Sometimes, we all need a little help to love ourselves a bit more.
These books will not disappoint.
Some of these self-love books are favorites of mine while others come highly recommended and are on my to-read list.
Note: The links shared are affiliate links.
10 of the Best Self-Love Books for Women
1. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown
Forbes magazine named Gifts one of the “Five Books That Will Actually Change Your Outlook On Life.”
Through this self-help classic, we find the courage to overcome paralyzing fear and self-consciousness, strengthening our connection to the world and helping us to believe we are worthy of self-discovery, personal growth, and boundless love.
A motivational and inspiring guide to wholehearted living, rather than just the average self-help book, with this groundbreaking work Brené Brown, Ph.D., bolsters the self-esteem and personal development process through her characteristic heartfelt, honest storytelling.
With original research and plenty of encouragement, she explores the psychology of releasing our definitions of an “imperfect” life and embracing living authentically.
Brown’s “ten guideposts” are benchmarks for authenticity that can help anyone establish a practice for a life of honest beauty—a perfectly imperfect life.
Now more than ever, we all need to cultivate feelings of self-worth, as well as acceptance and love for ourselves. In a world where insults, criticisms, and fears are spread too generously alongside messages of unrealistic beauty, attainment, and expectation, we look for ways to “dig deep” and find truth and gratitude in our lives.
A new way forward means we can’t hold on too tightly to our own self-defeating thoughts or the displaced pain in our world. Instead, we can embrace the imperfection.
Click here to buy this book on Amazon.
2. Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist
In these pages, New York Times bestselling author Shauna Niequist invites you to consider the landscape of your own life, and what it might look like to leave behind the pressure to be perfect and begin the life-changing practice of simply being present, in the middle of the mess and the ordinariness of life.
As she puts it: “A few years ago, I found myself exhausted and isolated, my soul and body sick. I was tired of being tired, burned out on busy. And, it seemed almost everyone I talked with was in the same boat: a longing for connection, meaning, depth, but settling for busy.
“I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, neighbor, writer, and I know all too well that settling feeling. But over the course of the last few years, I’ve learned a way to live, marked by grace, love, rest, and play. And it’s changing everything.
“Present Over Perfect is an invitation to this journey that changed my life. I’ll walk this path with you, a path away from frantic pushing and proving, and toward your essential self, the one you were created to be before you began proving and earning for your worth.”
Written in Shauna’s warm and vulnerable style, this collection of essays focuses on the most important transformation in her life, and maybe yours too: leaving behind busyness and frantic living and rediscovering the person you were made to be.
Present Over Perfect is a hand reaching out, pulling you free from the constant pressure to perform faster, push harder, and produce more, all while maintaining an exhausting image of perfection.
Shauna offers an honest account of what led her to begin this journey, and a compelling vision for an entirely new way to live: soaked in grace, rest, silence, simplicity, prayer, and connection with the people that matter most to us.
Click here to buy this book on Amazon.
3. You are a Badass by Jen Sincero
In this refreshingly entertaining how-to guide, bestselling author and world-traveling success coach, Jen Sincero, serves up 27 bite-sized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, sage advice, easy exercises, and the occasional swear word, helping you to:
* Identify and change the self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors that stop you from getting what you want
* Create a life you totally love and create it NOW
* Make some damn money already (the kind you’ve never made before)
By the end of You Are a Badass, you’ll understand
* why you are how you are,
* how to love what you can’t change
* how to change what you don’t love
* how to use the force to kick some serious ass
Click here to buy this book on Amazon.
4. Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes
The instant New York Times bestseller from the creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away With Murder shares how saying YES changed her life.
She’s the creator and producer of some of the most groundbreaking and audacious shows on television today.
Her iconic characters live boldly and speak their minds.
So who would suspect that Shonda Rhimes is an introvert?
That she hired a publicist so she could avoid public appearances? That she suffered panic attacks before media interviews?
With three children at home and three hit television shows, it was easy for Shonda to say she was simply too busy.
But in truth, she was also afraid.
And then, over Thanksgiving dinner, her sister muttered something that was both a wake-up and a call to arms: You never say yes to anything.
Shonda knew she had to embrace the challenge: for one year, she would say YES to everything that scared her.
This poignant, intimate, and hilarious memoir explores Shonda’s life before her Year of Yes—from her nerdy, book-loving childhood to her devotion to creating television characters who reflected the world she saw around her.
The book chronicles her life after her Year of Yes had begun—when Shonda forced herself out of the house and onto the stage; when she learned to explore, empower, applaud, and love her truest self. Yes.
Click here to buy this book on Amazon.
5. Untamed by Glennon Doyle
This is how you find yourself.
There is a voice of longing inside each woman.
We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends.
We hope all this striving will make us feel alive.
Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed.
We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this?
We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent—even from ourselves.
For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent.
Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love.
Three words flooded her mind: There She Is.
At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within.
This was her own voice—the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances.
