Five books to help you grow your confidence
I am an avid reader. I get through 140 plus books most years. In fact it was more like 200 in 2021! Every now and again I’ve recommended a book here on the blog and in episodes 10 and 20 of the podcast I provided a roundup of books I recommend. As I’ve never done that here I thought I’d remedy that today! And, if like me you enjoy listening to your books all five of these are available as audiobooks.
My first book recommendation is “Playing Big” by Tara Mohr. I love the subtitle – A practical guide for brilliant women like you! The back of the book says, “Five years ago, Tara Mohr began to see a pattern in her work as an expert in leadership: women with tremendous talent, ideas and aspiration were not recognising their own brilliance. They felt that they were ‘playing small’ in their lives and careers and wanted to ‘play bigger’ but didn’t know how. And so Tara devised a step-by-step programme for playing big from the inside out: this book is the result.”
I loved this book for many reasons but particularly for the way it tackles listening to our inner wisdom instead of our inner critic, and leaving behind those good student habits that we learn at school and university that hold us back in the workplace. We need to be visible in our workplaces, to speak out, not waiting for the invitation to speak and to blow our own trumpets. Putting our heads down and working hard aren’t enough to get us noticed. There are no more grades or gold stars.
I highly recommend this book, especially if you're feeling invisible in your workplace.
My second recommendation is “Thrive” by Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post fame. My copy if full of sticky tabs marking pages and quotes – always a good sign! The blurb on the back describes it as “a passionate call to arms, looking to redefine what it means to be successful in today’s world.”
Arianna in her introduction says that “to live the lives we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives we settle for, we need a Third Metric, a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving.”
It’s these four pillars that make up the four sections of her book. Just reading that sentence has made me want to dive into the book again. It’s so easy to let well-being be the price we pay for success – overwork, lack of sleep, poor mental health, anxiety – rather than our well-being being a measure of our success. Just imagine how different our workplaces and our businesses would be if we valued our well-being as highly as money and power.
I highly recommend reading Thrive.
My third recommendation is "How to Fail" by Elizabeth Day. There’s also a podcast by the same name.
The subtitle is "Everything I've learned from things going wrong". It's a great reminder that things go wrong for everyone and it's not the end of the world. Failure is a normal part of life and by learning from it we can end up stronger and more confident.
It's described as part memoir, part manifesto. It's a book I chose to listen to and I really enjoyed listening to the author speak so honestly about her life and what it is to be a woman in 21st century Britain. It’s a great read or listen – whichever you choose to do.
My fourth recommendation is, “Mindset” by Carol Dweck. Another book with a great subtitle – Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential. This is a little more academic and therefore a slightly heavier read. Dweck is a Stanford University psychologist with decades of research on achievement and success behind her book. In the book she explains why it’s not just our abilities and talent that bring us success but whether we approach our goals with a fixed or growth mindset.
It’s well worth the effort to read – as the blurb on the back says, “Mindset reveals what all great parents, teachers, CEOs and athletes already know: how a simple idea about the brain can foster learning and nurture the resilience that is the basis of accomplishment in every area.”
My final recommendation today is a classic that has been around for over 25 years, Susan Jeffers’ “Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway” Once again my copy is full of tabs marking pages to revisit. I first read the book about two decades ago and got so much out of it. I re-read it three years ago and despite being a very different woman to the twenty-something struggling with perfectionism and anxiety I still got a lot out of it. If you let fear hold you back from doing the things you want in life then I highly recommend this book!
I have the edition published for the 25th anniversary of the book and in it Jeffers has, with permission, shared stories from people who have read and used the book which are great at illustrating just what is possible when we feel the fear and do it anyway.
I have so many more books to recommend that we’ll definitely be doing this again! Happy reading!
