I love quotes and I love mantras: bite-sized phrases and sentences with big impact. Here are a few that have been on my mind and heart lately:
- Less is more.
- 20% of our actions give us 80% of our results.
- Present is better than perfect.
- The small stuff is actually the big stuff.
- Minimize to maximize.
It’s time to minimize the mental chaos, to declutter the home and to let go of what’s not important so that there is space, mental energy and bandwidth for what is. And the best way to do that?
Through books and reading, of course! This collection of books will help you decrease stress, anxiety and clutter to make space for the things that matter most.
You’ll find links to my Amazon and Bookshop affiliate stores below. Thanks for your bookish support!
Present Over Perfect by Shauna Neiquist
I read this book with a sense of disbelief. How was it that Shauna pegged my current way of living so perfectly? It’s like she saw right through the pages and into my mind and heart, inviting me to truly live her words into being and choose present over perfect. I’ve never read ANYTHING that so perfectly captured my day to day struggles with busyness, perfectionism and yes, anxiety. And because I felt seen and understood, I devoured the book in a way that I couldn’t otherwise. I explored many hard lessons that I’m still grappling with today and gained many incredible insights that instantly changed how I think about my purpose. Filled with my sticky notes, this is a book that will sit front and center in my office so I am reminded of the magic within it.
The Joy of Missing Out by Tanya Dalton
This was a delightfully inspirational, yet highly practical, book that has the potential to change your life. Really. From taking the time to decide what you really want your life to look like to creating the systems and routines in place to make time for those passions, Tanya walks us through the journey step-by-step complete with complementary videos, tools and even some beautifully lettered quotes throughout. I have more sticky flags and ear-marked pages (I ran out of flags!) than in any other book I’ve read. I’m ready to do the work, cultivate a life I love and finally understand the joy of missing out. You won’t be disappointed.
I Didn’t Do the Thing Today by Madeline Dore
Madeleine Dore has long felt a pressure to be productive. In the pursuit of getting things done, she tried every way to optimize her day, only to keep falling short and feeling behind. She turned to interviewing hundreds of creative thinkers and experts to find the secret to productivity. What she discovered instead was far more enriching: There is more to value in each day than what we did or didn’t do.
For anyone who has struggled with worrying about wasted time or felt caught in the busyness trap or stifled by indecision, I Didn’t Do the Thing Today shares how to take productivity off its pedestal and find more connection, creativity, and curiosity in its place.
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.
To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year.
Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman
Six Walks by Ben Shattuck
On an autumn morning in 1849, Henry David Thoreau stepped out his front door to walk the beaches of Cape Cod. Over a century and a half later, Ben Shattuck does the same. With little more than a loaf of bread, brick of cheese, and a notebook, Shattuck sets out to retrace Thoreau’s path through the Cape’s outer beaches, from the elbow to Provincetown’s fingertip.
Along the way, Shattuck encounters unexpected characters, landscapes, and stories, seeing for himself the restorative effects that walking can have on a dampened spirit. Over years of following Thoreau, Shattuck finds himself uncovering new insights about family, love, friendship, and fatherhood, and understanding more deeply the lessons walking can offer through life’s changing seasons.
The Conscious Closet by Elizabeth L. Cline
This book is not just a style guide. It is a call to action to transform one of the most polluting industries on earth–fashion–into a force for good. Readers will learn where our clothes are made and how they’re made, before connecting to a global and impassioned community of stylish fashion revolutionaries. In The Conscious Closet, Elizabeth shows us how we can start to truly love and understand our clothes again–without sacrificing the environment, our morals, or our style in the process.
What We Carry by Maya Shanbhag Lang
This book was a beautifully written, highly addictive avalanche of emotions from cover to cover. I came into this book expecting to gain insight into Maya’s life and relationship with her mother, hopeful that I could learn from her stories to better write my own. Instead, I gained an insight into my own life, my own expectations, my own relationships, my own sense of motherhood and mothering. I laughed, I cried and I cried some more as Maya seemed to speak directly to me, leaving me with lessons on the page that I could not escape. I do not have the words to adequately state how much this book has truly impacted my heart, so I’ll just leave it at this: This book has forever changed how I view myself, my mother, motherhood and the tangled bonds woven between each.
