A List Of Uplifting Books To Help You Kick Start Your Day

How do you begin your day? What does the morning bring to your doorstep apart from sunshine? Wouldn’t it be empowering to start the day full of energy, adrenaline pumping, with a doable exciting blueprint, a can-do spirit, optimum health, wise words to drive you, and just the right tools to seize the day? This list of uplifting books offers not only inspiring quotes and powerful rituals, it guides you to appreciate and embrace every new day with unbridled joy and juice!

Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach

How can you fill your morning and the day that follows with a rich, rewarding time? With 366 meditations, one for each day of the year, Sarah illuminates our journey of self-discovery, teaches us how to reorder our priorities, carve out time for the personal pursuits that bring contentment, savour the joy of simple pleasures, restore serenity to daily endeavours, nurture our creativity, nourish our imaginations and celebrate our own styles. With quotes, poems, reflections and excerpts, this is a unique scrapbook of hope and inspiration, and a treasured resource of ideas, advice and comfort. A wonderful way to begin the day and commit to a more abundant way of living.

Opening Doors Within: 365 Daily Meditations by Eileen Caddy

For 20 years, meditators have relied on these simple teachings which offer advice on faith, fulfilment, and stillness. Serving as a perennial meditational diary, this book presents inspirational and practical messages for everyone embarking upon the journey to find a true inner self and spiritual truth. Anyone who meditates--whether inexperienced or seasoned--will find these adages helpful and inspirational. The book is an uplifting treatise on daily spiritual satisfaction and internal happiness.

Serving as a perennial meditational diary, this book presents inspirational and practical messages for everyone embarking upon the journey to find a true inner self and spiritual truth.

The Miracle of Morning Pages by Julia Cameron

In this invaluable companion to Cameron’s seminal work on the creative process, The Artist’s Way, she provides answers to the most frequently asked questions about her most powerful tool for unblocking creative stores: Morning Pages. According to Cameron, keeping a Morning Pages Journal is essential to cultivating creativity and personal growth. These pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing will provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritise, and synchronise the day at hand.

The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith by Gabrielle Bernstein

Do you fear mornings? Dread facing the day? In this book, Gabrielle Bernstein teaches readers how to transform their fear into faith in order to live a divinely guided life. Each story and lesson in the book guides readers to release the blocks to what they most long for: happiness, security and clear direction. Making the shift from fear to faith will give readers a sense of power in a world that all too often makes them feel utterly powerless. The lessons help readers relinquish the need to control so they can relax into a sense of certainty and freedom, stop chasing life and truly live.

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Thrive by Arianna Huffington

If you think rushing through the morning and packing your day with endless chores is the way to go, think again. Co-founder of the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington learned the hard way that success shouldn’t be measured solely by money and power. After pushing her stress levels to the limit and jeopardising her health striving to launch her business, Huffington realised that she needed to take a step back and focus on her well-being. Thrive is full of personal insights and actionable advice on how to flourish through wisdom, foster an attitude of giving, and implement health-conscious daily routines.

Unplug by Suze Yalof Schwartz

Unplug is a novice’s guide to meditation, and one that doesn’t require you to lead an alternative lifestyle or be particularly spiritual. Guiding you through six steps of a simple 10-minute meditation, the book shows how anyone can try these visualisation and breathing techniques. Learn to acknowledge your thoughts without engaging with them, and start to feel more focused and less stressed from the moment you wake until you fall asleep. If you’re curious about the benefits of meditation but unsure where to begin, this is the book for you.

The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma

Legendary leadership and elite performance expert Robin Sharma introduced The 5 AM Club concept over twenty years ago, based on a revolutionary morning routine that has helped his clients maximise their productivity, activate their best health and bulletproof their serenity in this age of overwhelming complexity. Now, in this life-changing book, you will discover the early rising habit has helped the world’s wisest people start their mornings to produce astonishing achievements, a little-known formula you can use instantly to wake up early feeling inspired, a step-by-step method to protect the quietest hours of daybreak so you have time for exercise, self-renewal and personal growth.

My Morning Routine: How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired by Benjamin Spall and Michael Xander

Sixty-four leading business people and creative minds let you in with the morning light, and show you how they get their day off to a successful start. Writer Benjamin Spall and product designer Michael Xander bring together interviews, statistics, and tips on how to create a morning routine that works for you. Marie Kondo begins with a tidying ritual, and Arianna Huffington makes a point of not checking her phone first thing. Take inspiration from some of the most successful people around on how they make their day work well from the moment they wake up.

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Eat, Move, Sleep by Tom Rath

Author Tom Rath shares his insight on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Battling the effects of a long-term serious illness with a nutritious diet, an active lifestyle, and efficient sleep, Rath leads by example when it comes to living well. Learn how to limit long stretches of inactivity, and why you need to pay attention to every bite you eat. Starting your day well begins the night before — Rath can’t stress enough how vital sleep is for productivity and well-being. Familiarise yourself with the science behind health, get practical lifestyle tips. Even if the sun isn’t shining when you wake up, you can start your day in a good mood.

