The Feeling Good Handbook

Dr. David Burns

This is a good introduction to cognitive therapy. Dr. Burns offers many practical techniques to help you lift yourself out of a depression, to reduce your anxiety and to strengthen your communication skills. Overall an excellent book for learning clear thinking methods. However, I disagree with the author on some of his underlying premises and I don't recommend his book Ten Days To Self Esteem.

Managing Your Mind: The Mental Fitness Guide

Butler and Hope

Aside from the philosophical junkyard of chapters 1-3, this book is chock full of simple good tips (e.g., good study skills, identifying and pursuing healthy goals to bring you pleasure, keeping friendships fair) with a lovely undercurrent of egoism despite occasional nosedives. The mix of good and bad ideas makes me wonder if one author was philosophically healthier than the other. This book offers valuable thinking skills and is a good one to keep in your reference library.

Getting Through to People - The techniques of persuasion...how to break through the mental and emotional barriers between people

Jesse S. Nirenberg, Ph.D.

A timeless gem that is well worth reading. He has an extrodinary understanding of how to communicate to get ideas across, how to listen with the purpose of understanding another person, how to deal with heated emotions in conversations, how to detect and deal with another person's irrationality, how to hear mixed contexts in conversation and much more.

Sting Shift: The Street-Smart Cop's Handbook of Cons and Swindles

Smith and Walstad

Arm yourself against scams, psychics and swindlers of all kinds. Written as an aid for law enforcement.

The Courage to Heal

A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Ellen Bass and Laura Davis

If you've had the nightmarish experience of having been sexually abused and you don't know how to deal with the multiple levels of disturbed feelings you have, this book offers many excellent suggestions. These include recognizing that you can heal, that you don't need to remain a victim for life, recognizing the damage that the abuse has caused in your life, understanding what you did to cope with the abuse, learning how to break the silence, attributing blame accurately, dealing with your feelings of anger, appropriately rebuilding trust (in yourself and with others), and gaining closure and moving on.

Although there are sections with which I strongly disagree (e.g., on having a sense of power greater than yourself), this book offers excellent suggestions, examples and exercises. It helps you learn to change "internalized messages" such as "I hate myself" and "What I want doesn't count." The authors encourage learning to live for yourself: "If you are still trying to please others, if you are still hoping for someone else's approval, then you will never be smart enough, thin enough, successful enough... Try putting aside your father's expectations. Stop comparing yourself to your friend. Think about what you like to do, whom you like to spend time with, what you find worthwhile." If you've been seriously traumatized, I recommend using this book in conjunction with a counselor.

Mind over Mood

Changing How You Feel by Changing the Way You Think

Dennis Greenberger, PhD and Christine Padesky, PhD

How do you deal with other people's anger? With their praise? With their criticism? How do you deal with mistakes? Do you cope well with stress? Are you comfortable trying new things? How do you express your feelings? Are you able to say "no"? How do you make friends? What are your beliefs around sex? We each have a unique way of managing our lives. But how many of us explicitly know the rules guiding our lives? Those rules were formed in childhood and may or may not serve as good guides as we mature. How do you expose them and check their objectivity - and revise them where warranted? When you've held wrong ideas for a lifetime, you experience them as factual, unchallengable and true. How do you then uproot them? This short self-help book offers ways to challenge wrong ideas.

McKay's and Fanning's book helps you get to the foundation of your own "self-portrait," i.e., how you see yourself. Do you see yourself as a loner, as shy, as an angry person, as a cynic, as a happy person, as an assertive person? The authors help you uncover the rules you live by (e.g., Never say anything that will hurt someone. Never let anyone really get to know you. If you do not do things perfectly, you will be rejected.) Some of these rules may be healthy (e.g., Be responsible. Speak your mind openly and tactfully.) Some of these rules may literally drive you crazy (e.g., Don't make decisions. Don't try anything new.)

The authors help you understand and uncover your own core beliefs. "Your most deeply held, core beliefs are the bedrock of your personality. They describe you as worthy or worthless, competent or incompetent, powerful or helpless, loved or scorned, self-reliant or dependent, belonging or outcast, trusting or suspicious, flexible or judgmental, secure or threatened, fairly treated or victimized," say McKay and Fanning. Core beliefs affect your choice of career, your relationship with your children, your relationship with your partner, your sex life, you pursuit of enjoyable hobbies, your health, your life. As best put by the authors themselves: "Restricting negative beliefs can imprison you behind bars of conviction. This book shows how to become a personal scientist, test your core beliefs objectively, subtly shift your more negative convictions, and escape from the prison of belief to a freer, more satisfying life." Although the book has some minor flaws, its benefits far outweigh them.

