Best Self-Improvement Books in 2020
Have you been hunting for ways to transform into a happier self?
It is time to call shots and make some big changes in life.
Well, little did you know but creating a happy bubble around you is easy-peasy. The secret lies in unleashing the potential in you so that you become your best version.
Kiss goodbye to anxiety because happiness is not hard-found. Being happy is easier than you think.
So, are you great at chalking out plans and strategies but not quite efficient in implementing them? No problem! Digging into the best of self-improvement books can help you rule out every little hurdle, standing in the way of you and a good life. Believe it or not but self-help books work like magic.
Taking cues from the insights shared by the greatest minds in the world, reading lines that are inspiring and healing and getting a hang of simple, developmental exercises, the perks of engaging in self-improvement books are way more than you can imagine.
Wondering where to start? Don’t worry because here’s a curated list of 10 best self-improvement books of 2020
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
If you’ve been dreaming of taking pleasure in a fairytale life, Big Magic is a must-read. The author has splendidly jotted down stories, spilling beans about her experiences with magic and creativity. Read more to find out what makes her life so much happy and fulfilling.
Buy Now Here - Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Time Management Secrets by Martin Manser
Do you struggle to execute a job perfectly when your plate is too full? Well, Time Management Secrets is a winning aid for you. Explore the fundamentals of time management and give your career the much-needed wings. Read about the ways of strategizing and recognizing your priorities. The book includes priceless words of wisdom from experts in business circles. Learn the ropes of necessary work ethics, analyze the importance of communication and every other knick-knack, important to hit the easy-street.
Buy Now Here : Time Management: Collins Business Secrets
Girl Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis
Is your life topsy-turvy? Well, Rachel Hollis is here to tell you that it is okay to have a messy life. However, to make it a joyful space and make life a smooth-sailing, one must get over the bait of procrastinating and lying to oneself. It is a big hurdle that does a lot of damage. Girl Wash Your Face is a book that enlightens you about the 20 odd lies, people love telling themselves to procrastinate and hold back.
Buy Now Here : Girl, Wash Your Face
Year of Yes by Shonda Rimes
Shonda Rimes is not an unknown name if you loved to binge-watch shows like ‘How To Get Away With Murder’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ The book is not a fancy tenement of tricks and tips for a better life. Instead, Rimes highlights the changes she witnessed after she said ‘YES’ for a year. It is a chronicle of episodes that only got better when she started nodding ‘YES’ for everything in life. Her...
What’s your attitude? 15 mindsets to build a positive one
How many times are you told by elders, friends and mentors to develop a positive attitude?
Everyone instructs to do it, but only a few have directions on how to do it?
What’s your attitude
An attitude is a mindset developed over time, through experiences of resilience and observations about people and things.
It’s a predisposition to respond in a certain way, to both the known and unknown.
Simply, your attitude is your perspective towards life proceedings.
It speaks a lot about you.
Expressions ( often called as body language) is the indicator of your attitude towards people.
That doesn’t mean you should start dancing to them.
Allow the real inside to roll your reel outside.
And that’s why we need a positive attitude, to respond better in the now, so we unlock our desires, and dive into the flow of achieving them.
What's Positive Attitude?
Positive attitude is Integrity — honesty towards people and commitment to oneself.
The headspace where you are optimistic yet surrender to the present beyond control.
It unleashes vibes of nothing to lose and experiences to gain, the approach that sets the spirit free to express your true self and unlock higher possibilities.
Positive attitude is luxury you afford piercing comfort.
It fosters with practice.
Positive attitude is a mind zone where:
people's thinking of you doesn't matter to you.
you trust instincts more than your compulsive thoughts.
you believe everything will be ok no matter how hard it is right now.
good for you includes good for people.
there is self respect, no ego.
success is just moving.
lesson is the name of a failure.
you believe no feeling is permanent, neither success nor failure, neither happiness nor sadness.
beginning means almost done.
you embrace negativity and bliss out to positivity.
mind welcomes fear and accepts shortfalls gracefully.
you are perseverant until you reach your goal.
The headspace where your flowing presence entices everyone in the room is a positive attitude.
Top Quotes on Attitude that Inspire
“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.”
― Walt Whitman
“I do not believe in taking the right decision, I take a decision and make it right.”
― Muhammad Ali Jinnah
“If you can quit, quit. If you can't quit, stop complaining - this is what you chose.”
