24 Books to Read Now if You Want to Drastically Improve Your Life in 2026

The Let Them Theory will forever change the way you think about relationships, control, and personal power. Whether you want to advance your career, motivate others to change, take creative risks, find deeper connections, build better habits, start a new chapter, or simply create more happiness in your life and relationships, this book gives you the mindset and tools to unlock your full potential.

For over a decade, Brené Brown has found a special place in our hearts as a gifted mapmaker and a fellow traveler. And what’s now become a movement all started with The Gifts of Imperfection. What transforms this book from words on a page to effective daily practices are the ten guideposts to wholehearted living. The guideposts not only help us understand the practices that will allow us to change our lives and families, they also walk us through the unattainable and sabotaging expectations that get in the way.

In How to Manifest, Lacy Phillips, a renowned manifestation expert and founder of the To Be Magnetic program, shares her revolutionary approach to unlocking the power of your subconscious mind. Lacy’s journey from struggle to success reveals the real secret to manifestation: aligning your subconscious beliefs with your true desires. Through her unique, science-backed method, Lacy teaches you how to harness neuroplasticity to rewire your mind, enabling you to attract the life you truly deserve.

In her newest book, bestselling author Roxie Nafousi provides eight steps to developing a deep, long lasting confidence. The truth is, you don’t have to strive to earn your confidence with a resume full of external achievements. Nafousi teaches that it’s about the simple, day-to-day inner work – and while it will be a journey, it’s one that will enable you to own your worth and live unapologetically yourself.

In The Four Agreements, a perennial bestseller published in dozens of languages worldwide, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.

What would it mean to become supernatural? What if you could tune in to frequencies beyond our material world and transform your very biology to enable profound healing? This is what Dr. Joe Dispenza offers in this revolutionary book: knowledge and a set of tools that allow ordinary people to reach extraordinary states of being. Dr. Joe draws on research in neuroscience, epigenetics, and quantum physics to show how this kind of transformation takes place and what it can mean for our lives.

101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, the global bestseller and social media phenomenon, is a collection of author Brianna Wiest’s most beloved pieces of writing. Her meditations include why you should pursue purpose over passion, embrace negative thinking, see the wisdom in daily routine, and become aware of the cognitive biases that are creating the way you see your life.

After having a nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America, Dan Harris knew he had to make some changes. Eventually, Harris realized that the source of his problems was the very thing he always thought was his greatest asset: the incessant, insatiable voice in his head. 10% Happier is now considered a classic text on the power of meditation, an introduction to the practice that can convert even the most hardened skeptic.

Legendary leadership and elite performance expert Robin Sharma introduced The 5am Club concept over twenty years ago, based on a revolutionary morning routine that has helped his clients maximize their productivity, activate their best health and bulletproof their serenity. Now, in this life-changing book, handcrafted by the author over a rigorous four-year period, you will discover the early-rising habit that has helped so many accomplish epic results while upgrading their happiness, helpfulness and feelings of aliveness.

Are you ready to unlock the greatest resource of your life? Gabby Bernstein has written the ultimate self-help guide, offering a revolutionary practice to radically shift your core beliefs and connect you to an infallible inner guidance system: the energy of Self within you. As you learn to approach your own behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs with curiosity, love, and understanding, you’ll start to see yourself through the lens of self-compassion, clearing space for miraculous shifts.

Self-care has become the all-encompassing answer for essentially all of women’s problems, but fixing your troubles isn’t as simple as buying a new journal or signing up for a meditation class. In this book, board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Pooja Lakshmin breaks down what a real practice of caring for yourself could look like. Using case studies from her practice and clinical research, Lakshmin provides a step-by-step program for real change, including setting boundaries, moving past guilt, treating yourself with compassion,  and asserting your power.

Forget just living longer. Live better. Using the latest science to provide nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools addressing emotional and mental health, Dr. Attia’s aim is to help you learn how to think about long-term health in order to create the best plan for you as an individual. The goal? To outlive your genes to make each decade better than the one before.

