Welcome to Client Resources.
Books & Podcasts
Changing our perspective through reading or listening speeds healing, growth, and change. I’ve collected best sources on common therapy topics below. I’ve also read them all and can discuss. A few notes:
Listen twice if the material is dense or rewind; we retain around 80% when reading and 55% when listening.
Take notes, blog, or discuss these ideas in therapy and with friends; talking and writing solidifies information.
Most of these books are free – use the local library with the free Libby app for digital or audiobooks.
Read while attending therapy. Most people only achieve 1/10th the personal change reading alone.
Start Here:
Self-forgiveness, self-care, and mind decluttering. Move past self-imposed limitations and others’ expectations. Best read with the sequel.
Sequel to The Courage to be Disliked. Love is important but praise can damage. Boundaries and happiness despite others’ opinions.
Dealing with parents: managing emotional immaturity, instability, and self-focus. What to do or how to cope when they oppose insight or change.
Shame: overcoming shame with vulnerability, changing how we live, love, parent, and lead. See also The Gifts of Imperfection for more on shame.
Changing Thoughts:
For perfection, failure, and rigid thinking. How beliefs about our abilities shapes success. New approaches to effort, challenges, and failure.
Using the subconscious mind to cause change. An antidote to anxiety, an improvement to self-esteem and the rational power of our thoughts.
The science of changing our mind, and how new thoughts can heal the body too. An ode to the epic transformational capability of our mind and emotions.
How trauma reshapes body and brain, harming pleasure, self-control, and trust. Paths to recovery from PTSD, new insight to your own experiences.
Conceived in the Nazi concentration camps, an insightful exploration of human will-to-meaning, even in the worst adversity or existential suffering.
Classic CBT self-help from a pioneer of psychotherapy. Our unrealistic expectations produce needless anxiety not related to survival.
A guide to power, both healthy and toxic behavior, self-protection and exploitation. Teaches resilience, assertiveness, and strategic thinking.
Pulitzer-prize winner exploring an answer to the vital lie of life—man’s refusal to acknowledge his mortality and answer the call to engage.
A layman’s approach to stoicism’s emotional management. How to remain unbothered by the upsetting things in life or the world around you.
The original primer on social interactions. How self-thinking clouds our ability to connect to other people. Learn essential social skills.
Healing Trauma:
If you feel manipulated, controlled, or lied to; have an intense, violent, or irrational raging partner who is desperate avoid abandonment.
Finding Strength:
A powerful affirmation of what women and men can accomplish together. A collaborative fix for misandry and misogyny alike, and a better feminism.
For Relationships:
Determine your relationship attachment style, build stronger connections, and understand the differences which caused relational push–pulls.
The definitive, original work on boundaries. A guide to standing firm —compassionately—in your convictions and capabilities.
A guide to Imago Couples Therapy, emphasizing heartfelt connection and non-judgment. How to see and hear your partner effectively.
The complexities of sustaining desire and finding exciting, playful, and even poetic sex and connection in modern, long-term relationships.
Equally usefully for men and women seeking a robust sex life, explains female sexual science and debunks sexual arousal and pleasure myths.
Affairs give insight into personal and cultural views of love, lust, and commitment. Betrayal hurts, but can heal and allow greater intimacy.
Expert ways to resolve conflicts, create new common ground, and achieve greater intimacy. Collaborate more effectively to resolve any problem.
Principles of how people attract and turn each other off. Learn to understand what attracts your partner to you and how you turn them off, too.
For Parents:
Learn about parenting errors that can create harmful attitudes towards perfection, failure, and identity in kids. How beliefs about abilities shapes success or cause failure. New thinking on effort, challenges, and failure.
Discipline with positive reinforcement, without yelling kids into submission. Includes a validated, five-week program to manage child behavior successfully, and strategies for managing specific behavior problems.
Louis Bates Ames describes stages of children ages 1 to 14 in a series of books. Provides peace for parents surprised by the constant change of child growth and will affirm various quirks in each stage, providing confidence.
For Professionals
The third most popular TED video of all time. His framework will change how you view your goals, and give you the meaning to carry yours out.
A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas and has the courage to develop that potential.
Life is full of negotiation and compromises. Level up emotional intelligence and intuition. A little skill can go a long way.
How we blind ourselves to our true motivations and sabotage our effectiveness and happiness with self-justification. How to change.
Sequel to Leadership & Self-deception. We misunderstand the root of conflict and continue problems. How to heal relationships and let go of blame.
Life is full of negotiation and compromises. Level up emotional intelligence and intuition. A little skill can go a long way.
Much of our success is social. Addresses approaches to work, relational interactions, and productivity for business professionals and more.
Much of our success is social. Addresses approaches to work, relational interactions, and productivity for business professionals and more.
Fiction
Fiction is great for self-care or self-soothing, and can relax us as much as exercise or nature. Great fiction is a map of behaviors we can follow toward positive or negative outcomes and gives us external perspectives on our relationship challenges and individual existence. I recommend checking with the Hugo Awards to find great stories and series to get lost in. Here are a few which I have seen change people:
Deep Study
Maps of Meaning
by Dr. Jordan Peterson. Analysis of the psychological patterns that shape society.
