Shelf-help your way to a new you

Hearing the adage of “new year, new you” is as inevitable as possibly breaking a resolution within the first minute of 2025.

Before you berate yourself, remember that such incidents are part of the human condition, not unlike amnesia, anxiety or neglecting your creative self — for which there are cures, particularly in the literary form! So read the following books to keep the mind clear this year (and at least you can say that you've finished one!):

The Burnout Doctor: Your 6-step recovery plan by Dr Claire Ashley 

It may be after 5pm but work-related stress and anxiety knows no time constraints, with recent research showing that one in five of us have taken time off work due to stress and burnout over the last year. 

Neuroscientist Dr Claire Ashley's The Burnout Doctor offers both compassion and practical advice on how to manage burnout and stress while protecting your mental health.

Ashley's guide includes a quiz to identify your burnout level, what workplace and personality factors can be affecting you, and how to start your six-step recovery plan — and maintain it for good.

Buy What You Love Without Going Broke: Transform Your Spending And Get More of What Money Can't Buy by Jen Smith and Jill Sirianni 

A new set of headphones, a Taschen tome, a thrifted Argyle sweater, a street market mango — everyone differs when it comes to deciding what to spend their money on.

Enter hosts of the Frugal Friends podcast Jen Smith and Jill Sirriani's Buy What You Love Without Going Broke, an holistic approach to make financial decisions based on that which you — sans societal pressure — value in life.

With this book you’ll learn how to analyse your current spending and identify what you value, prioritise your values when you can’t afford everything, identify the root causes of your impulse spending and make your habit changes stick long-term. Say cheers, Januworry and howzit, January! 

Beyond Anxiety: Curiousity, Creativity and Finding Your Life's Purpose by Martha Beck

The 21st century has become synonymous with an epidemic of anxiety to which most of us aren't immune. In Beyond Anxiety, Dr Martha Beck explains why feelings of dread, fear and stress are surging both around and within us.

In combining the latest neuroscience with her background in sociology and coaching, Beck has created a book which explains how our brains tend to get stuck in an “anxiety spiral”.

The most elementary escape? Engaging in different parts of our nervous systems, involved in creativity. Beck provides instructions for engaging the “creativity spiral,” a process that halts anxiety and fosters innovative problem solving, a sense of meaning and purpose, and joyful, intimate connection with others — and with the world.

The Dream Cure: How recalling your dreams can heal your life by Theresa Cheung 

In The Dream Cure, Theresa Cheung — dubbed “the British Grande Dame of psychic and spiritual studies” by Women's Health — reveals the meanings of common dream symbols and themes that will help you harness their power to resolve anxieties, overcome obstacles and ignite positive transformation.

Whether you're a Freud fan, Jungian or dream interpretation sceptic, it cannot be denied that, while asleep, our unconscious remains awake and aware. Cheung shares practical exercises designed to improve both your waking and dreaming lives, from reducing nightmares to dreamscaping.

This book provides the tools you need to make the best of slumbering self.

Sleep: A User's Guide by H. Kenneth Fisher, MD

On the topic of slumber ... do you toss and turn at night? Easily fall asleep but struggle to stay asleep? Will counting jumping sheep put your mind into overdrive and not to rest? Are you gatvol of all or any of the above?

Bid jumping Dollies goodbye and enter the maws of Morpheus' sleeping realm, with Sleep: A User's Guide wherein Dr H. Kenneth Fisher will help you understand sleep (or the lack thereof) like never before.

Covering common problems such as sleepwalking, sleep apnoea, getting too little sleep and drowsiness during the day, Fischer's book will provide insight as to why you're saddled with not getting enough shut-eye and how understanding the roots of your sleeplessness can result in you getting better, more reliable sleep patterns. Lekker zzz!

Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross

A New York Times bestseller and Bloomberg Best Book of the Year, the blurb of authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross's Your Brain on Art reads: “a life-altering journey through the science of neuroaesthetics, which offers proof for how our brains and bodies transform when we participate in the arts — and how this knowledge can improve our health, enable us to flourish, and build stronger communities.”

Did you know that engaging in an art project for as little as 45 minutes reduces your cortisol levels? That doctors have been prescribing museum visits to address loneliness, dementia, and many other physical and mental health concerns? How one art experience a month can extend your life by 10 years? And — this one's for the screen aficionados in our midst — that virtual reality can provide therapeutic benefits? Featuring conversations with artists such as David Byrne, Renée Fleming, and evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson, this guide to neuroaesthetics is as authoritative as it is transformative.

The Kitchen Shrink: How the food we eat reveals who we are — and who we love by Dr Andrea Oskis 

Me: 'When did you know he didn't love you anymore?'

My patient: 'It wasn't when we stopped having sex. No, it was when he stopped eating dinner with me.'

That was the light-bulb moment.

That was when I discovered there is no better way to get inside people's lives than through their stories about food.

In The Kitchen Shrink, psychotherapist, food writer and professional cook Dr Andrea Oskis shows us how the food we eat reveals how we love. Sharing her own food story about love and loss, Oskis invites us to take a seat in her therapy room and, per the blurb, “tells us the real reason why comfort food comforts; why dessert isn't a good idea when you're stressed; what makes children feel obliged to eat their greens; and why you should never give a bottle of hot sauce to someone who has been rejected”. Say bon appétit to nourishing relationships — with food and with thee. 

It Begins With You: The 9 Hard Truths About Love That Will Change Your Life by Jillian Turecki

“Relationship coach, teacher and host of relationship podcast Jillian on Love reveals nine core truths about love and self-acceptance and provides powerful self-healing techniques and strategies to help us repair our relationship with ourselves and start building the rewarding relationships we deserve”, says the blurb of Jillian Turecki’s It Begins With You.

In her debut book, the relationship doyenne's message is clear: to hold and sustain meaningful relationships, you have to look within. Whether you like it or not, the common denominator in all your relationships is none other than you. #facts.

The blurb continues: “It Begins with You introduces the 9 core truths we must accept in order to change our lives: Truth 1: It begins with you. Truth 2: The mind is a battlefield. Truth 3: Lust is not the same thing as love. Truth 4: You have to love yourself. Truth 5: You must speak up and tell the truth. Truth 6: You need to be your best self (even after the honeymoon). Truth 7: You cannot convince someone to love you. Truth 8: No-one is coming to save you. Truth 9: You must make peace with your parents.”

Here's to taking the love and not the loss!