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tress can play a major role in everyday life. It can affect relationships, productivity, and daily moods. Stress can also lead to serious health conditions such as heart disease and diabetes. The best way to combat stress is by using coping skills and healthy lifestyle changes. This blog will give you many of the best books on stress management written by experts in the field. These books cover a variety of topics from identifying your triggers to developing healthy habits.
Best Books on Stress Management: THE LIST
1. Burnout | By Emily Nagoski
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New York Times Best Seller
“This book is a gift! I’ve been practicing their strategies, and it’s a total game-changer.” (Brené Brown, Ph.D., author of the number-one New York Times bestseller Dare to Lead)
This groundbreaking book explains why women experience burnout differently than men – and provides a simple, science-based plan to help women minimize stress, manage emotions, and live a more joyful life.
Burnout. Many women in America have experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s world are two very different things – and women exhaust themselves trying to close the gap between them. How can you “love your body” when every magazine cover has 10 diet tips for becoming “your best self”? How do you “lean in” at work when you’re already operating at 110 percent and aren’t recognized for it? How can you live happily and healthily in a sexist world that is constantly telling you you’re too fat, too needy, too noisy, and too selfish?
Sisters Emily Nagoski, Ph.D., and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Instead of asking us to ignore the very real obstacles and societal pressures that stand between women and well-being, they explain with compassion and optimism what we’re up against – and show us how to fight back.
In this audiobook, you’ll learn:
- What you can do to complete the biological stress cycle – and return your body to a state of relaxation
- How to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration
- How the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies – and how to defend yourself against it
- Why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering and preventing burnout
With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful exercises, all women will find something transformative in this audiobook – and will be empowered to create positive change. Emily and Amelia aren’t here to preach the broad platitudes of expensive self-care or insist that we strive for the impossible goal of “having it all”. Instead, they tell us that we are enough, just as we are – and that wellness, true wellness, is within our reach.
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by Book Riot
“Burnout is the gold standard of self-help books, delivering cutting-edge science with energy, empathy, and wit. The authors know exactly what’s going on inside your frazzled brain and body, and exactly what you can do to fix it. Truly life-changing.” (Sarah Knight, New York Times best-selling author of Calm the F–k Down)
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
2. Full Catastrophe Living | By Jon Kabat-Zinn
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It is everywhere around us. Even worse, it gets inside us – sapping our energy, undermining our health, and making us more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and disease. Now, based on Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s renowned mindfulness-based stress-reduction program, this groundbreaking audiobook shows you how to use natural, medically proven methods to soothe and heal your body, mind, and spirit.
By using the practices described within, you can learn to manage chronic pain resulting from illness and/or stress-related disorders, discover the roles that anger and tension play in heart disease, reduce anxiety and feelings of panic, and improve the overall quality of life and relationships through mindfulness meditation and mindful yoga. More timely than ever before, Full Catastrophe Living is a book for the young and the old, the well, the ill, and anyone trying to live a healthier and saner life in today’s world.
3. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers | By Robert Sapolsky
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Now in a third edition, Robert M. Sapolsky’s acclaimed and successful Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers features new chapters on how stress affects sleep and addiction, as well as new insights into anxiety and personality disorder and the impact of spirituality on managing stress.
As Sapolsky explains, most of us do not lie awake at night worrying about whether we have leprosy or malaria. Instead, the diseases we fear – and the ones that plague us now – are illnesses brought on by the slow accumulation of damage, such as heart disease and cancer. When we worry or experience stress, our body turns on the same physiological responses that an animal does, but we do not resolve conflict in the same way – through fighting or fleeing. Over time, this activation of a stress response makes us literally sick. Combining cutting-edge research with a healthy dose of good humor and practical advice, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers explains how prolonged stress causes or intensifies a range of physical and mental afflictions, including depression, ulcers, colitis, heart disease, and more. It also provides essential guidance to controlling our stress responses. This new edition promises to be the most comprehensive and engaging one yet.
4. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and It’s All Small Stuff | By Richard Carlson
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Featured in Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: The Kristine Carlson Story starring Heather Locklear, premiering on Lifetime
Put challenges in perspective, reduce stress and anxiety through small daily changes, and find the path to achieving your goals with this groundbreaking inspirational guide—a self-help classic.
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and It’s All Small Stuff is a book that tells you how to keep from letting the little things in life drive you crazy. In thoughtful and insightful language, author Richard Carlson reveals ways to calm down in the midst of your incredibly hurried, stress-filled life.
You can learn to put things into perspective by making the small daily changes Dr. Carlson suggests, including advice such as “Choose your battles wisely”; “Remind yourself that when you die, your ‘in’ box won’t be empty”; and “Make peace with imperfection”. With Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff… you’ll also learn how to:
- Live in the present moment
- Let others have the glory at times
- Lower your tolerance to stress
- Trust your intuitions
- Live each day as it might be your last
With gentle, supportive suggestions, Dr. Carlson reveals ways to make your actions more peaceful and caring, with the added benefit of making your life more calm and stress-free.
5. When the Body Says No | By Gabor Mate
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In this accessible and groundbreaking book – filled with the moving stories of real people medical doctor and best-selling author Gabor Maté shows that emotion and psychological stress play a powerful role in the onset of chronic illness, including breast cancer, prostate cancer, multiple sclerosis, and many others, even Alzheimer’s disease.
When the Body Says No is an impressive contribution to research on the physiological connection between life’s stresses and emotions and the body systems governing nerves, immune apparatus, and hormones. With great compassion and erudition, Gabor Maté demystifies medical science and, as he did in Scattered Minds, invites us all to be our own health advocates.
6. Getting Things Done | By David Allen
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David Allen reads an all-new edition of his popular self-help classic for managing work-life balance in the 21st century – now updated for the new challenges facing individuals and organizations in today’s rapidly changing world.
Since it was first published more than 15 years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now shorthand for an entire way of approaching professional and personal tasks and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organizational tools, seminars, and offshoots.
Allen has rewritten the book from start to finish, tweaking his classic text with important perspectives on the new workplace and adding material that will make the book fresh and relevant for years to come. This new edition of Getting Things Done will be welcomed not only by its hundreds of thousands of existing fans but also by a whole new generation eager to adopt its proven principles.
7. Mindfulness for Stress Management | By Robert Schachter
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50 ways to stop stressing over stress.
Today’s the day you start trading stress for calm. Mindfulness for Stress Management provides you with a collection of easy-to-learn stress management exercises that will help you stop worrying and start focusing on the moment.
Broken into 6 chapters―each focused on dealing with a different type of stress―this mindfulness-based guide to stress management offers you 50 unique tools designed to help you tackle stressful thoughts, emotions, and communication. Learn simple ways to avoid thought traps, externalize your emotions, sharpen your focus, and more.
Mindfulness for Stress Management includes:
- 50 actionable tips―Get real, practical stress management advice that can be used today―no spending weeks reading before you start taking action.
- Strategies for all kinds of stress―Whether you’re worried about your kids, your business, or your personal life, find effective ways to manage your stress.
- Mindfulness made easy―Learn how to keep yourself in the present through breath control and body awareness so you can prevent stress from getting in the way when things get chaotic.
Start mastering 50 simple and effective ways to control your stress today with Mindfulness for Stress Management.
8. A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook | By Elisha Goldstein
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The ultimate practical guide to MBSR—with more than 115,000 copies sold—is now available in a fully revised and updated second edition.
Stress and pain are nearly unavoidable in our daily lives; they are part of the human condition. This stress can often leave us feeling irritable, tense, overwhelmed, and burned-out. The key to maintaining balance is responding to stress not with frustration and self-criticism, but with mindful, nonjudgmental awareness of our bodies and minds. Impossible? Actually, it’s easier than it seems.
In just weeks, you can learn mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a clinically proven program developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Full Catastrophe Living. MBSR is effective in alleviating stress, anxiety, panic, depression, chronic pain, and a wide range of medical conditions. Taught in classes and clinics worldwide, this powerful approach shows you how to focus on the present moment and permanently change the way you handle stress.