Incerto (Black Swan, Antifragile, etc.)
by Dr. Nassim Taleb. A discussion of ontology and probability for business leaders.
The Origins & History
of Consciousness
by Dr. Erich Neumann. Evolutionary psychology at its finest.
The Untethered Soul
The Journey Beyond Yourself, by Michael Singer
Civilization & Its Discontents
by Dr. Sigmund Freud. The social psychology of group decision-making.
Character & Neurosis
by Dr. Claudio Naranjo. Psychosis, as defined by personality constructs.
Thus Spake Zarathustra
Beyond Good & Evil
by Dr. Friedrich Nietzsche. When the golden rule is too much, and we are not enough.
No Man Is an Island
by Thomas Merton
Face your flaws, you’ll notice the change
Courage makes the difference between health and psychosis. Courage comes from testing reality and building insight. Reading of any type, then writing and discussing our responses builds resilience and bravery.
Podcasts
Akimbo
Understand work roles and entrepreneurship.
Status roles: Status roles drive us.
You're it: The power (and the myth) of getting picked.
Honest signals: Lessons from the poisonous dart tree frog.
Possibility and Enrollment: Both work to create cultural change.
The Science of Success
Mental Fitness and Creating the Life You Want with Dr. Sasha Heinz: overcome fear and anxiety and transform your life. No one’s actually stuck, but we FEEL stuck because what we want – goals, desires, change – are bumping up against an emotional roadblock or subconscious belief.
Harvard Business Review: HBR IdeaCast
Women at Work: Make Yourself Heard: Communication: 1) speech pattern differences in genders; 2) how to be assertive in meetings; and 3) deal with interrupters.
When ‘Best Practices’ Backfire: So-called best practices actually hold us back. Defy industry norms and reinvigorate your business.
Basic Competence Can Be a Strategy: Why seemingly common-sensical management practices are so hard to implement. Only 6% of firms globally are qualified as highly well-managed. “Why Do We Undervalue Competent Management?”
4 Behaviors of Top-Performing CEOs: CEO performance. 1) deciding with speed and conviction 2) engaging for impact 3) adapting proactively 4) delivering reliably.
Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant on Resilience: How to build resilience in yourself, team, and organization.
Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
Excellent for self-sabotaging, religious narcissism, or bleak worldviews.
The inevitability, utility, and danger of hierarchies: tribalism, factions, and coming to terms with your role in the community.
Warren Farrell – The Absolute Necessity of Fathers: ideologues, identity-politics, systemic patriarchal prejudice, and oppression.
How to Change the World: Properly. Truth is the route to societal improvement — and why that starts with the individual.
The Psychology of Redemption: Redemption, transformation in therapy.
The Necessity of Virtue: Virtue, beyond religious contexts.
Tragedy vs. Evil: Distinguishing evil from tragedy, and dealing with both.
Reality and the Sacred: introduction to myths and religious representations.
Freakonomics
How to Change Your Mind: Barriers to changing our mind and how we can get better at becoming who we want to be when change is required.
How to Launch a Behavior-Change Revolution: Driving forces push us in a particular direction. Restraining forces prevent us from going there. If we want to achieve behavior change, diminish the restraining forces, instead of increasing the driving forces.
The Tony Robbins Podcast
Self-empowerment of forward momentum for professionals.
The #1 Decision You Will Ever Make: How we make unconscious decisions based on habit and conditioning, and believe suffering inevitable. We have the power to leave suffering states and cultivate love, joy, gratitude, playfulness, growth, and appreciation.
In Pursuit Of Your Why: James Altucher On Purpose, Hunger And How To Create A Compelling Future. Make your vision real. The science of building wealth and the tactical investment strategies to create financial abundance.
How To Create Life-changing Moments: The Power of Moments – the Heath brothers on the most memorable and meaningful experiences in our lives. How to intentionally create experiences that enrich and enhance our lives.
Are You A Giver Or A Taker?: Adam Grant on How businesses can get the most out of their employees, and how employees can get the most out of their jobs. They cover givers and takers, innovators and original thinkers.
Jordan Harbinger On Social Influence: How nonverbal communication and first impressions impact actions and reactions. Better business is better relationships. Social capital is trust, understanding, and even loyalty which supports success.
The 3 Steps To A Breakthrough: Creating a breakthrough: strategy, story and state. The way you approach a goal, your beliefs about your life, and your mental game form the foundation for any success or failure.
The Ultimate Success Formula: Joseph Mcclendon III On The Four Steps To Getting What You Want.
Tony Robbins & Deepak Chopra: The principles of lifelong health, the spiritual forces that shape our lives, and the immense power of the mind-body connection.
Tony Robbins & Jay Abraham: World-class Marketing, Strategic Innovation And How To Grow A Business Exponentially. Jay Abraham on simple strategies to dramatically increase your income.
The Psychology Of Success: Peter Diamandis. 80% of the time, the chokehold on your business is your psychology, your thinking. Execution creates greater results than theory. And execution starts with your mental and emotional state.
The #1 Secret To Productivity: Charles Duhigg. Our habit-making behavior forms the core of our lives and businesses. As much as 40-45% of our daily activities are habits, so get your habits right to reach your goals.
