The best self-help books to make 2016 a positive year

From treating life like a video game to power posing in the office, we put the latest self-improvement manuals through their paces
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Today’s tech-obsessed, high-stress culture has spawned thousands of self-help books, each promising to be the key to living a happier and more fulfilled life.

Here are six you should be reading this year, according to the Evening Standard features desk.

Better than Before

Breaking the snacking habit

Instead of staring at Twitter and mindlessly posting crisps into my mouth as I usually would be doing at 3pm, I am having a conversation with a friend who works on the other side of the office. It isn’t a long chat — we mainly swap gossip about a mutual acquaintance’s girlfriend — but I return to my desk focused and ready to take on my email inbox. Once that’s done I watch Kendrick Lamar on YouTube as the treat that the excellently named Gretchen Rubin tells me I deserve for replacing aldesko snacking with another habit, going for short office walks.

Rubin’s book is about liberating yourself from destructive habits. We repeat about 40 per cent of our behaviour almost daily and habits have developed to save us from making decisions.

She is realistic, saying that no one- size-fits-all solution exists. She focuses on smaller actions and changing your surroundings rather than yourself. She includes Johnny Cash’s to-do list in the book: “Not smoke. Kiss June. Not kiss anyone else. Cough. Pee. Eat. Not eat too much. Worry. Go see Mama. Practise piano.”

I try her technique of issue-spotting — she says that at a technology company they put snacks in opaque containers with lids saying what they are so you would have to think more carefully about eating sweets and remind yourself that was what you were doing, and they make the containers they put things in smaller.

When food is delivered to the office I no longer squirrel it away but offer it around. When I buy food or bring it in I make sure it is healthy and divided into smaller bags. I still snack but it isn’t as automatic. I feel calmer and can enjoy meals away from the desk because I’m not full and it feels fine to have chips on Friday because I haven’t been gorging all week. By the end of the week it is easy to keep up not snacking — it has become a habit.

Susannah Butter

Best self help books for 2017 - in pictures

1/5

Super Better

Building emotional resilience

Super Better’s conceit is that you can resolve the world by approaching it as you would a game; its author, Jane McGonigal, is a scientist whose TED talks on games have been viewed more than 10 million times. There are four quests: physical, mental, emotional or social resilience; you use strategy, logic and rationale (the gaming principles) to develop one of them. I opted for emotional resilience because when I got dumped two years ago I spent a lot of time crying on the Tube.

I find many games to be tedious, difficult to follow, and that it is difficult to muster the energy to care enough about them. However, the book assured me I was “stronger than [I] know”, that I am “surrounded by potential allies” and that I am “the hero of [my] own story”, so I felt positive about the “quest”.

Super Better posed two options for my first task: look out of the window or search for a picture of my favourite baby animal. I did the former, as I oppose twee fascism. I spied a man cycling with an ironing board and felt sad that it was dark at 3.30pm. I also wondered about the elusive point of the task, but also of life more generally.

Resolving the latter demanded action on a cosmic scale, though luckily the book could help me with the former: looking out of the window was supposed to “provoke curiosity” and help me to “access positive emotions at will”. The connection is opaque, though I will always remember the man with the ironing board as a brave person. Perhaps one day his co-ordination will inspire me.

Other quests included singing my lungs out (I was in the office, so I hummed); hugging myself (less satisfying than a hug delivered by another person); picking a lucky charm; and brushing my teeth or hair (not both). I brushed my hair and felt physically presentable, though not especially emotionally resilient. The book suggested I learn what it feels like to be “time-rich” and “awe-rich”; honestly, I would rather be rich-rich.

Other tasks were more thoughtful: posing yourself questions including “What would I do if anxiety and fear weren’t holding me back?” Unfortunately I am anxious and fearful so that sent me tailspinning. There was another task that delivered the verdict that my “emotional ratio” is similar to that of someone suffering from clinical depression”.

Essentially, Super Better was very good at making you think about your lack of emotional resilience; it did not do much to bolster mine. Also, Super Better is a tautology.

