Anxiety-Proof Your Mind: 6 Must-Reads for a More Peaceful Life
Tackle stress, regain focus, and find calm with these expert-backed books.
When you start in on your to-do list, do you feel calm and confident or anxious and stressed? Unfortunately, the latter is an abundantly common answer. Our culture obsesses over productivity, prizes social-media-worthy outputs, and floods our brains with intractable mountains of information. It is no wonder the modern mind is finding it hard to relax.
Anxiety doesn’t have to control your schedule. These books offer proven methods for managing anxiety, as well as silver linings to that inner struggle for a life of peace and purpose. Find an approach that lets you achieve and breathe in the pages of these six books.
Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose
By Martha Beck
Using a combination of the latest neuroscience as well as her background in sociology and coaching, Beck explains how our brains tend to get stuck in an anxiety spiral. To climb out, we must engage the parts of our nervous system involved in creativity. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Martha Beck, in the Next Big Idea App or View on Amazon
Start Making Sense: How Existential Psychology Can Help Us Build Meaningful Lives in Absurd Times
By Steven Heine
A psychologist investigates the science of why we crave meaning—and how we can pursue it in this age of anxiety. By understanding why and how we seek to make sense, we can live authentic lives in times that don’t seem to make sense at all. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Steven Heine, in the Next Big Idea App or View on Amazon
The Happy High Achiever: 8 Essentials to Overcome Anxiety, Manage Stress, and Energize Yourself for Success―Without Losing Your Edge
By Mary Anderson
A game-changing road map for ambitious people to transform chronic stress and anxiety into sustainable happiness and success. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Mary Anderson, in the Next Big Idea App or View on Amazon
And How Does That Make You Feel?: Everything You (N)ever Wanted to Know About Therapy
By Joshua Fletcher
Psychotherapist Joshua Fletcher provides a candid, funny, and revealing look inside the mind of a therapist as he faces his own struggles while treating patients with anxiety disorders. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Joshua Fletcher, in the Next Big Idea App or View on Amazon
Deeper Mindfulness: The New Way to Rediscover Calm in a Chaotic World
By Mark Williams & Danny Penman
It is possible to deepen the effect of mindfulness practice by focusing on vedana, or “feeling tone,” which targets certain core processes in the meditating mind. This can alleviate anxiety, depression, stress, and general unhappiness, creating a calm inner space from which one can rebuild their life. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by co-authors Mark Williams and Danny Penman, in the Next Big Idea App or View on Amazon
Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods
By Mariana Alessandri
Existentialist philosopher Mariana Alessandri draws on the stories of a diverse group of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers and writers to help us see that our suffering is a sign not that we are broken but that we are tender, perceptive, and intelligent. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Mariana Alessandri, in the Next Big Idea App or View on Amazon
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