― Joe Konrath
“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”
— Oprah Winfrey
“The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.”
— Louis E. Boone
“An attitude of positive expectation is the mark of the superior personality.”
— Brian Tracy
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
— Helen Keller
15 mindsets to develop a positive attitude
Boils to Discipline when you Lack Motivation in Work
Show up to work no matter how low you feel.
Just showing up is half the job done.
Begin your session with a 15 min exercise where you...
Try this exercise to enter the moment
Is your monkey mind guilty of attending only distractions?
Is your desire to consciously sync with the life-flow remain unfulfilled?
Are you tired of your ego playing the same psychological drama?
All are signs we are less in the moment, and more under powerful influence of the Mind’s unconscious projections.
The following exercise is a doorway into the now.
Well, the word writing may sound boring to you, but I request you to try out the suggested way.
Please experience it yourself to give a reason to your logical mind to believe it.
It's a tried-tested by me for quite a while now, and I promise writing won't be boring this time.
Scribble without a backspace
Bring out that 'old school' journal where you blindly express shrugging off your ego-generated identifications.
A conscious 30-min effort every day where you scribble whatever thoughts and emotions you encounter beyond thoughts of publishing it or even reading it again.
Not on the modern-day mediums like computers and tabs, but that 'old school' journal which remains your manuscript holding your deep-dark-dirty secrets.
Build that writing space where even if your mind has questions and no answers, you flush out.
There’s no clarity but the void, you still discharge the rawness.
Treat those pages not as your possessions, but as trash, which you would dump it anyway someday.
Pouring words over self-judgments
Leave grammar, style, structure, just vent out the vulnerable expressions of originality by total surrender, no judgments.
Just begin and speak out both the meaningless or the meaningful.
Affirm that’s not editorial content, just a practice to reconnect with life.
Beginning, and then cultivating this habit may not be enjoyable always, but need not lose love in the process.
As you scribble, you feel a little tide of contentment gently hitting the shores of kind awareness, as your words flow at a slow but consistent pace.
That’s where you feel the source of life flowing from a deeper consciousness, beyond the intellectual concepts of the mind.
I find it the best way to clear my monkey mind by an overwhelm.
The best about journal writing is it doesn’t have a backspace to renovate the past.
That generates willpower to flex creative muscles, to unlock the awareness in the present moment, so that life cruise through instincts.
Summary
Self-judgments labels living as a task where your egoistic mind is racing to reach the finish.
That’s where the love in the life process fades away.
This way, life only happens accidentally.
So how do you enter the now?
Pull out the 'old school' journal.
Flush whatever’s inside — your painful emotions and dirty thoughts, or the present moment expressions and subconscious nostalgia.
Write guilt-free, over the fear of judgments, not for anyone but maybe for yourself, to recall those souvenirs somewhere down the memory lane and laugh over it.
Irrespective the language, dedicate a 30 min session to journal writing expressing your original vulnerability.
Go slow as a snail, but scribble in that journal to reconnect with the joyful road, without a reverse from the past, naturally sailing on the wheels of now.
This practice brings clarity, and your future flows from the source of your creative imagination.
Most important,...
Lockdown Tales: How About An Interaction With The Expressive Nature
According to Collins dictionary, Nature is all the animals, plants, and other things in the world that are not made by people, and all the events and processes that are not caused by people.
(I'll be denoting Nature by They, Them, Their... Just cannot confine nature into a box of It.)
Let’s meet Nature
Nature is super-expressive! Since ages, they are trying hard to express:
Pain during ruthless slaughtering,
Misery in feeding pollutants,
Suffering after a sudden human attack,
Yes that’s what nature had to share. Because that’s what we... the most intelligent creatures on this planet... had been offering to them... in our own filthy ways.
Cruel We ... who didn’t bother listening to nature shouts in pain inflicted by us.
We could not sense those tears; We had no feelings for them in our consciousness.
We murdered them for our luxuries; burnt them for money.
We went unconscious of their existence, unaware that our existence is superficial without the creator — Nature!
You might wonder:
Why am I told this?
Why am I forced to realize all of it?
Well the whole purpose of saying this is:
If that’s the ugly past you want to forget, guess what... you got this opportunity!
It’s time you can break that equation, and start afresh chemistry with nature.
Because nature just forgot ages of brutality by us during this pandemic.
Nature revived without long-due revenge!
Nature resurrected!