A Little Book of Happiness by Ruskin Bond

To find happiness, look halfway between too little and too much, says the author. Why be happy and how and why not to worry if you think you are not. India’s beloved sage and writer brings together his own pithy observations and those by artists and thinkers he admires in this beautiful little anthology, which has short verses and quotes by some of the most famous writers in the world. There are beautiful quotes by the author himself, all of which are meant to decipher the meaning of happiness and help readers find their own ways to be happy in their life. Start your day on a positive note and develop an optimistic outlook towards things.

India’s beloved sage and writer brings together his own pithy observations and those by artists and thinkers he admires in this beautiful little anthology, which has short verses and quotes by some of the most famous writers in the world.

What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast by Laura Vanderkam

What should you really be doing during your morning ritual? In this book, the author shows us how to ignite our careers by taking control of our work days and reveals how a few simple changes can make you more productive and fulfilled in your career. Vanderkam shows how successful people employ certain daily practices to make sure their work hours are invested, not squandered. Drawing on research and interviews with people as varied as children's book illustrator LeUyen Pham, productivity guru David Allen, fitness personality Chalene Johnson, Vanderkam shows how to take control of your career by taking control of your 9-to-5.

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

Kafka is one of 161 inspired—and inspiring—minds, among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, who describe how they subtly manoeuvre the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do, whether by waking early or staying up late. Here are: Anthony Trollope, Woody Allen, Agatha Christie, George Balanchine, Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, John Updike, Twyla Tharp, Benjamin Franklin, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, Anne Rice, and Igor Stravinsky.

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Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chödrön

This is an indispensable handbook for cultivating fearlessness and awakening a compassionate heart. With insight and humour, Pema Chödrön presents down-to-earth guidance on how we can 'start where we are'—embracing rather than denying the painful aspects of our lives. Chödrön frames her teachings on compassion around fifty-nine traditional Tibetan Buddhist maxims. Working with these slogans and through the practice of meditation, Start Where You Are shows how we can all develop the courage to work with our inner pain and discover joy, well-being, and confidence.

Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott

Readers of all ages have followed and cherished Anne Lamott’s funny and perceptive writing about her own faith through decades of trial and error. And in this book, she has coalesced everything she knows about prayer to these fundamentals. It is these three prayers – asking for assistance from a higher power, appreciating what we have that is good, and feeling awe at the world around us – that can get us through the day and can show us the way forward. Lamott recounts how she came to these insights, explains what they mean to her and how they have helped, and explores how others have embraced these same ideas.

Morning: How to make time: A manifesto by Allan Jenkins

In Morning, Allan Jenkins shows how getting up earlier even once a week or month can free us to be more imaginative, to maybe read, to walk, to write. He talks to other early risers such as Jamie Oliver and Samuel West, to poets and painters. We hear from a neuroscientist about sleep, a philosopher about dawn, a fisherman about light. Allan wakes early, he listens, he looks. He introduces us to a secret world. This is a celebration of dawn and morning: the best time of day.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process.

This thrilling critique of the forces vying for our attention re-defines what we think of as productivity, shows us a new way to connect with our environment and reveals all that we’ve been too distracted to see about ourselves and our world. When the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24/7 availability, platforms for personal branding, and products to be monetised, nothing can be quite so radical as… doing nothing. Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process.

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Rising Strong by Brené Brown

The physics of vulnerability is simple: If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall. The author of Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection tells us what it takes to get back up, and how owning our stories of disappointment, failure, and heartbreak gives us the power to write a daring new ending. Struggle, Brené Brown writes, can be our greatest call to courage, and rising strong our clearest path to deeper meaning, wisdom, and hope.

The Sleep Solution by W. Chris Winter, M.D.

Neurologist and qualified sleep specialist W. Chris Winter takes us through the importance of regular sleep patterns for our general well-being. By explaining insomnia and circadian rhythms, and suggesting the best napping techniques, Winter consolidates his expert knowledge by linking sleep quality to performance outcomes. If you can’t switch off, struggle to sleep, or don’t think that sleep is that important, then this book helps you see how sleep makes you stronger; yes it leads to better mornings.

Make your Bed by William H. McRaven

Ten top lessons from former U.S. Navy SEAL Admiral William H. McRaven on how to make small but very effective changes to your life. It’s the simple things that make a big difference, that’s why making your bed every morning when you first get up should be a key part of your daily routine. Starting off by completing a task like bed-making puts you in a productive mindset, which will stay with you for the rest of the day. This top read from someone who’s overcome many challenges offers a unique perspective on how to bring discipline, create value, and make the most of life.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

This book explores the psychology behind habitual behaviour and shows us how to drop bad habits and stick to good ones. From smoking to biting your nails to eating fruit for breakfast, habits are ingrained in our daily lives. In fact, 40% of our actions are determined by habit rather than conscious choice which influences our spending patterns, health, and mental well-being. By reading this bestseller you’ll learn that through training your willpower you can take control of habitual behaviour and live life with greater intention.

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The views expressed are the author's own.