As you work through A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, you’ll learn how to replace stress-promoting habits with a mindful ones-a skills that will last a lifetime. This groundbreaking, proven-effective program will help you relieve the symptoms of stress and identify its causes.
This fully revised and updated second edition includes new audio downloads, new meditations, and extensive chapter revisions to help you manage stress and start living a healthier, happier life.
9. The Upside of Stress | By Kelly McGonigal
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The author of The Willpower Instinct delivers a controversial and groundbreaking new book that overturns long-held beliefs about stress.
More than 44 percent of Americans admit to losing sleep over stress. And while most of us do everything we can to reduce it, Stanford psychologist and best-selling author Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., delivers a startling message: Stress isn’t bad. In The Upside of Stress, McGonigal highlights new research indicating that stress can, in fact, make us stronger, smarter, and happier – if we learn how to embrace it.
The Upside of Stress is the first audiobook to bring together cutting-edge discoveries on the correlation between resilience – the human capacity for stress-related growth – and mindset, the power of beliefs to shape reality. As she did in The Willpower Instinct, McGonigal combines science, stories, and exercises into an engaging and practical book that is both entertaining and life-changing, showing you:
- How to cultivate a mindset to embrace stress
- How stress can provide focus and energy
- How stress can help people connect and strengthen close relationships
- Why your brain is built to learn from stress and how to increase its ability to learn from challenging experiences
McGonigal’s TED talk on the subject has already received more than seven million views. Her message resonates with people who know they can’t eliminate the stress in their lives and want to learn to take advantage of it. The Upside of Stress is not a guide to getting rid of stress but a guide to getting better at stress by understanding it, embracing it, and using it.
10. Stress Management for Dummies | By Allen Elkin
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Tired of letting stress have a negative impact on your life? Easy.
It’s impossible to get through life without encountering stress. And unfortunately, most of us learn the incorrect ways to cope with it. Thankfully, Stress Management For Dummies gives you trusted, time-tested guidance on teaching your body and mind to properly cope with stress while keeping your sanity intact.
Whether it’s love, work, family, or something else that has you in the red zone, this updated edition of Stress Management For Dummies will help you identify the stress triggers in your life and cut them down to size – all without losing your cool.
- Shows you how to use stress in a positive, motivational way instead of letting it negatively affect your life
- Teaches you to retrain your body and mind to react positively to stress
- Helps you overcome common stresses faced in modern life
If you want to manage stress and get back to living a normal life, Stress Management For Dummies has you covered.
11. The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living | By Amit Sood
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Have you ever driven several miles without noticing anything on the road or read a page in a book without registering any of it? Do the day’s worries and disappointments crowd your mind as you’re trying to fall asleep at night? Do you feel stressed much of the time and aren’t sure how to find peace?
In this book Amit Sood, MD, MSc, a Mayo Clinic specialist in stress and resiliency, reveals how the mind’s instinctive restlessness and shortsightedness generate stress and anxiety and presents strategies for living a more peaceful life. The book is based on the highly popular stress management program offered at Mayo Clinic that Dr. Sood developed after two decades of work with tens of thousands of people.
Drawing on groundbreaking brain research, Dr. Sood helps you understand the brain’s two modes and how an imbalance between them produces unwanted stress. From this basis you learn skills that will help you:
- Develop deep and sustained attention
- Practice gratitude, compassion, and acceptance
- Live a meaningful life
- Cultivate nurturing relationships
- Achieve your highest potential
All of these concepts are weaved into a practical and fun journey that has been tested in numerous scientific studies, with consistently positive results. Take the first step to discover greater peace and joy for you and your loved ones.
12. Declutter Your Mind | By Barrie Davenport
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Feel overwhelmed by your thoughts? Struggling with anxiety about your daily tasks? Or do you want to stop worrying about life? The truth is we all experience the occasional negative thought. But if you always feel overwhelmed, then you need to closely examine how these thoughts are negatively impacting your lifestyle.
The solution is to practice specific mindfulness techniques that create more “space” in your mind to enjoy inner peace and happiness. With these habits, you’ll have the clarity to prioritize what’s most important in your life, what no longer serves your goals, and how you want to live on a daily basis. And that’s what you’ll learn in declutter your mind.
