Welcome to this month’s Aspire Magazine Top 10 Inspirational Books list! You’ll discover inspirational and empowering books, written by women and for women, each dedicated to sharing a universal message of love, hope and self-empowerment. Through their wisdom-filled books, these visionary female authors are illuminating the path for women on the journey of healing and self-discovery. Add these transformational books to your inspired living resource library.
Your Difference Is Your Strength: A Guide to Accepting Yourself―for Anyone Who Has Ever Felt Out of Place by Kris Ferraro
Your Difference is Your Strength is a book for anyone and everyone who has ever felt out of place, misunderstood, or just...different. It’s the book for the kid who was too creative or too shy or too “weird” and who grew up into an adult who still isn’t quite sure where they fit in or if they even want to. It’s a book for you. Kris Ferraro, author of Manifesting, invites the oddballs and underdogs of the world to stop hiding, minimizing, or disguising their differences and instead embrace them in a powerful new way. It’s a fearless, joyful call to finally be who you actually are in a world that seems to demand uniformity. Filled with real life examples, personal stories, journal prompts, and practical wisdom, Your Difference is Your Strengthwill help you identify your own genre-defying brand of “weird” and harness that power in your outlook, your relationships, your work, and your life.
Do What You Love: A Guide to Living Your Creative Life Without Leaving Your Job by Kate Volman
Your soul craves magic and creativity―but who has time to pursue passions and hobbies when there are bills to pay? Reignite your lost creativity―it still lives inside of you. You don’t have to trade a world of exciting possibilities for an unfulfilling life of responsibilities. Joy and a fulfilling personal and professional life await. In Do What You Love, you’ll discover simple steps for overcoming the fears and doubts holding you back from pursuing your dreams. Get ready to explore your creative ideas, rediscover your passion projects, and give yourself permission to start creating– simply for the joy of it. It’s time to start embracing the passions that feed your soul.
This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life by Annie Grace
This Naked Mind has ignited a movement across the country, helping thousands of people forever change their relationship with alcohol. Many people question whether drinking has become too big a part of their lives, and worry that it may even be affecting their health. But, they resist change because they fear losing the pleasure and stress-relief associated with alcohol, and assume giving it up will involve deprivation and misery. This Naked Mind offers a new, positive solution. Here, Annie Grace clearly presents the psychological and neurological components of alcohol use based on the latest science, and reveals the cultural, social, and industry factors that support alcohol dependence in all of us. This Naked Mind will give you freedom from alcohol. It removes the psychological dependence so that you will not crave alcohol, allowing you to easily drink less (or stop drinking). With clarity, humor, and a unique blend of science and storytelling, This Naked Mind will open the door to the life you have been waiting for.
Radiant Rebellion: Reclaim Aging, Practice Joy, and Raise a Little Hell by Karen Walrond
What if aging is something to aspire to, not to dread? What if together we could forge a radiant rebellion against the idea of aging as a season of decline? Join Karen Walrond, author of The Lightmaker's Manifesto, in this intriguing investigation into how we can reclaim aging, cultivate joy, and resist ageism. During her own year of transition--a milestone birthday, a wedding anniversary, the emptying of the nest--Walrond, in the buoyant and luminous style her readers have come to love, does a deep dive into dimensions of getting older, including health, beauty, spirituality, connection, adventure, and meaning and purpose. Internalized ageism--bias against our future selves--is not our only option; we can write a different story of aging than the one we've been handed. With wisdom from luminaries who light our way, Walrond helps us radiantly rebel against the fads and assumptions that hold us back, redefine the adventure of getting older, and create a shining future of expanded potential. We might even raise a little hell while we're at it! A resources section offers journal prompts and strategies for creating a handbook for your own radiant rebellion.
Soul Archaeology: A (Totally Doable) Approach to Creating a Self-Loving and Liberated Life by Sarah Sapora
With the help of this powerful guidebook, meet your ultimate You and cultivate real self-acceptance and true self-love in the present moment. You want to love yourself. You want to let go of feeling invisible or unworthy or alone. You want to break free of others’ expectations (and your own) and live life on your terms. Let’s do it! Plus-size personal growth trailblazer,Sarah Sapora, redefines self-love, offering the knowing nod, the deep cleansing breath, and the older sister wisdom which women of all sizes have been waiting for. Soul Archaeology begins with a simple, illuminating question: “What’s hurting me right now?” Acting as your guide, Sapora helps you through the sticky, liberating process of self-discovery to uncover your Ultimate You, allowing you to: see the patterns of self-abandonment that screw you out of a self-loving life; define how you truly want to feel and craft a plan to make it happen; build your Self-Love To-Do List to break free of the quest for unattainable perfection and learn to love the empowered, messy, and beautiful you. Weaving together practical, transformative guidance with her own deeply personal narrative, Soul Archaeology teaches readers to cast off the chains of traditional Before-and-After thinking so often found in self-improvement. Instead, it offers a strategy for self-accountability, honesty, and compassion that can help each of us to grow into our greatest selves–a person not defined by weight or age, but by our commitment to a more loving, honest, and powerful life.
