The past year had its challenges for nearly everyone. At Big Self, we’ve been working on our own processes and structures behind our goals for this year. For all the aspirations, we know that sometimes the right message or the right system–at the right time–can push us to actually get there. Here is our curated list of powerful books packed in succinct and manageable scopes.

We thought you would appreciate this handpicked list of 12 items our staff loves for themselves and loves to gift.

And let the world respond to you, not the other way around.

And how to let go of the idea of the one perfect call you’re missing.

The late 20th-century philosopher Alan Watts once used this analogy in a lecture:“If I draw a circle, most people, when asked what I have drawn, will say I’ve drawn a circle or a disc, or a ball. Very few people will say I’ve drawn a hole in the wall, because most people think of the inside first, rather than thinking of the outside. But actually these two sides go together — you cannot have what is ‘in here’ unless you have what is ‘out there.’”Now is the time to employ some transport into your post-pandemic life experience. Whether you choose ordinary means of stepping into cold showers and contemplating the sky as you walk the dog, or flee your confines and find a dramatic coast while listening to live raga music, it’s all right there waiting for you. You will lift yourself from your anxiety stew. You will find calm and clarity. And you will find much deeper satisfaction.

Improving your self-knowledge won’t happen in a day. Sometimes it takes years of reflection, introspection, and difficult conversations with people you affect directly or indirectly. As you grow in self-awareness, you will find you get more comfortable being your true self, transparent, and even vulnerable. You will have more acceptance of yourself, and more acceptance and others. You will also have more insight into discerning when others are telling you something you need to hear, and when it is really about them. ‍Finding mental clarity is everything — and the good news is that it can be taught.

Mindfulness works, and it is hard. First, accept that you will never master it. You will never get “good enough.” So don’t even try. At the same time, you don’t need to live in, “I’ll never live up to the high standards of someone who practices mindfulness,” either. The standards aren’t high. You’ll definitely not practice it well at some point in the near future, and that’s after the obvious first attempts, which will not be easy or possibly even yield much in the way of results. What matters is that you show up, just like the idea of showing up in life. You show up to your practice. And it turns out, that is hard.

People automatically seem to believe that self-awareness leads to a better self. Why is that? Is it necessarily the case? Are there different kinds of self-awareness, and if so, how are they different? And if so, what makes a comprehensively self-aware person? And does truly lead to people who are morally better? We investigate to find out, and offer a takeaway of our own.

If you were to distill down the basics of any book on habits, it comes to this. This is the framework for understanding breaking bad habits and beginning and sustaining good ones. So, yes, you've probably heard some of this before, but it's broken down to its essence so its also easy to simply practice. Spend more effort practicing these ideas that deciding whether or not you agree with them. It's empirical, time-tested stuff. We just have to do the work. Pick a lane. Some things in our lives we want to spend time reflecting on, we may need to understand, to interpret, to develop greater awareness. With habits we're ultimately aiming to actually put things on autopilot so we don't have to spend energy thinking. We just begin to do.

We're told again and again to do what we love. Because you know what happens then? "You'll never work a day in your life." But is that really true? And what if there are a lot of things to love? And what about things we don't even know we'll love until we happen to try them? It's a privilege, on the one hand, to have any choice at all. That's not really the problem we face in our culture today. There are almost too many things. It starts to make your head spin. You don't even know where to begin, or how to ask for help. No wonder Gen Z is struggling. I can't solve it all in a post, but we can give some context as to what's going on, along with a few practical takeaways to practice.