The goal of this book is simple: We will teach you the habits, actions, and mindsets to clean up the mental clutter that’s holding you back from living a meaningful life.
You will learn:
- Four causes of mental clutter
- How to reframe all your negative thoughts
- Four strategies to improve (or eliminate) bad relationships
- The importance of decluttering the distractions that cause anxiety
- A simple strategy to discover what’s important to you
- 400 words that help identify your values
- The benefit of meditation and focused deep breathing (and how to do both)
- How to create goals that connect to your passions
Declutter Your Mind is full of exercises that will have an immediate, positive impact on your mindset. Instead of just telling you to do something, we provide practical, science-backed actions that can create real and lasting change if practiced regularly.
13. 10% Happier | By Dan Harris
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Nightline anchor Dan Harris embarks on an unexpected, hilarious, and deeply skeptical odyssey through the strange worlds of spirituality and self-help, and discovers a way to get happier that is truly achievable.
After having a nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America, Dan Harris knew he had to make some changes. A lifelong nonbeliever, he found himself on a bizarre adventure, involving a disgraced pastor, a mysterious self-help guru, and a gaggle of brain scientists. 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, which had both propelled him through the ranks of a hyper-competitive business and also led him to make the profoundly stupid decisions that provoked his on-air freak-out.
We all have a voice in our head. It’s what has us losing our temper unnecessarily, checking our email compulsively, eating when we’re not hungry, and fixating on the past and the future at the expense of the present. Most of us would assume we’re stuck with this voice that there’s nothing we can do to rein it in but Harris stumbled upon an effective way to do just that. It’s a far cry from the miracle cures peddled by the self-help swamis he met; instead, it’s something he always assumed to be either impossible or useless: meditation. After learning about research that suggests meditation can do everything from lower your blood pressure to essentially rewire your brain, Harris took a deep dive into the underreported world of CEOs, scientists, and even marines who are now using it for increased calm, focus, and happiness.
10% Happier takes listeners on a ride from the outer reaches of neuroscience to the inner sanctum of network news to the bizarre fringes of America’s spiritual scene, and leaves them with a takeaway that could actually change their lives.
14. The Happiness Trap | By Russ Harris
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Build a more satisfying and meaningful life with this best-selling guide to freeing yourself from depression, anxiety, and insecurity through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Are you, like millions of Americans, caught in the happiness trap? Russ Harris explains that the way most of us go about trying to find happiness ends
The techniques presented in The Happiness Trap will help readers to:
• Reduce stress and worry
• Handle painful feelings and thoughts more effectively
• Break self-defeating habits
• Overcome insecurity and self-doubt
• Create a rich, full, and meaningful life
“ . . . a powerful beacon showing us another way forward.” —Steven Hayes, Ph.D., author of getting Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life
15. Winning the War in Your Mind | By Craig Groeschel
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Are your thoughts out of control – just like your life? Do you long to break free from the spiral of destructive thinking? Let God’s truth become your battle plan to win the war in your mind!
We’ve all tried to think our way out of bad habits and unhealthy thought patterns, only to find ourselves stuck with an out-of-control mind and off-track daily life. Pastor and New York Times best-selling author Craig Groeschel understand deeply this daily battle against self-doubt and negative thinking, and in this powerful new book, he reveals the strategies he’s discovered to change your mind and your life for the long term.
Drawing upon Scripture and the latest findings of brain science, Groeschel lays out practical strategies that will free you from the grip of harmful, destructive thinking and enable you to live the life of joy and peace that God intends you to live. Winning the War in Your Mind will help you:
- Learn how your brain works and see how to rewire it
- Identify the lies your enemy wants you to believe
- Recognize and short-circuit your mental triggers for destructive thinking
- See how prayer and praise will transform your mind
- Develop practices that allow God’s thoughts to become your thoughts
God has something better for your life than your old ways of thinking. It’s time to change your mind so God can change your life.
16. Who Moved My Cheese? | By Spencer Johnson
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The number one international bestseller!