Prisoners of Belief: Exposing & Changing Beliefs That Control Your Life

Patrick Fanning

How do you deal with other people's anger? With their praise? With their criticism? How do you deal with mistakes? Do you cope well with stress? Are you comfortable trying new things? How do you express your feelings? Are you able to say "no"? How do you make friends? What are your beliefs around sex? We each have a unique way of managing our lives. But how many of us explicitly know the rules guiding our lives? Those rules were formed in childhood and may or may not serve as good guides as we mature. How do you expose them and check their objectivity - and revise them where warranted? When you've held wrong ideas for a lifetime, you experience them as factual, unchallengable and true. How do you then uproot them? This short self-help book offers ways to challenge wrong ideas.

McKay's and Fanning's book helps you get to the foundation of your own "self-portrait," i.e., how you see yourself. Do you see yourself as a loner, as shy, as an angry person, as a cynic, as a happy person, as an assertive person? The authors help you uncover the rules you live by (e.g., Never say anything that will hurt someone. Never let anyone really get to know you. If you do not do things perfectly, you will be rejected.) Some of these rules may be healthy (e.g., Be responsible. Speak your mind openly and tactfully.) Some of these rules may literally drive you crazy (e.g., Don't make decisions. Don't try anything new.)

The authors help you understand and uncover your own core beliefs. "Your most deeply held, core beliefs are the bedrock of your personality. They describe you as worthy or worthless, competent or incompetent, powerful or helpless, loved or scorned, self-reliant or dependent, belonging or outcast, trusting or suspicious, flexible or judgmental, secure or threatened, fairly treated or victimized," say McKay and Fanning. Core beliefs affect your choice of career, your relationship with your children, your relationship with your partner, your sex life, you pursuit of enjoyable hobbies, your health, your life. As best put by the authors themselves: "Restricting negative beliefs can imprison you behind bars of conviction. This book shows how to become a personal scientist, test your core beliefs objectively, subtly shift your more negative convictions, and escape from the prison of belief to a freer, more satisfying life." Although the book has some minor flaws, its benefits far outweigh them.

Choosing to Live

How to defeat suicide through cognitive therapy

Thomas Ellis, PsyD and Cory Newman, PhD

The Beck Diet Solution

Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person

Dr. Judith S. Beck

I want to whet your appetite for this fabulous book. Would you like to lose weight? Absolutely! You’d love that slimmer physique you once had. You’d love to look at yourself naked in the mirror (or step on the scale) and be pleased. You’d love to buy smaller size clothes. Your back would feel less achy if you shed some pounds and firmed up some muscles. But you also love your pasta and your heapin’ helpins’ of meatloaf and mashed potatoes and your “death-by-chocolate” cake. You love your comfort foods.

How do you even begin to shed some pounds? Dr. Judith Beck’s book may be the recipe you’re looking for. In it you will learn thinking skills that will help you maintain weight loss “for the rest of your life.” She gives you methods (in six-week plan) to identify and counter self-sabotaging thoughts (e.g., I’ll just have this one cookie.) She helps you identify all thepersonal benefits to you of losing weight and gives you a method to keep these benefits, not at the edge of your mind, but center stage. These benefits are your mental fuel to stay on track. You will learn how to give yourself credit for every healthy choice you make, however small. You will also learn to tell difference between hunger, desire and cravings, to form a realistic plan (including exercise), to say “no” to food-pushers, to stay in charge when eating in restaurants, to eliminate emotional eating and to supportively get back on track if you slip up. Dr. Judith Beck helps you strengthen your desire to eat smaller portions, eat less fattening foods, find alternative ways to relax and to feel the pride that comes from knowing you are making yourself look and feel better and younger. I highly recommend her book and her workbook.

Beck Diet Solution Weight Loss Workbook: The 6-week Plan to Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person

Dr. Judith S. Beck

Loving Life

The Morality of Self-Interet and the Facts That Support It

Craig Biddle

For those who want "to live life to the fullest" and "achieve the greatest happiness possible," this book outlines "the essential means to that end: a proper code of values - a proper morality."

Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

Dr. Leonard Peikoff

Containing an entire chapter on happiness, this is the first comprehensive statement of Ayn Rand's philosophy. Although the text can be understood by the general reader, you will have an easier time if you have first read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand

Ranked 14th in a Library of Congress survey of books that made a difference in people's lives, this novel contains incredible psychological insights into the motivations and basic premises that produce a variety of character traits.

Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand

Ranked 2nd in a Library of Congress survey of books that made a difference in people's lives, this novel is a mystery story, not about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder of man's spirit.