The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery by Brianna Wiest
This is a book about self-sabotage. Why we do it, when we do it, and how to stop doing it—for good. Coexisting but conflicting needs create self-sabotaging behaviors. This is why we resist efforts to change, often until they feel completely futile. But by extracting crucial insight from our most damaging habits, building emotional intelligence by better understanding our brains and bodies, releasing past experiences at a cellular level, and learning to act as our highest potential future selves, we can step out of our own way and into our potential. For centuries, the mountain has been used as a metaphor for the big challenges we face, especially ones that seem impossible to overcome. To scale our mountains, we actually have to do the deep internal work of excavating trauma, building resilience, and adjusting how we show up for the climb. In the end, it is not the mountain we master, but ourselves.
She Who Wins: Ditch Your Inner "Good Girl", Overcome Uncertainty, and Win at Your Life by Renée Bauer
If these past years have taught us anything, it's that so many women are stuck―stuck in jobs they despise, marriages that are joyless, roles they didn't ask for, and even in their own heads. The pandemic shook our world and now as we emerge from the cover of COVID, going back to "normal" seems insufferable. If there was ever an opportunity to shake things up, it's now. Through the pages of SHE WHO WINS, Renee Bauer breaks down some uncomfortable truths about the things holding us back from truly winning in life. Because if we can survive a pandemic, homeschooling, loss of income, and even a toilet paper shortage don't we deserve to win? Using her over two decades as an award-winning divorce attorney and entrepreneur, Renee Bauer shares her own vulnerable stories of divorce, failure, and ultimately, reinvention, to embolden, empower, and inspire women to choose the path most uncomfortable. This self-empowerment and motivational book is equal parts mindset and strategy, that can catapult women's lives from flatlined to fabulous by leaning into doing the hard thing.
The Invitation: Vital Conversations about Menopause by Tricia Brouk and Alexandra Stockwell, MD
Whether you’re a woman in the midst of menopause, anticipating it, or close to someone who is, you are invited to join a candid, provocative conversation in a safe space where all experiences are honored.
The Invitation is an expansive, meaningful dialogue between two friends that unfolds organically as the authors discuss the nuances of their individual experiences, challenge widely held social constructs, and give rise to empowering new perspectives on the menopause paradigm. Chapters explore physical manifestations of menopause, sex and intimacy, marriage through the lens of menopause, and how menopause impacts women at work—a topic for which an expert joins the conversation to enlighten readers about both challenges and solutions for female employees going through menopause. The Invitation is not about medical treatments or behavioral solutions. It’s about creating a collective sisterhood; engaging in open, honest dialogue; and validating and empowering one another to embody a different and more inspiring relationship with menopause.
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Dr. Julie Smith
Drawing on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, online sensation Dr Julie Smith provides the skills you need to navigate common life challenges and take charge of your emotional and mental health in her debut book. Filled with secrets from a therapist's toolkit, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before teaches you how to fortify and maintain your mental health, even in the most trying of times. Dr Julie Smith’s expert advice and powerful coping techniques will help you stay resilient, whether you want to manage anxiety, deal with criticism, cope with depression, build self-confidence, find motivation, or learn to forgive yourself. Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before tackles everyday issues and offers practical solutions in bite-sized, easy-to-digest entries which make it easy to quickly find specific information and guidance. Your mental well-being is just as important as your physical well-being. Packed with proven strategies, Dr. Julie’s empathetic guide offers a deeper understanding of how your mind works and gives you the insights and help you need to nurture your mental health every day. Wise and practical, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before might just change your life.
The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul by Connie Zweig
Winner of numerous book awards! A guide to working through the inner obstacles of late life and embracing the spiritual gifts of aging. With extended longevity comes the opportunity for extended personal growth and spiritual development. You now have the chance to become an Elder, to leave behind past roles, shift from work in the outer world to inner work with the soul, and become authentically who you are. This book is a guide to help get past the inner obstacles and embrace the hidden spiritual gifts of age. Offering a radical reimagining of age for all generations, psychotherapist and bestselling author Connie Zweig reveals how to use inner work to uncover and explore the unconscious denial and resistance that erupts around key thresholds of later life, attune to your soul’s longing, and emerge renewed as an Elder filled with vitality and purpose. She explores the obstacles encountered in the transition to wise Elder and offers psychological shadow-work and diverse spiritual practices to help you break through denial to awareness, move from self-rejection to self-acceptance, repair the past to be fully present, reclaim your creativity, and allow mortality to be a teacher. Sharing contemplative practices for selfreflection, she also reveals how to discover ways to share your talents and wisdom to become a force for change in the lives of others.
