Inspiring Books to Help You Reach Your 2023 Goals
Every new year is a time of great hope and joy—and opportunity. A lot of us made New Year’s resolutions as the clock struck midnight and are now looking for ways to meet our goals for self-care, self-improvement, personal or professional success, or general wellness.
Unfortunately, the old joke about going to the gym in January and cancelling your membership by February is all too often true. How can you stay motivated to keep working on your goals even after the the winter festivities are over? Try one of these books. They tell inspiring stories that will remind you of what you’re fighting for and even help you achieve it!
The past few years have been rough for everyone. At minimum, you’ve lost the way of life you knew and loved, and grief is a perfectly normal reaction to that. Soulbroken focuses on “ambiguous grief,” or the sense of loss that accompanies trauma related to something other than death. Though misunderstood, this kind of grief can be just as debilitating as any other. This book will help you to process your feelings and guide you towards a healthier, happier future.
Sometimes, the goal you strive for is not the goal you end up reaching—and that’s okay. If you need proof of that, read Walking Miracle by Ryan Shazier (with Larry Platt). When Shazier, middle linebacker for the Cincinnati Bengals, was paralyzed during a game, he was ready to do everything possible to walk again and rejoin the game. In the end, all that hard work prepared him for a different, more fulfilling life.
Did you make a resolution to cook more or take better care of your mental health in 2023? Steamed will help you do both! Authors Rachel Levin and Tara Duggan present you with fifty delicious recipes that give you the opportunity to mash, rip, and slice away at both your ingredients and your negative emotions. By the end, not only will you feel better, you will have a fantastic meal to share with the people who love and support you.
Many people dread going to work, but for women of color, the workplace is fraught with additional hazards, including microaggressions and a persistent wage gap. Written by Minda Harts, a Black woman who worked her up to become a CEO, Right Within offers powerful insights into how women of color can acknowledge work-based racial trauma, heal from it, and achieve their career goals, whatever they may be. You can also check out Harts’s previous book, The Memo, for more advice.
While it is good to set career goals, it is equally important to realize that your worth as a human being does not depend on how much work you do (or don’t do), and that you deserve the healing balm of relaxation regardless. That is often easier said than done in our hustle-obsessed world. Tricia Hersey’s Rest Is Resistance exposes the harmful flaws in that way of thinking and encourages us to find new, more empowering ways to attain self-improvement.
Eileen Gonzalez is a freelance writer from Connecticut. She has a Master’s degree in communications and years of experience writing about pop culture. She contributes to Book Riot and Foreword Reviews, and she occasionally tweets at @eileen2thestars.