Nature is back to the old school smiles!
So time to get back to the present and embrace this undeserved opportunity.
It’s important we connect with nature now... when they are all smiles!
Never was a better time we could feel free from this guilt... the guilt of causing so much harm to them.
It’s time we feel happy with them, for them!
Just to remind you, nature was never helpless.
If they would take long-due revenge, the entire human race could be sacrificed.
That’s how much damage we did to them.
But guess what... nothing as such happened...
And nature we never met... sounds familiar!
Call it luck, fate, destiny, anything, but make sure you accept this as a blessing!
That human lockdown led to nature's independence!
Indirectly adding more generations to the human race.
All mediums of pollution are at rest. And the:
fresh air,
clear skies,
whirling trees,
gushing winds,
chirping birds,
they are all back.
It’s a huge offering from nature who was hit brutally hard by us.
So come on mate… We always complained about limited time. We were unconscious of their cries then.
But about now...during this lockdown...
Let us not miss this... to listen to nature expressing joy!
Well if you are wondering...
How do I interact with nature?
Let me remind you there’s an unconscious breath transaction always on between you are the greens outside.
Oxygen... Carbon dioxide... Oxygen... Carbon dioxide... lifetime transaction... till your last breath!
And now let me ask you:
The fact that life is lifeless without breath, and breath connects humans to nature,
Is this not enough to create an involvement?
I feel... Acknowledging this simple fact has enough reasons to develop a beautiful bond with the creator — Nature!
If you could feel this mind shift, you could experience life over mental and emotional barriers.
Your ego goes for a toss, as you...
4 Mindshifts During This Lockdown to Keep You in Sanity
The extended lockdown period... is it taking a toll on your mental health?
Are you yearning to step out of lockdown to fulfill your desires?
Is the pain of world outside transiting into your suffering?
Do you struggle to utilize the Me time you never got before?
Do you foresee uncertainties, leading to dilemmas, on the other side of pandemics?
If any of these is happening with you during the Corona outbreak, your mind is turning into a theatre of psychological dramas.
High time mate! You better stop engaging with your thoughts.
Let’s understand what’s cooking
A hell lot is happening around you, infact the whole world is suffering.
Like too much to take!
And amidst all these, the viral pictures of grief, remorse, sorrow, helplessness, are everywhere, in social media and news channels, making worse for the mind to sail smoothly with this life transition.
The normal routine... regular thinking patterns... all disrupted!
Nothing is motivating, nothing seems inspiring about the world right now.
To add final nail to the coffin, this extended lockdown period!
What all of it is resulting to?
Overflowing thoughts... conspiring against each other, causing severe damage to your sanity.
I was hit hard by lows during this quarantine.
And as I always do, I consciously chose to explore the dark.
I walked out in a better headspace!
A few mindshifts pulled me out from the slumps of my mind.
I am happy sharing these as my suggestions; hope you find them useful.
4 Mindshifts for a better headspace
A mere acceptance of your pain
Human race is mourning to bereavement,
Eyes around reflect deep down fears,
Destitution struck so hard the poor are starving to death,
Economies gravely affected; savings vaporizing than never,
Future looks ambiguous... the other side under dilemmas,
Like everything brought to a standstill!
Difficult time this... as there is only pain to attract from the outside world.
You never stood here before, and your mind is clueless about the way out.
The result: A chaotic mind that produces anxiety.
But my dear friend... you need to realize:
Not only you, your family, your city, or your country...
It’s the entire world that’s unsettled right now.
So what you are going through is fine. It’s the current normal!
Yes you need to accept this right now...
Better said... you might wonder:
How should I gracefully accept this change?
Just acknowledge you are not battling alone.
It's not only about you this time... we are in this together!
This offers you strength to stand in solidarity, as we people are kind of sharing identical pain.
It brings the acceptance you need!
Trust me... Acceptance of pain is that reliever that never allows your pain turn into suffering.
Consciously experience the biggest blessing — You are Alive!
You are blessed to be alive, sitting at home, comfortable with your family, away from the virus, getting enough luxuries for a healthy living.
You got to feel grateful for this!
You are fortunate than millions suffering in this pandemic. Please don't let that feeling of gratitude die in your sub-consciousness.
If I ask you:
Did you experience the fear of being asymptomatic to Covid-19 at any point?
I think many of us would admit:
Yes... I felt that... just for a little... but I did!
If...