My Favorite Personal Development Books

My journey with self help, or personal development, started in kind of a weird way. Till a few weeks ago, the story was quite different. I would tell people, “My husband recommended the first self help book I ever read. It’s called How To Win Friends and Influence People. I always had a hard time connecting with people and making friends. He talked about this book for years before I gave into reading it. Finally, after another emotional separation with what I thought would be a life long friend, he begged me to read the book. I gave in. Downloaded it on Audible that day and started listening. It made so much sense. This book truly changed how I interact with and treat people. It has improved many of my relationships and made me more confident. Then I started hearing about other books that had given people these life changing experiences and dove in. Over the years I have read more than 20 books.”

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Great story, right? Well a few weeks ago my husband confessed something to me. He told me that he didn’t have some strong belief in this book or “self help books” in general. He recommended this book to me because when it was recommended to him, the person sounded really smart. He read it and understood it completely, although he’s always been good with people. He kept bringing me up and ended up begging me to read it because he didn’t understand what I was going through and wasn’t sure how else to help me.

I laughed so hard when he told me this. Because reading that first book and being so inspired that I looked for more books to read, totally changed my life. In fact, it has probably changed my husband’s life just as much because each of these books I have read (and re-read over and over) have shaped the wife, woman, and mother I am today. I couldn’t be more grateful for my husband, in every way, but especially that he started me on this path through self discovery and improvement. Even if he didn’t mean to!

The purpose of this blog post, other than to share the funny story of what led me to these books, is to have a place to send people when they ask me what my favorites are! I get into a lot of conversations about these books and personal development in general. I always get asked which books have I read. It’s hard to list them all without leaving out any of my favorites. Below, you can scroll through all of these books I am constantly praising. I hope you find one that can change your life.

I thought about writing a note about each book on this post, but that would make this a looooong blog post. Instead, I am reviewing them individually as I re-read them. I will link to them below each image as I get my full reviews done! The images below are all clickable and will take you straight to Amazon where you can purchase any form of the book. Your local library could have several of them as well. These books aren’t in any particular order, but as I review them I’m going to move those books to the top of the list. At the end I’ve also included a short list of books that are on my wishlist to read next!