Take a look at our favourite self-help wellbeing books for adults! Browse our titles to sooth anxious minds, find calm and help you become your best self. All of these books and more are available to borrow for free with your library card.
Want more reading suggestions? Take a look at our recommendations.
Ten Times Calmer: Beat Anxiety and Change Your Life
Dr Kirren Schnack
Whether you’re going through something and need support to feel like yourself again, or if you have been dealing with anxious thoughts for a long time, Ten Times Calmer is full of practical explanations and and strategies offering the help you’ve been looking for.
Structured with case studies, patient examples, tasks and summaries, the ten chapters cover everything from dealing with anxious thoughts and stress to managing uncertainty and safely tackling trauma, each taking you a step closer to an anxiety-free life. Inside you’ll find short anxiety-busting exercises with a big impact and a toolkit of well-researched and clinically proven tips that will help you find calm each and every day.
Read Yourself Happy: How to Use Books to Ease Your Anxiety
Daisy Buchanan
Forget ‘self-help’ and embrace ‘shelf-help’ by discovering the healing power of books and reading to inspire, comfort and fortify.
In a hectic world that can feel uncertain and overwhelming, Daisy Buchanan offers the perfect source of anti-anxiety, inviting us to discover the literary worlds that have helped her in unwinding anxiety to survive – and thrive.
Daisy provides personally curated reading lists and over 200 book recommendations to help you process your emotions and find more peace with every page.
Dealing With Feeling: Harness Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want
মার্ক এ. ব্র্যাকেট
Think back to your most challenging moment – whether in your career, relationships or personal life. Did you lose control from anger? Were you paralysed by fear? Did you isolate yourself due to humiliation? Whatever your reaction, your emotions most likely determined what you said, or did, next. But the way we handle our emotions is not, as many believe, an involuntary part of ourselves – it is a skill that must be taught and refined throughout our lives.
In this book, Brackett shares his own journey of emotional growth, explores the latest science behind our emotions and offers practical techniques to help you nurture healthy relationships, tackle life’s challenges and enhance your mental wellbeing.
Fear Less Live More: How to Overcome Fear, Build Resilience and Achieve Anything
Aimee Fuller
For many of us, fear is something best avoided. But as professional snowboarder Aimee Fuller knows well, fear can also be a catalyst for growth – and the true magic happens when you take your fear and turn it into fire.
In this bright and insightful book, Aimee draws from her personal experience to show you how to get to know fear without letting it hold you back, how to learn from failure, and help you reframe fear as your most powerful ally.
Brave, honest and inspiring, Fear Less Live More will help you overcome fear and find what drives you – so you can start living life with purpose, maintain that focus, and enjoy the ride.
Unstressable: A Practical Guide to Stress-Free Living
Mo Gawdat and Alice Law
This follow-up to the bestselling Solve For Happy will show you that chronic stress is not an unavoidable part of modern life, but a predictable – and therefore preventable – response, often as much to do with negative thought patterns as external circumstances. Mo explains how he made it through the most acutely stressful times in his own life, and touches on the idea of post-traumatic growth – both on a personal level and in response to huge events that affected all of us, such as the COVID pandemic and subsequent economic turmoil.
Practical exercises will help you build up the skills to manage stress no matter your circumstances, backed up by neuroscience and accessible psychology.
Spread the Joy: Make Every Day Brighter
Gaby Roslin
In Spread the Joy, Gaby shows us how to live a happier, more fulfilled life, one Tiny Task at a time. Whether at home, at work or on your commute, be inspired to find and create pockets of joy in your day.
If you’re a fan of Tanya Rad, Fearne Cotton and Ingrid Fetell Lee, you’ll love this book, made with care and a huge dash of cheer just for you. Packed with heart-warming stories and laugh-out-loud anecdotes, practical tips and inspired tricks, this guided journal shows you how to lean into life’s simple pleasures and spread the joy, one person at a time.
All You Need is Less Stress: Find Calm Every Day
Leonie Amarasekara
For many, overcoming stress is a regular struggle, yet it’s very important for our health and well-being that we keep it in check. By finding calm, you can make your life feel easier and happier, and this little book will show you how.
Inside, you’ll find a collection of tips, quotes and activities to help you understand stress triggers and transform your life. From reading it on the go to before bed, you can take this toolkit with you everywhere, so that you can tackle your stress one step at a time.
Happier Hour: How to Spend Your Time for a Better, More Meaningful Life
Cassie Holmes
The most precious commodity we own isn’t money. It’s time. We are allotted just twenty-four hours a day, and we live in a culture that keeps us feeling ‘time poor’ – like we never have enough. Since we can’t add more hours to the day, how can we experience our lives more richly?
Enlivened by Holmes’s upbeat narrative and groundbreaking research, Happier Hour will teach you how small changes can have an enormous impact – helping you feel less overwhelmed, more present and more satisfied with your life overall – things that money can’t buy. It all starts by transforming just one hour into a happier hour.
Ordinary Joy: A Realistic Guide to Being Yourself
Kim-Joy
Kim-Joy rose to fame in 2018 following her appearance on The Great British Bake Off, where she was best-known for her cute, quirky bakes and radiant positivity. Before her appearance on the show, Kim-Joy worked in the NHS as a qualified Wellbeing Practitioner, supporting and treating patients with anxiety and depression, while facing mental health difficulties of her own.
Filled with funny, relatable moments from Kim-Joy’s life, along with a practical toolkit to navigate being ‘different’, Ordinary Joy is a moving and inclusive guide to finding joy, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places. Kim-Joy shares stories, reflections, questions and prompts to help you get to know yourself better, to help you live more authentically.
From how to set boundaries and say no, to saying yes to the right things and people, along with simple ways to celebrate your differences, Ordinary Joy reminds you that you belong.
You Will Get Through This Night: A Practical Mental Health Guide
Daniel Howell
Written by Daniel Howell, in consultation with a qualified psychologist, this is an entertaining and personal book to help you from the perspective of someone who has been through it all. This no-nonsense book gives you the tools to understand your mind so you can be in control and really live. Split into three chapters for each stage of the journey:
- This Night – how to get through your toughest moments and be prepared to face anything.
- Tomorrow – small steps to change your thoughts and actions with a big impact on your life.
- The Days After – help to look after yourself in the long term and not just survive, but thrive.
You will laugh and learn – but most of all, this book will assure you that even in your darkest times, there is always hope.
The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Study on Happiness
Dr Robert Waldinger and Dr Marc Schulz
Based on the world’s longest scientific study of happiness, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, this landmark book reveals the simple yet surprising truth: the stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying and overall healthier lives.
Drawing on over 80 years of research and hundreds of life stories, programme directors Dr Robert Waldinger and Dr Marc Schulz bring together scientific precision, traditional wisdom, incredible real-life stories and actionable insights to show us how and why prioritising meaningful connection – not financial success or achievement – is the key to a good life.
Accessible, inspiring and deeply practical, The Good Life is the accessible and practical guide on how to nurture relationships, build emotional resilience and find lasting happiness.
Are You Mad At Me?: Stop Focusing on What Others Think, Start Living For You
Meg Josephson
Why do I always feel everyone’s mad at me? Am I the problem? How can I feel safe?
If you’ve felt this way, you’re not alone. ‘Fawning’ is a common yet misunderstood trauma response for chronic people-pleasers who fall under six categories: peacekeepers, performers, perfectionists, caretakers, and lone wolves, and chameleons.
This empowering guide equips each archetype with the specific tools they need to handle high-pressure scenarios and break patterns of self-sabotage, inspiring you to stop focusing on what others think so you can start living for you.
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