5 Books You Can Read Now To Change Your Life Forever
There is nothing quite like a life-changing event to make you question the meaning of it all.
For me, the event was a pulmonary embolism at the age of 34, unprovoked (medically speaking) and out of the blue. For the first couple of weeks after the PE, as my lungs recovered from the blood clots, I couldn’t walk for longer than 30 minutes without having to lie down afterwards. And I couldn’t busy about, distracting myself with mindless activities - I literally had to sit with the enormity of what I was going through. Some days this was easier than others and I revelled in dealing with the deep stuff; I did question the meaning of my life, and unable to do much of anything else, I turned to books to help me find the answers.
Right now, we’re all going through a life-changing event - a global pandemic - and it’s forcing us to think about our lives. What is my purpose? What truly makes me happy? As Viktor Frankl says in his book, Man’s Search For Meaning, we must endeavour to “say yes to life in spite of everything”. If you are currently contemplating the BIG questions, like I did, and you’re finding yourself reading more as a result of this strange and unsettling time, then here are 5 books I’d recommend to help you say yes to life:
1. How To Fail by Elizabeth Day. Life-changing events are often associated with failures of some kind. Granted they’re not always self-inflicted, tragic events can just happen to us and Day’s reflection on both her failures such as failing her driving test, and those which were beyond her control - is comforting, sometimes heartbreaking and often humorous. Together with her Podcast of the same name, Day reminds us that it’s what we learn from our failures and how we respond to them that matters. She’s also distilled everything she’s learned about failure into seven key principles which she outlines in her new book Failosophy: A Handbook for When Things Go Wrong.
2. Untamed by Glennon Doyle. Released in March this year, just before most of the world went into Lockdown, Glennon had to cancel all of her planned book promotion events. It didn’t matter - such is her following, that the hype surrounding this book reached feverish levels. And for good reason. Untamed is a tour de force and ironically, for many, it came out at just the right time. It’s for anyone, and I mean primarily women, struggling with the realisation that they frequently martyr themselves for the sake of others but increasingly find happiness elusive. Like Day, Doyle writes with honesty and wisdom about her failures - alcoholism, bulimia and emerging from a broken marriage to find love with another woman. Doyle’s book is a call to action for us to feel it all and do it anyway; to be braver and live more authentically. Read it, weep and then act.
3. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Some of the concepts in spiritual guru, Eckhart Tolle’s book are difficult to get your head around and I’ve listened to several Podcasts to help me understand them, but once you do, they can be life changing in themselves. Staying present is one of the simpler concepts and at times, it’s ridiculously hard to follow. But it’s my biggest takeaway from this book. Understanding that so many of our fears and worries come from projections in our mind of what could happen in the future is futile and often damaging to our health - mental and physical. Not only that but it prevents us from living an authentic life. Telling myself that I’m ok in this moment, has helped me immeasurably and I have taken greater risks in my life as a result.
4. The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. Over 62 million people have read this book and it’s topped the bestseller list in 74 countries worldwide. If you are one of those people then I’d recommend reading it again. And again. And again. The story of shepherd boy Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried beneath the Pyramids, only to discover the greatest treasure - the treasure found within - is an enduring classic and for good reason. This book is packed full of life lessons; from finding courage, to the kindness of strangers, looking for omens - or trusting your gut - to the realisation that your life matters. As the Alchemist says to the boy, No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.
5. Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust is the strapline for this book. Finding hope in a concentration camp would seem impossible to many but somehow, Frankl did. And, after he’d been liberated, Frankl went on to form his own therapeutic doctrine, logotherapy - roughly translating to the will to meaning - which he gives a brief explanation of at the end of his book. Frankl teaches that there are 3 main avenues on which one arrives at the meaning of life, the most important of which he says is “even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by doing so change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.” What better life lesson to end on.