Drawing from her past personal experience being out of a job and in a huge financial hole, Aliche shares her ten-step formula for attaining both financial security and peace of mind. Wondering how to once and for all pay off debt, save money, and build wealth? With checklists, worksheets, and pearls of wisdom from experts who Aliche herself relies on, Get Good with Money has guided more than one million women worldwide in cultivating good financial habits and making your money work for you.

Whether you need a perspective check or a friendly nudge in the right direction, Wiest is your girl. And The Pivot Year is no exception. If you’re in the in-between, navigating your way between where you are and where you want to be, this book of of 365 daily meditations is a regular reminder that the person you’re becoming is attainable because she’s already within you. This book is your guide in convincing your mind to act in line with what your heart already knows it wants to do.

Inspired by her popular podcast How To Fail (where she interviews people about what they have learned from their failures), Day flips the script on failure in this part memoir, part manifesto, celebrating when things go awry. With chapters on everything from dating to work to families and friendship, Day draws on her own hardships as well as those faced by her interviewees to drive home the simple premise that understanding why we fail ultimately makes us stronger.

If you’re looking to change what your average day looks like and build better habits while breaking bad ones, you’ve come to the right place. Clear provides a practical guide for transforming your habits—no matter what your goal is—intertwined with inspiring, real-life stories of people who used his strategies to master their craft and become their highest selves.

For all you people-pleasers out there, this is a must-read. Untamed is about discovering your voice and living authentically. Doyle takes us through her personal journey of letting go of others’ expectations and, instead, trusting and strengthening her inner voice. The main takeaway? “Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.”

The Mountain Is You is a book about self-sabotage: why we do it, when we do it, and how to stop doing it—for good. Wiest argues that any bad habit, problem, or not achieving the life that we want is often because we are holding ourselves back. In this book, you’ll find out why you’re resisting positive changes, or why you say you want one thing but doing another. With self-compassion, science, and inspiration, Wiest will inspire you to get out of your own way and live your best life. Listen to Brianna Wiest on The Everygirl Podcast. 

The Self-Love Experiment is the cheerleader you need to shake those perfectionist and fearful thoughts and remember how much good your failures can do. Kaiser takes you on her journey to self-love and acceptance, and through her true testimony, you just might start to realize more about your own. She’s candid and real and doesn’t lead you on that self-love is a quick fix.

As the title conveys, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat it: “Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it.” Rather than living in a world of sunshine and rainbows, he encourages embracing our fears, faults, and uncertainties to lead happier, more grounded lives. Equal parts a reality-check and a humorous self-help guide, this book is the kick in the a** we all need.

You might know Oyeneyin as the sought-after Peloton instructor or from her popular S.P.E.A.K. Instagram Live series. Well, now she’s extending her trademark blend of positivity, empathy, and motivational “Tunde-isms” to fans on and off the bike through this book. She walks you through each step of the SPEAK acronym—Surrender, Power, Empathy, Authenticity, and Knowledge—while imparting what she has learned about loss, love, body image, and creating an intentional, joyful life.

Ladies, it’s about time we write our own rules and blaze our own trails. The follow-up to the best-selling book Girl Code, Girl on Fire builds on the idea that you don’t need permission or validation to start fearlessly living your dream life and career, and it teaches you just how to do that.

According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai—a reason for living or purpose. And based on the lives of the residents of Ōgimi, the Japanese village with the world’s longest-living people,  having a strong sense of ikigai may be the secret to happiness, physical health, and longevity. This book provides practical tools to help you discover your own ikigai.

In this refreshingly entertaining guide to reshaping your mindset and your life, Sincero serves up loving yet firm inspo and easy-to-implement exercises to help you identify and change the self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors that stop you from getting what you want. By the end of the book, you’ll understand how to stop self-sabotaging and start living the kind of life that once seemed impossible.