8 Books That Actually Changed My Life
I got conned by a bestselling author but these aren’t BS
I got conned by a bestselling author and I didn’t even see it coming.
She was on one of the biggest podcasts in the world (you know the one, tens of millions of downloads every month), super confident and articulate and full of bold claims about nutrition and what was slowly killing us all.
I bought her book before the episode was over.
Within the first few chapters, I knew something was off. So I did what I should have done before handing over my hard-earned cash and I looked into who she actually was.
She wasn’t qualified to make half the claims she was making. The “science” was cherry-picked, oversimplified, or flat-out wrong.
And the host never pushed back on a single thing.
I felt like such a fucking idiot. I still CRINGE!
I’m educated, I’m a health coach, I know how to read research, and I still fell for it.
If it wasn’t a Kindle copy, I would have burnt that fucking book.
Now I’m more skeptical. I check credentials and I look at the research. I check if the person is actually qualified to say this, or are they just confident and well-marketed.
Because the wellness space is flooded with charismatic people saying things that sound true but aren’t.
And the cost of bad advice isn’t just wasted money. It’s wasted time, misplaced trust, and sometimes real harm.
So here are 8 books that actually changed something in me, how I think, how I coach or how I treat myself (written by people who are actually qualified to write them).
They changed my life, and I think they could change yours too.
This is a long one. Grab a coffee or bookmark it :)
1. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
This book explains why smart people make terrible decisions about their health, their habits, and their lives.
Daniel Kahneman was a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and in the book he breaks down the two systems driving how we think:
System 1 (fast, instinctive, emotional)
System 2 (slow, deliberate, logical)
Most of the time, System 1 is running the show, and it’s full of biases we don’t even notice. It’s the reason you fall for marketing claims, overestimate your willpower, and keep repeating patterns that don’t serve you.
Once you understand how your brain actually works (spoiler: not as rationally as we’d like to think), you stop blaming yourself and start designing better systems.
This isn’t pop psychology repackaged by an influencer.
Kahneman spent decades researching this and won the Nobel Prize in Economics for it.
The man literally changed how we understand human decision-making. It’s not perfect (some of his findings have been debated since), but it’s still one of the most influential frameworks for understanding why we do dumb shit.
2. Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg
This is the book that made me stop relying on motivation.
BJ Fogg is a Stanford behaviour scientist who founded the Behaviour Design Lab, and his model is elegant: B=MAP (Behaviour happens when Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt converge at the same moment).
I’m a huge advocate of design thinking, in fact I got the opportunity to train at the d.school at Stanford U so I was immediately intrigued by his approach.
His whole thing is making the desired behaviour so small that you can’t fail. Floss one tooth. Do two push-ups. Open the journal.
It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it works because it removes the biggest barrier to change: the feeling that it must be hard.
This book fundamentally shaped how I design my coaching programme. And unlike a lot of habit content out there, this comes from the source.
Fogg has been researching this for over 20 years. A lot of the people who popularised habit science either studied under him or borrowed heavily from his work.
[I wrote more about tiny habits and why motivation is overrated here →]
3. The Kindness Method by Shahroo Izadi
This book was a turning point for me.
I spent years trying to force my way out of bad habits through sheer willpower, beating myself up every time I "failed."
Shahroo is a behavioural change specialist who worked in addiction services, and she reframes the whole thing: your habits aren’t moral failings, they’re coping mechanisms.
And the way to change them isn’t punishment. It’s understanding and kindness.
The book walks you through mapping your habits, understanding what they’re really giving you, and replacing them without the usual guilt spiral.
For anyone who’s ever thought “I know what to do, I just can’t make myself do it,” this is your book.
She’s not selling a fantasy or a 21-day fix. She’s sharing a method grounded in real therapeutic practice, and you can feel that on every page.
[I’ve written about The Kindness Method and self-compassion before here →]
4. How to Change by Katy Milkman
Where Tiny Habits gives you one elegant framework, How to Change gives you a whole toolbox.
Katy Milkman is a Wharton professor, co-director of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative, and her research is published in top academic journals.
This book offers a toolkit of evidence-based strategies for making change stick: fresh starts, temptation bundling, commitment devices, and more.
It’s the most useful research-to-real-life behaviour change book I’ve read in years, but it’s written in a way that doesn’t make you want to fall asleep.
The book is organised by theme, so use it as a reference you come back to regularly. Milkman is brilliant at translating academic research into things you can actually use on a Monday morning.
