"You mean it's not immoral to be selfish?" ....
"The question does not mean, 'Do I have permission to violate the rights of others?' or 'Is it appropriate to be indifferent to human suffering?' or 'Are kindness and generosity not virtues?' It means, 'Do I have a right to honor my own needs and wants, to act on my own judgment, to strive for my own happiness?'
Ultimately it means, 'Do I have a right to exist for my own sake?'
Strictly speaking, this question is tautologous. If my right to exist is contingent on services I render to others, I exist only by permission or favor. My life does not belong to me."