Jocko Underground: How to Live in Peace, Now.

In this bestselling classic, Dale Carnegie—author of How to Win Friends and Influence People—offers timeless advice and practical methods for cultivating a happier, more worry-free mindset.

This guide explains the cause of worry and why it’s important to take control of it, and walks you through Carnegie’s methods for eliminating it from your life. You’ll come away knowing how to overcome worry by focusing on the present, come up with constructive solutions to your problems, and prevent criticism, work, or finances from triggering worry.

We’ll also expand on his suggestions with psychological research, additional insights, and practical advice from other self-help practitioners.

We take it as a given that we want to be happy, but how do we achieve happiness, or even define it? Derren Brown suggests that the answers can be found in the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers for whom the quest for a happy, well-lived life was a practical problem to be solved. Brown says that by adopting a philosophy based on those of the Stoics and Epicureans, we can lead thoughtful, balanced, and more well-rounded lives.

As a magician, Brown isn’t a stereotypical self-help guru. However, his understanding of how stories misdirect us led to his belief that we can reshape our own narratives to be happy in the here and now while maintaining a positive outlook toward our own mortality. This guide will examine Brown’s definition of happiness and the philosophical building blocks he claims can achieve it. We’ll compare Brown’s ideas to those of modern psychology and contrast his views with those of other happiness experts, some of whom he argues directly against.

Former ABC News anchor Dan Harris believes anyone can benefit from meditation. In 10% Happier, he offers a skeptic’s journey through the world of self-help following his meltdown on live television. Harris explains how meditation allowed him to get control of his anxiety, manage his ego, and become a more compassionate person. This book explores how mindfulness and meditation can improve your life and career—even by just 10%.

In this guide, we’ll explore Harris’s understanding of mindfulness, meditation, and Buddhist principles. We’ll also discuss the lessons meditation can teach you, explain how to start meditating, and debunk some common misconceptions about mindfulness. Along the way, we’ll provide research on meditation and other actionable tips from experts.

In Soundtracks, best-selling author and speaker Jon Acuff offers a set of tools designed to help you stop overthinking and start chasing your goals. Acuff argues that the best way to overcome negative thoughts is to replace them with positive, motivating ones. With candor and humor, he provides a step-by-step procedure for interrupting negative thoughts, generating positive thoughts, and turning those positive thoughts into genuine beliefs.

In our guide, we’ll start by defining overthinking. We’ll examine how overthinking can negatively impact your productivity and consider the biological reasons we tend to focus on negative thoughts. Then, we’ll go through Acuff’s process for overcoming overthinking, providing examples that help illustrate how to apply each step in your own life. We’ll also include commentary that provides psychological context for Acuff’s ideas, as well as contrast those ideas against other notable approaches to self-improvement.

Former Vedic monk and award-winning content creator Jay Shetty claims that the route to happiness and fulfillment is to Think Like a Monk. According to him, monks are the calmest and happiest people in the world because they live with a sense of purpose that aligns with their true, inner selves.

Fortunately, you don’t need to cut yourself off from the modern world or shave your head to benefit from this mindset. Shetty draws from his experiences as a monk, ancient spiritual texts, and the latest psychological research to transform abstract concepts into actionable methods you can easily incorporate into your life.

In this guide, we’ve compared and contrasted Shetty’s key concepts with up-to-date psychological research and advice. In addition, we’ve expanded on his methods with actionable ideas from other self-improvement practitioners and psychologists.

Have you ever spent a long time worrying about a problem only to end up feeling stressed and no closer to a solution? In Stop Overthinking, Nick Trenton explains that you were probably overthinking the problem: reflecting on it so much that it made you feel bad. He argues that by adopting stress management skills and replacing your negative thought habits with a positive mental framework, you can stay grounded in the present moment and live a productive life driven by action and control rather than endless worrying.

In this guide, we’ll discuss what overthinking is and how it’s connected to stress and anxiety. Then, we’ll explore ways you can manage stress before, during, and after it happens with various research-based techniques. Finally, we’ll show how you can reshape your negative thinking habits into positive ones. Along the way, we’ll compare Trenton’s strategies with those of other coaches and thinkers such as Tony Robbins (Awaken the Giant) and Judson Brewer (Unwinding Anxiety), and offer additional actionable insights to overcome your negative thought patterns.

Trauma can stem from abuse to a severe car accident to wartime combat—and cause a lifetime of flashbacks, nightmares, isolation, insomnia, hypervigilance, and rage. In The Body Keeps the Score, the author explores how diagnosing and treating trauma has evolved as new technologies, research, and fields of science emerged.

Trauma’s impact is not only mental, emotional, and neurological, but also physiological: Trauma rewires the brain to put people in a constant state of stress or numbness, leading to a host of physical problems.

In this summary, you’ll learn:

• Why trauma survivors feel like their trauma is never-ending
• How flashbacks make parts of the brain shut down and others to go into overdrive
• Why some trauma survivors can’t recognize themselves in the mirror
• How activities like choral singing, yoga, and theater can be therapeutic

Although we live longer today and have more material wealth than ever, many people feel anxious rather than happy. In Flow, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi offers an antidote. People are happiest when they feel in control of their inner thoughts and feelings and experience a “flow state”: a sense of enjoyment, purpose, and meaning.

Csikszentmihalyi explains: how controlling and ordering your consciousness brings flow and enjoyment, which personality characteristics produce flow, and how to find flow in your work and relationships.

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone understood each other, and nobody yelled at a customer service representative or got into a fight over whose turn it is to take out the trash? We’d likely all be less stressed if we lived in that world. But since we don’t, law enforcement trainer and English professor George Thompson wrote Verbal Judo to explain how to handle any tense situation calmly.

Thompson contends that by using a form of “tactical communication” inspired by the Japanese martial art judo, you can resolve even the most stressful confrontation without losing your cool. Verbal Judo involves directing the other person’s energy toward a solution that makes everyone feel understood.

In this guide, we’ll outline Thompson’s advice for putting yourself in the state of mind to empathize and listen, determine what’s happening, and persuade even the angriest person to cooperate. We’ll also compare the principles of his method to other experts’ recommendations for navigating tough conversations.