Top Books for Mastering Leadership, Relationships & Emotional Strength

Psychotherapy (Shame, Anxiety, Depression, etc.)

1. Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model
2. Richard C. Schwartz & Martha Sweezy, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Second Edition
3. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
4. Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
5. John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame That Binds You
6. Manuel J. Smith, When I Say No, I Feel Guilty
7. Susan Forward, Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
8. Ann Weiser Cornell, The Radical Acceptance of Everything: Living a Focusing Life
9. Daniel J. Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation
10. Irvin D. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy
11. Eric Berne, Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships
12. Albert J. Bernstein, Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People Who Drain You Dry

Psychoanalysis & the Founding Fathers of Psychotherapy

13. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
14. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
15. Carl G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
16. Carl G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
17. Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

Relationship Therapy

18. Richard C. Schwartz, You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For
19. Harville Hendrix, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples
20. Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship
21. Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life
22. John Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
23. Cheri Huber, Be the Person You Want to Find

Parenting Psychology

24. Dr. Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
25. Daniel J. Siegel & Mary Hartzell, Parenting from the Inside Out
26. Susan Forward, Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life

Psychology of Masculinity

27. Terrence Real, I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression
28. Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover
29. David Deida, The Way of the Superior Man

Evolutionary Psychology

30. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
31. Daniel Bergner, What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire
32. David Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

Social Psychology, Behavioral Economics, & Neuroscience

33. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
34. Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
35. Robert Cialdini, Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade
36. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
37. Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets
38. Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational
39. Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein, Nudge
40. Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference
41. Luke Burgis, Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
42. Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Dating Skills & Mindsets

43. Mark Manson, Models: Attract Women Through Honesty
44. Robert Greene, The Art of Seduction
45. David Tian, Online Programs & Courses 🙂

Death Anxiety & the Meaning of Life

46. Irvin D. Yalom, Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death
47. Irvin D. Yalom & Marilyn Yalom, A Matter of Death and Life
48. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross & David Kessler, On Grief & Grieving
49. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
50. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
51. Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
52. Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
53. Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
54. Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole
55. Bill Perkins, Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life
56. Oliver Burkeman, 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
57. Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life
58. Mark Manson, Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope
59. Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
60. Irvin D. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy
61. Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Good, Evil, & Moral Philosophy

62. Frans de Waal, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society
63. Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?
64. Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
65. Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
66. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
67. Roy F. Baumeister, Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty
68. Frans de Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved

Peak Performance, Learning, & Success

69. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
70. Edward Slingerland, Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity
71. Adam Robinson, What Smart Students Know
72. Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance
73. David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
74. Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.
75. W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
76. Peter Attia, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity
77. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
78. Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success
79. Adam Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know
80. Adam Grant, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

Leadership, Purpose, & Creativity

81. Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman & Kaley Warner Klemp, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership
82. Gay Hendricks, The Genius Zone: The Breakthrough Process to End Negative Thinking and Live in True Creativity
83. Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
84. Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
85. Ray Dalio, Principles: Life and Work

Honourable Mentions

Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation

Philip J. Ivanhoe, Ethics in the Confucian Tradition: The Thought of Mengzi and Wang Yangming

Russ Shafer-Landau, The Fundamentals of Ethics, 6th edition

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

For the Show Notes and the full Transcription, go here:
https://davidtianphd.com/beyond-success/books-stop-proving-myself-start-living-real-37/

Last updated May 2025

Happy Reading!