Phoebe Luckhurst

Everything You Need You Have

Break the routine

Loved by Fearne Cotton, Chris Evans, Greg James and presumably some people who haven’t worked for the BBC, Gerad Kite is a highly regarded acupuncturist who is branching out into pop spiritualism with this slender guide to mindful self-improvement. Every one of these books needs a USP to stand out and Kite’s involves an awareness of the natural rhythms of our bodies as well as visualising the daily lurch from perky elation to tired narkiness as a swinging pendulum. He even, at one point, suggests you track these mood swings with a little paper pendulum, which is completely normal and not weird at all.

Parking my cynicism, I dive in and discover that once you wade through some of the wackier bits — some chuntering on about finding your “inner GPS”, humblebraggy anecdotes about his cured clients, pre-chapter quotes from the Spice Girls — there is some useful, actionable stuff. “Break the rules,” urges one chapter. “If you normally turn left at the end of your street — turn right and take the longer route… see if the world falls apart.” On the face of it this sounds like the most puny of Pippa Tips. But for Londoners — who loathe even slightly breaking their routine and largely commute on muscle memory — it’s potentially huge.

So one chilly morning I alter my course, swapping the usual panicked scramble for an earlier stroll through the park. Birds chirp in the darkness, passing runners say hello — it’s a tiny act of rebellion that feels tragically thrilling and also puts me in a better mood. So, turn left. As life advice goes it’s hardly earth-shaking but it is indicative of the nuggets of simple wisdom that make Kite’s book worth the occasional blast of psycho-waffle.

Jimi Famurewa

The Wisest One in the Room

Own the space

I am humming as I write this. It’s on the advice of my self-help sages, Thomas Gilovich and Lee Ross, dubbed the “wisest ones in the room” by none other than wise man Malcolm Gladwell. They say that it will raise my spirits; so far it’s only managing to depress everyone else’s.

Still, this book is packed with interesting ideas. The premise is that you can “harness” insights about human behaviour to improve every sphere of your life. Small changes have big effects — the old butterfly, earthquake scenario. The pair apply this method to everything from tackling the obesity epidemic to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

My aim is more modest. All I want to test is if I can manipulate my own mood through posture and gesture. I remember this idea from my teenage years doing cross-country. When I was exhausted, my coach Maggie would tell me to bounce off the balls of my feet and to straighten my back — running the way you do at the start of the race. The idea is you con your body and mind into believing you’re still full of energy.

A trick to feel more confident, the book says, is to take up more space: so I stretch out my arms and put my feet on the desk. Our office is cramped. Colleagues arch their eyebrows in mock-disgust.

Next I try to replicate an experiment in the book. Psychologists found that we are kinder in our judgments of people if we are (unintentionally) putting our thumbs up rather than our middle finger. So, while chatting to a colleague, I give her an enthusiastic thumbs-up. We are talking about death. She looks at me as though I require sectioning. Then, I start giving her the finger. This does work — I feel hostile — but I fear she may be reporting me to HR. Still, I now know to do a thumbs-up — under the table — when they do call me in.

Rosamund Urwin

The Book of YOU: Daily Micro-Actions for a Happier, Healthier You

Tiny changes

On the advice of Nora Rosendahl, Nelli Lähteenmäki and Aleksi Hoffman, in the past few days I’ve eaten a lot of fresh fruit (tip: “fruit has loads of amazing nutritional benefits”), read something new (tip: “it can improve creativity”), spent five minutes unsubscribing from pesky mailing lists (tip: “searching for the word unsubscribe in your inbox can help you target unwanted subscriptions”), and had several family meals (tip: “sharing scrumptious food with the people you love is one of life’s great pleasures”).

What I have not done, however, is written myself positive or uplifting notes before going to bed and leaving them on the fridge (tip: “if you can’t think of anything to say, leave it for someone else” ), written down what I like about myself (tip: we all have something to be proud of on a daily basis) and purposefully put a smile on my face (tip: “research shows that the mere act of smiling will actually make you feel happier!”) confident reaching out to others”). These are just a few of the 365 micro-actions for, yes, one for each day of the year in a new book based on the app of the same name.

Most of the practical ones contributed by Goldman Sachs MD Caroline Arnold are sensible if totally obvious, ditto Jamie Oliver’s on improving eating habits. Otherwise, sorry, but do we really need to be encouraged to spend even more time thinking about and “celebrating” ourselves?

Katie Law

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