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The best self love books will help you build a long lasting positive relationship with yourself. If you embrace the concept of self-love you will never be lonely that Valentine’s Day is a 365-day holiday to celebrate a loving relationship with yourself that you are enough that you treat yourself with kindness and compassion while They celebrate your quirks and imperfections.
In this list of the best books on self-love and healing, you will find a variety of books to help you discover more self-love for yourself. They cover topics such as loving yourself in a culture of harmful perfectionism, toxic misogyny, and unhealthy body expectations. And without further ado, the best self love books for 2021 and beyond.
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The body is not an excuse from Sonya Renee Taylor
From acclaimed poet and activist Sonya Renee Taylor, the body is no excuse: the power of radical self-love is a powerful celebration of self-love centered on body image. Taylor tells readers how to overcome and heal the mental poison that is body shame. It is almost impossible to get away from Taylor’s manifesto without feeling kinder and more accepting of your body: the good and the “bad”.
Body Positive Power by Megan Jayne Crabbe
Instagram influencer Megan Jayne Crabbe brings a refreshing shot of openness to her body empowerment book Body Positive Power. Crabbe shares her painful history of eating disorders and unstable weight. Ultimately, Crabbe was able to regain their bodies and help others overcome similar challenges. Body Positive Power is a call to everyone who could use a little more self-love in their life … and isn’t that all of us?
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Gilbert’s classic memoir Eat, Pray, Love, an oldie but a goodie, helped popularize the pursuit of self-love. With their marriage in pieces and their personal life in crisis, Gilbert felt an exciting call for a fuller life that prompted a trip around the world – to Italy, India, and Indonesia – to find themselves and restore some self-love. Gilbert’s lively prose and denominational honesty made her a role model for readers who asked: Is there anything more?
The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
Superstar self-help guru Brené Brown leads a movement to take risks, be vulnerable, and accept your imperfections on the path to self-love. Not sure where to start with this prolific writer? Start with The Gifts of Imperfection, Brown’s blueprint for readers challenged by accepting their imperfections. Through the gifts of imperfection, Brown offers actionable tips for replacing negative self-talk with self-love.
Good vibes, good life from Vex King
Lifestyle and wellness influencer Vex Kings debut book Good Vibes, Good Life helps you create and manifest the life you’ve always wanted to live, leaving hangups and doubts behind to blossom into your own best friend. King’s guide to transforming self-hatred into self-love involves adopting positive routines like meditation and mindfulness and exploring your relationship with the universe.
Hunger: A memory of (my) body by Roxane Gay
After experiencing trauma and eating disorders, writer and activist Roxane Gay takes a critical look at the nutritionally obsessed world we live in and fights back with a powerful reputation for loving ourselves regardless of our mistakes. Gay’s Hunger: A Memory of (My) Body is an analytical approach to analyzing our relationship with food, our body and the critical culture in which we live. We dare to question unhealthy appetites and instead become hungry for self-love.
Milk and honey from Rupi Kaur
In her first collection of poems, Milk and Honey, the poet and phenomenon Rupi Kaur writes scorching verses that are pervaded by a collective cry to love ourselves more. Milk and Honey encourages readers to leave negative conversations with ourselves behind and instead channel self-love. Kaur’s unapologetically feminist and empowering verse, told with poetic precision and keen observation, helps readers redirect love from toxic relationships to more loving ones with ourselves.
Perfect Is Boring by Tyra Banks and Carolyn Landon
Boring is one thing that model star and CEO Tyra Banks can never be blamed for. And in Perfect Is Boring, Banks and her mother Carolyn Landon dispel the myth that being perfect is perfect. Banks honors the ten lessons Landon taught her to strengthen self-love and let go of the obsession with being perfect. With chapters like “Embrace Your Beauty” and “Fix It or Flaunt It”, Banks and Landon have put together an arsenal of actionable ways to be more loving towards yourself.
The princess is saved in this by Amanda Lovelace
The feminist poet Amanda Lovelace wrote some of the most violent poems of modern times. In the princess saves herself in this one, Lovelace starts her series Women Are Some Kind of Magic, each of which dismantles the toxic culture of misogynist society through the lens of broken fairy tales. This collection of poems enables women to break free from the perfect princess expectations that women are fed at a young age and instead love themselves.
Radical Acceptance: Embrace Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach
If you want to master self-love, you want to learn more about radical acceptance. This psychological concept is central to Dialectic and Behavioral Therapy (DBT), but Tara Brach makes it available to all in her bestseller Radical Acceptance. Brach combines teachings from Buddhism with guided meditations and helps you overcome self-judgment and self-hatred by radically accepting who you are, mistakes and everything.
Radical self-love from Gala Darling
Motivational speaker and author Gala Darling shares her self-love wisdom in Radical Self-Love, a powerful roadmap that takes you from a place of personal contempt, shame, and judgment to a more loving relationship with yourself. This self-love book has a unique format that assigns homework and activities to readers to make your self-love less a mysterious concept and more a practical and workable process. The result? A celebration from you.
Self Compassion: The Proven Power to Be Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff
The kindness movement isn’t just about being kind to other people. What is often much more difficult is being kinder to yourself. In Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff transforms the cult of self-esteem into the more powerful model of self-compassion. In Neff’s book you will find numerous exercises and takeaways that are specially tailored to bring you to a place of self-compassion and self-love, including detours to mindfulness and emotional resilience.
Shannon Kaiser’s self-love experiment
The road to self-love can be a rocky road, but Shannon Kaiser shows the true path to loving ourselves in The Self-Love Experiment. Coach and spokesman Kaiser has developed 15 principles that you can apply in order to live with more self-love. Kaiser’s “experiments” in areas such as self-care, self-compassion, and self-confidence help destroy bad thoughts and channel some of the kindness you show to others on the path to happier, more joyful lives.
Unfu * k Yourself by Gary John Bishop
Sometimes we are our worst enemy. When we direct poisonous thoughts upon ourselves, is it any surprise that our minds get going? Gary John Bishop’s Unfucking Yourself offers a way out of negative self-energy by teaching readers seven statements such as “I am wired to win” and “I am relentless”. Bishop sets out to help you transform your brain into a more self-loving tool for grasping your unique imperfections and simply striving for them.
You’re a Jen Sincero badass
If you’ve ever doubted your size – and who hasn’t? – It’s time to pick up Jen Sincero’s beloved book, You Are a Badass. This classic self-help guide walks you through the negative habits and thoughts that keep you from loving yourself. You Are a Badass is a no-BS, open-ended guide to realizing what’s great about you and how, as the title suggests, you are a total badass. Invert bad thinking and self-doubt with Sincero’s micro-lessons on self-love in this unmissable read.
What a time to be alone by Chidera Eggerue
Last but not least, Chidera Eggerues What a Time to Be Alone is important reading for anyone who wants to bring more self-love into their life. From the creative force behind the popular Slumflower blog, What a Time to Be Alone focuses on teaching readers that you are enough and that being alone can be just as fulfilling as being out of a relationship. While this may seem like radical concepts, Eggerue’s book gets to the heart of your self-doubts and helps you wire yourself to a better, more self-loving place.
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