This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be.
Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world’s expectations of her.
She quit being good so she could be free.
She quit pleasing and started living.
Soulful and uproarious, forceful, and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call.
It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live.
It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member’s ability to bring her full self to the table.
And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is.
Untamed shows us how to be brave. As Glennon insists: The braver we are, the luckier we get.
Click here to buy this book on Amazon.
6. Not Nice by Aziz Gazipura
Are You Too Nice?
If you find it hard to be assertive, directly ask for what you want, or say “no” to others, then you just might be suffering from too much niceness.
In this controversial book, world-renowned confidence expert, Dr. Aziz Gazipura, takes an incisive look at the concept of nice.
Through his typical style, Dr. Aziz uses engaging stories, humor, and disarming vulnerability to cut through the nice conditioning and liberate the boldest, expressive, authentic version of you.
You’ll discover how to:
* Easily say “no” when you want to and need to.
* Confidently and effectively ask for what you want.
* Speak up more freely in all your relationships.
* Eliminate feelings of guilt, anxiety, and worry about what others will think.
Click here to buy this book on Amazon.
7. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
In The Four Agreements, bestselling author 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.
* A New York Times bestseller for over a decade
* Translated into 46 languages worldwide
“This book by don Miguel Ruiz, simple yet so powerful, has made a tremendous difference in how I think and act in every encounter.” — Oprah Winfrey
“Don Miguel Ruiz’s book is a roadmap to enlightenment and freedom.” — Deepak Chopra, Author, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
“An inspiring book with many great lessons.” — Wayne Dyer, Author, Real Magic
“In the tradition of Castaneda, Ruiz distills essential Toltec wisdom, expressing with clarity and impeccability what it means for men and women to live as peaceful warriors in the modern world.” — Dan Millman, Author, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
Click here to buy this book on Amazon.
8. UnF*ck Yourself by Gary John Bishop
Joining the ranks of The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, You Are a Badass, and F*ck Feelings is this refreshing, BS-free self-empowerment guide that offers an honest, no-nonsense, tough-love approach to help you move past self-imposed limitations.
Are you tired of feeling f*cked up?
If you are, Gary John Bishop has the answer. In this straightforward handbook, he gives you the tools and advice you need to demolish the slag weighing you down and become the truly unf*cked version of yourself.
“Wake up to the miracle you are,” he directs.
“Here’s what you’ve forgotten: You’re a f*cking miracle of being.”
It isn’t other people that are standing in your way; it isn’t even your circumstances that are blocking your ability to thrive.
It’s yourself and the negative self-talk you keep telling yourself.
In Unf*ck Yourself, Bishop leads you through a series of seven assertions:
* I am willing
* I am wired to win
* I got this
* I embrace the uncertainty
* I am not my thoughts; I am what I do
* I am relentless
* I expect nothing and accept everything
Lead the life you were meant to have – Unf*ck Yourself.
Click here to buy this book on Amazon.
9. Buy Yourself the F*cking Lillies by Tara Schuster
By the time she was in her late twenties, Tara Schuster was a rising TV executive who had worked for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and helped launch Key & Peele to viral superstardom.
By all appearances, she had mastered being a grown-up. But beneath that veneer of success, she was a chronically anxious, self-medicating mess.
No one knew that her road to adulthood had been paved with depression, anxiety, and shame, owing in large part to her minimally parented upbringing.
She realized she’d hit rock bottom when she drunk-dialed her therapist pleading for help.
Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies is the story of Tara’s path to re-parenting herself and becoming a “ninja of self-love.”
Through simple, daily rituals, Tara transformed her mind, body, and relationships, and shows how to
* fake gratitude until you actually feel gratitude
* excavate your emotional wounds and heal them with kindness
* identify your self-limiting beliefs, kick them to the curb, and start living a life you choose
* silence your inner frenemy and shield yourself from self-criticism
* carve out time each morning to start your day empowered, inspired, and ready to rule
* create a life you truly, totally f*cking LOVE
This is the book Tara wished someone had given her and it is the book many of us desperately need: a candid, hysterical, addictively readable, practical guide to growing up (no matter where you are in life) and learning to love yourself in a non-throw-up-in-your-mouth-it’s-so-cheesy way.
Click here to buy this book on Amazon.
10. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Eckhart Tolle is emerging as one of today’s most inspiring teachers. In The Power of Now, already a word-of-mouth bestseller in Canada, the author describes his transition from despair to self-realization soon after his 29th birthday.
Tolle took another ten years to understand this transformation, during which time he evolved a philosophy that has parallels in Buddhism, relaxation techniques, and meditation theory but is also eminently practical.
In The Power of Now he shows readers how to recognize themselves as the creators of their own pain, and how to have a pain-free existence by living fully in the present.
Accessing the deepest self, the true self, can be learned, he says, by freeing ourselves from the conflicting, unreasonable demands of the mind and living present, fully, and intensely, in the Now.
