By Sam Grisdale

With the start of the New Year comes a fresh beginning, and the opportunity to become the best version of yourself with help from our selection of top-rated self-help books.

Reasons To Stay Alive

 Matt Haig

“Depression is…Smaller than you. Always, it is smaller than you, even when it feels vast. It operates within you, you do not operate within it. It may be a dark cloud passing across the sky, but – if that is the metaphor – you are the sky. You were there before it. And the cloud can’t exist without the sky, but the sky can exist without the cloud.”

Read this if…

You’re struggling with a mental illness (in particular depression and anxiety), or someone close to you is fighting the battle, you NEED this book. Not as much as you need a good, balanced diet, sleep and someone to talk to during the rough times with a cup of tea and a biscuit, but you need it nonetheless.
Gif: http://gph.is/2cVsGtY

The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying

 Marie Kondo

“Have you ever tidied madly, only to find that all too soon your home or workspace is cluttered again? If so, let me share with you the secret of success. In this book, I have summed up how to put your space in order in a way that will change your life forever. Impossible? This is a common response and not surprising considering that almost everyone has experienced a ‘rebound effect’ at least once, if not many times, after tidying their home.”

Read this if…

You seem to have accumulated ‘stuff’ everywhere you look in your home; you enjoy the physical feeling of a refresh after a good decluttering session; you want to focus less on materialistic possessions and more on the things that really matter to you.

The Happiness Project 

Gretchen Rubin

“A ‘happiness project’ is an approach to changing your life. First is the preparation stage, when you identify what brings you joy, satisfaction, and engagement, and also what brings you guilt, anger, boredom, and remorse. Second is the making of resolutions, when you identify the concrete actions that will boost your happiness. Then comes the interesting part: keeping your resolutions.”

Read this if…

You’re yet to set your 2017 New Years Resolutions in stone because you either don’t know what to include, find the whole process overwhelming or are prone to not keeping your previous years’ resolutions so frankly, don’t see the point. Gretchen will help you see and realise what the point is and encourage your self-help journey.

Calm

Michael Acton Smith
“The foundation of a calm attitude is mindfulness, a practice that offers us the ability to wake up and become present in our everyday lives. It helps us to develop the wisdom to pull ourselves out of autopilot, and teaches us how to respond, rather than habitually react to, people and external events. It gets us to notice what’s actually going on within our minds and bodies.”

Read this if…

You’re interested in that trendy buzzword, ‘mindfulness’, or are in need of finding your own version of calm in this technology driven, modern world we currently live in.

GIF source: Giphy