A great way to relax and uplift your mood is to dive into a good book. Self-help books can aid in your self-care journey by providing insight and framework into living your best life. As Black Women, we receive so many messages about how we should exist in the world but rarely do those sources make us proud to be ourselves. The books mentioned below remind us of our “Glow Power”, our inner strength and abilities, help us to let go of the need to be perfect and simply be who we are without feeling obligated to live a life we don’t want to. In Big Magic, we are encouraged to be guided by our creative curiosity and not be held back by our fears. For those who are sensitive take comfort in knowing you are not alone and you can thrive in this overly stimulated world. Find a book that speaks to your soul and do the work to become your best self.
Own Your Glow: A soulful guide to luminous living and crowning the Queen within by Latham Thomas
In this inspirational book, Thomas provides tools to live your best life with the help of self-care practices and mindset shifts. From moon mapping, meditation guides, journal prompts, recipes and much more readers gain actionable tips to make life changes. This book which is sprinkled with #BlackGirlMagic encourages women to acknowledge their inner strength and uniqueness to Own Your Glow. Thomas coins the term “Glow power” which is the innate creative force within all women – cosmic-creation vibration, that potent instinctual energy that awakens within us, plus fierce femininity. Thomas uses terms Glow Power to remind women of the magic that rests within us and how to make the most of it.
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let go of who you are supposed to be and embrace who you are by Brene’ Brown
In this book, Shame researcher Brene’ Brown shares insight on the things that hold us back from living an authentic life and how we can overcome them with grace. She writes “to overcome perfectionism, we need to be able to acknowledge our vulnerabilities to the universal experiences of shame, judgment, and blame; develop shame resilience; and practice self-compassion.” Letting go of perfectionism means to recognize yourself as a flawed human and yet still beautifully unique. We must realize that everyone deals with shame, and embarrassment at times and the fear of being shamed should not hold us back from living a full life. We must learn to be gentle with ourselves and others as we are all flawed beings.
The Life-Changing Magic of not giving a F*ck: How to stop spending time you don’t have with people you don’t like, doing things you don’t want to do (A No F*cks Given Guide) by Sarah Knight
Author Sarah Knight gets real about what and who is worthy of our time. While we don’t have to be an asshole about it, there is an acceptable to say no and decline invitations to things we don’t want to do. We are not obligated to do anything that takes away from our joy or “F*ck budget” as knight calls it. We have only so much time, so why spend it doing things you don’t want to do. This book helps you to let go of the obligation to say yes to every invite and instead be more intentional about who and what you give your time and attention to.
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth GilbertThis book is for all the creative souls who would love nothing more than to spend their days creating. Creative living relies on being brave verses being fearful, it is our courage that makes our art that much more amazing. In Big Magic, Gilbert explores the idea of inspiration and how it comes and goes. To live creatively we must make time to do our art. Gilbert also goes on to describe some of the things that hold creatives back such as perfection. We learn it is better to complete our tasks than not at all. Whenever we are at a loss for inspiration, we should look towards our curiosity and let that lead us to our next project. To live creatively you must have fierce trust in your abilities, know that you are worthy and were born to create.
The Highly Sensitive Person: How to thrive when the world overwhelms you By Elaine N. Aron
This book is for those sensitive souls, those who experience the world a little differently than most. “High sensitivity is a personality trait that results in hypersensitivity to external stimuli, a greater depth of cognitive processing and high emotional reactivity.” A highly sensitive person is more deeply affected by the environment. For some people, an ambulance siren is just noise but to a highly sensitive person, it can be deafening and highly distracting. HSP’s also tend to be more intuitive and inwardly focused, thus making it hard to make decisions or describe our feelings because we often feel everything at once. This book teaches readers how to survive in the world and not be constantly overwhelmed. If you think you could be a highly sensitive person you can take the quiz here.
This post was everything for me. I’m just starting to get into reading self-help books. I’m only on my first one but, I love it. You never know how much you need these books until you start to read them. There’s so much that we don’t know about ourselves and in order to live our best lives, we need to change that. Thank you for sharing these. I’ll definitely be looking for them on Amazon.
I’m so glad this post resonated with you. Recently self-help books have been a huge part of my self-care routine. Happy reading!
Reblogged this on Life of Shai and commented:
Self-Help books are in and if you don’t know where to start, take a look at this post. You won’t regret it!