5. What Happened to You? by Bruce Perry & Oprah Winfrey
This book rewired how I understand behaviour. Mine and other people’s.
Dr Bruce Perry is one of the world’s leading experts on childhood trauma and brain development, and together with Oprah, he explores how childhood experiences shape who we become.
The central question shifts from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”
So many of our “bad habits,” emotional reactions, and self-sabotaging patterns aren’t character flaws. They’re adaptations. Responses that made sense at one point, even if they don’t serve us anymore.
It gave me more compassion for myself and for every client I work with. It’s the reason I now ask “what’s driving this?” instead of “why can’t you just stop?”
I read this book while I was in therapy, and honestly, the timing couldn’t have been better. It helped me understand why some of my patterns ran so deep, and why talking about them was only ever going to be part of the work.
Some things don’t start with a decision. They start with something that happened long before you had any say in the matter.
Perry explains the neuroscience in a way that’s accessible without being dumbed down. Oprah brings the storytelling and her own deeply personal experiences, but the science is Perry’s, and it’s rock solid.
The combination of rigour and humanity is what makes this book special.
6. Not Drinking Tonight by Amanda E. White
I’m over 1000 days sober, and this is the book I wish I’d had earlier.
The line that changed everything for me: “Would your life be happier without alcohol?”
Amanda White is a licensed therapist who specialises in addiction and founded a therapy group practice, and she combines clinical expertise with her own recovery journey into something that feels like a conversation with a smart, non-judgmental friend.
Most sobriety resources are either 12-step focused or very all-or-nothing. This book meets you where you are.
Whether you’re sober-curious, cutting back, or just wondering why you always reach for wine after a hard day, it treats you like an adult who can make their own decisions.
What sets it apart from the growing pile of “quit lit” is that White isn’t an influencer who quit drinking and wrote a memoir (nothing wrong with that, but this is different).
She’s a clinician who understands the psychology behind why we drink and how to change that relationship.
[I wrote about my sobriety journey and this book in more depth here →]
7. Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
This book gave me a language I didn’t know I was missing.
Dr Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston who has spent over two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy. In Atlas of the Heart, she maps 87 emotions and experiences, and makes a compelling case that most of us are working with a shockingly limited emotional vocabulary.
Her whole argument is that we can't process what we can't name. And honestly, that changed everything for me.
I only discovered this book at 40, and it was quite revolutionary.
I’d spent my whole adult life cycling through feelings I couldn’t articulate, defaulting to “I’m happy” or “I’m stressed” or “I’m sad” when the truth was so much more nuanced than that.
I have the coffee table edition and I still reach for it regularly when something feels off but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. Being able to say “this is disappointment, not anger” or “this is grief, not numbness” has changed how I coach and how I talk to myself.
This isn't some influencer's feelings wheel repackaged into a book. Brown has spent over two decades researching this stuff, and it shows on every single page.
8. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
OK, full disclosure. This is the odd one out on this list. Tolle isn’t a scientist. He doesn’t cite peer-reviewed studies. And I’ll be honest, I’ve read it twice, and both times I had to really work at it. It’s not the easiest read, not for me anyway.
But this book changed how I experience being alive. Not in a dramatic, overnight way, but in a quiet, fundamental shift.
It helped me notice how much of my suffering was created by my own thoughts about the past and future, rather than anything actually happening in the present moment.
For someone who spent years living in a constant state of “what’s next” and “not enough,” that was revolutionary.
I’m including it because this list is about books that genuinely changed me, not just books that tick the “evidence-based” box.
Tolle isn’t selling a programme, a supplement, or a lifestyle. He’s pointing at something that contemplative traditions have been saying for thousands of years, and that neuroscience is increasingly backing up: rumination makes us miserable, and presence is a skill you can develop. Sometimes the thing that shifts you isn’t a study.
It’s a different way of seeing.
The common thread
Looking at this list, I notice something. None of these books tell you to try harder.
None of them promise a transformation in 30 days. None of them require you to wake up at 5am, buy a supplement, or follow some guru or heavily rely on stoic quotes.
What they do, in different ways, is help you understand yourself better. How your brain works. Why you do what you do. What’s actually getting in the way. And then they give you tools, real, evidence-based (mostly) tools, to work with that understanding.
That, to me, is what good self-help looks like. Not someone shouting at you to be better. But someone helping you see clearly, so you can choose better.
With love,
Noemie x
P.S. Have you read any of these? Or do you have a book that genuinely changed how you live? Hit reply and tell me!