9 Best Self-Help Books for Improving Yourself

Self-help books are a dime a dozen, but not all of them are worth your time. We’ve scoured the shelves to find the most popular, highly rated, and frequently recommended self-improvement books available right now.
Whether you’re looking to improve your social skills, find purpose in your life, or balance your checkbook, you can learn how to do it all with the advice in the books below.
1. How to Win Friends and Influence People

You’re unlikely to find a list of the best self-help books without this one on it somewhere. Dale Carnegie penned it way back in 1936, but it’s as valuable today as it ever was. By reading How to Win Friends and Influence People you can learn useful strategies to become more likable in all aspects of your life.
Don’t worry, it’s not about creating a fake persona. It’s actually about learning how to listen to other people, how to understand their wants and needs, and how to make them feel appreciated. Needless to say, if you internalize these lessons, you’ll find that friends, jobs, and sales are far easier to come by.
2. Think and Grow Rich

Despite its title, Think and Grow Rich is not solely about making a pile of money big enough to make Scrooge McDuck jealous. Although a portion of the book is certainly dedicated to monetary wealth, author Napoleon Hill wants you to grow rich in ideas, too.
This is another self-improvement book from the 1930s, but its also just as relevant now as it was back then. The author spent 20 years studying the most successful people of his time—including Henry Ford and Alexander Graham Bell—in research for this book.
You can use his findings to achieve what you want most in life, whether that’s a bank balance or a state of mind.
3. Man’s Search for Meaning

During the Second World War, Viktor Frankl spent three years as a prisoner in four different Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Having survived the Holocaust, Frankl wrote about what he learned from the experiences in Man’s Search for Meaning.
Needless to say, this book paints a harrowing picture of what life was like in these torturous camps. But as a psychiatrist and neurologist, Frankl uses the opportunity to show how important it is to find meaning and a sense of purpose for your life.
He demonstrates their importance for resilience with examples of how his fellow prisoners coped through the most difficult years of their lives.
4. The Power of Positive Thinking

Norman Vincent Peale wrote this book in 1952, and it’s still one of the best self-help books around. The core message is simple: if you think in a positive way, you’ll start to see positive results. That’s because you’re more likely to try harder, to stretch further, and to dream bigger.
Of course, it isn’t easy to achieve a permanently optimistic attitude, but The Power of Positive Thinking endeavors to show you all the ways...