A timeless business classic, Who Moved My Cheese? uses a simple parable to reveal profound truths about dealing with change so that you can enjoy less stress and more success in your work and in your life.
It would be all so easy if you had a map to the Maze.
If the same old routines worked.
If they’d just stop moving “The Cheese.”
But things keep changing…
Most people are fearful of change, both personal and professional because they don’t have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Dr. Spencer Johnson, the co-author of the multimillion bestseller The One Minute Manager, uses a deceptively simple story to show that when it comes to living in a rapidly changing world, what matters most is your attitude.
Exploring a simple way to take the fear and anxiety out of managing the future, Who Moved My Cheese? can help you discover how to anticipate, acknowledge, and accept change in order to have a positive impact on your job, your relationships, and every aspect of your life.
17. Stress-Proof | By Mithu Storoni
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Discover simple, science-based strategies for beating stress at its own game
When’s the best time to exercise – and how much is too much? Which foods fortify the brain, and which do the opposite? How can we use music, movement, and motivation to boost our rational brain and keep our cool no matter what life throws our way?
Short bursts of stress are an inevitable part of modern life. But how much is too much? Research is uncovering the delicate balance that can turn a brief stressful episode into systemic overload, eventually leading to inflammation, anxiety, depression, and other chronic health issues.
This practical and groundbreaking guide reveals seven paths to fighting the effects of stress – to strengthen our natural defenses so that our minds remain sharp, and our bodies resilient, no matter what life throws at us.
Each chapter examines a common stress agent – including inflammation, an out-of-sync body clock, cortisol levels, and emotional triggers – and presents simple ways to minimize its harmful effects with changes in diet, exercise, and other daily habits – including surprising hacks involving music, eye movements, body temperature, daily routine, and more. Translating cutting-edge scientific findings into clear and simple advice, Stress-Proof is the ultimate user’s guide for body, mind, and well-being.
18. Wherever You Go | By Jon Kabat-Zinn
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When Wherever You Go, There You Are was first published in 1994, no one could have predicted that the
19. The Stress-Proof Brain | By Melanie Greenberg
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Modern times are stressful – and it’s killing us. Unfortunately, we can’t avoid the things that stress us out, but we can change how we respond to them. In this breakthrough book, a clinical psychologist and neuroscience expert offers an original approach to help listeners harness the power of positive emotions and overcome stress for good.
Stress is, unfortunately, a natural part of life – especially in our busy and hectic modern times. But you don’t have to let it get in the way of your health and happiness. Studies show that the key to coping with stress is simpler than you think – it’s all about how you respond to the situations and things that stress you out or threaten to overwhelm you.
The Stress-Proof Brain offers powerful, comprehensive tools based on mindfulness, neuroscience, and positive psychology to help you put a stop to unhealthy responses to stress – such as avoidance, tunnel vision, negative thinking, self-criticism, fixed mindset, and fear. Instead, you’ll discover unique exercises that provide a recipe for resilience, empowering you to master your emotional responses, overcome negative thinking, and create a more tolerant, stress-proof brain.
This book will help you develop an original and effective program for mastering your emotional brain’s response to stress by harnessing the power of neuroplasticity. By creating a more stress-tolerant, resilient brain, you’ll learn to shrug off the small stuff, deal with the big stuff, and live a happier, healthier life.
Final Thoughts on the Best Books on Stress Management
Stress affects your health in a number of ways. It can make you feel overwhelmed, anxious, and depressed. It also causes physical symptoms like headaches, nausea, or heart palpitations. The first step to fighting stress is to understand the different types of stressors that exist and how they affect your body. Here are some of the best books on stress management.
Happy reading!
Do you see a book that you think should be on the list? Let us know your feedback here.
Meet Maurice, a staff editor at Bigger Investing. He’s an accomplished entrepreneur who owns multiple successful websites and a thriving merch shop. When he’s not busy with work, Maurice indulges in his passion for kayaking, climbing, and his family. As a savvy investor, Maurice loves putting his money to work and seeking out new opportunities. With his expertise and passion for finance, he’s dedicated to helping readers achieve their financial goals through Bigger Investing.
