19 Best Books on Self

Since Mischel’s Marshmallow Test in the late sixties, we’ve learned a lot more about how willpower works and what it looks like. It’s created a very bustling market of evermore (and more) self-help books designed to equip readers with useful tactics, motivation, and insight into their habits.

In this section, a combination of popular self-help books on the topics of self-discipline and control is provided. We’ve made these recommendations with the average ‘you and I’ in mind, and they are not overly academic in any way unless specified otherwise.

Perfect for a summer read or a less tedious morning commute. In addition, after selecting a great book, head on over to Self-Discipline Exercises for even more inspiration and encouragement.

This is considered the seminal work on Growth Mindset for the layperson – if you’re looking to read about self-control as part of a bigger picture on personal growth, this book provides exactly that.

Professor Carol Dweck is highly respected in the positive psychology field for her vast contributions to the scientific literature on motivation, intelligence, and mindset, among other things. In this straightforward but very insightful read, is an excellent introduction for anyone who wants to learn about fixed vs. growth mindsets.

Dweck’s work on the latter is highly relevant for all those who are interested in the role of hard work, effort, and practice in personal growth. In this sense, it’s not focused exclusively on self-control, but gives a more holistic overview of its importance in achieving what you set out to do.

Mindset is based on solid psychological science, but it’s digestible and a pleasant read for mainstream readers who aren’t keen on slogging through mountains of data. It explains the concept in-depth and uses plenty of anecdotes to flesh out key ideas.

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This book is full of techniques to help anyone who tends to procrastinate – and perfectionists who want to improve their productivity. It’s a clear and straightforward read and offers plenty of help for people who – let’s be open here – can’t understand why they are procrastinating.

By delving into root causes, Dr. Neil Fiore invites his readers to get a better grasp of their unique difficulties and deal with them in the most appropriate way.

By offering to help you do things ‘Now,’ make a positive habit out of it, and break old, unhelpful ones, this is a powerful book. Perhaps not compelling enough for some very intense procrastinators, but a highly recommended read for anyone who wants to get things done and move on, minus the anxiety.

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Brian Tracy is the author of several popular books on goal-setting, so his work on self-regulation is quite extensive. This book is roughly 300 pages long and spans 21 chapters, each of which contains tactical exercises to help you apply the concepts he’s discussed.

It is divided into three main areas: financial and business goals, personal goals, and general well-being, and these, in turn, are broken down further into domains such as leadership, relationships, friendship, personal excellence, responsibility, health, and time-management.

Concerning specific approaches, he emphasizes nine disciplines in particular, such as daily goal-setting, hard work, persistence, and similar. The ‘tone and flavor’ of this book is best described as motivational—it’s not a heavy read at all, and it’s easy to jump back and forth between chapters as you feel like covering certain topics.

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Charles Duhigg is a business reporter for the New York Times, who wrote this book on habits after observing collective habits at play in rioting mobs overseas.

He became intrigued by human behavior and began digging further into the research on the “loops” that our brain gets into to conserve effort.

It is an insightful look into the deep-seated way in which habitual behaviors often sabotage the best intentions, and how they guide our behaviors in more ways than we may realize.

Duhigg considers some of the findings on how habits work at the brain level and discuss the 3-stages of cue, habit, and reward that can shape our actions. Throughout the book and more so toward the latter parts, he introduces specific strategies for changing habits and regaining self-control.

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The terms self-regulation, self-control, and self-discipline are often interchangeably used in everyday conversations. The first, however, is the term most commonly used by behavioral psychologists to refer to a specific set of mechanisms.

The books in this particular section are either:

They also make great reads for anyone who’s looking for a slightly different, perhaps more scientific take on self-control. If you’re interested in reading more about the psychology of emotional and behavioral self-regulation, our article What is Self-Regulation? (+95 Skills and Strategies) also looks much closer at the topic.

In this article, we’ve put together a list of some of the best books on the topic.

One of this book’s fundamental premises is that willpower is a finite resource. Along with IQ, the authors argue, it is one of life’s most important determinants of whether we succeed or not.

This book lays out how willpower is linked very strongly with happiness, emotional well-being, social support, physical health, and more.

At least in part, then, self-control is about consciously managing how we channel our energy—what depletes our willpower, replenishes it, and even when we should leave things (like critical tasks) until another time.

Cited over and over by myriad other self-development authors, Willpower is probably one of the seminal texts on self-discipline and self-control. It’s a 316-page read and professionally written by psychologists, so it touches on some fascinating experiments to make its strong and convincing arguments.

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In this fascinating book, psychologists Dr. Amy Johnson discusses the neuroscience of addiction and habits to argue that changing them is very much possible.

Popular with counselors, therapists, and other helping professionals, it’s heavily focused on recovery but also touches on how we can reverse our tendency to think in certain ways.

There are useful insights for those struggling with anxiety or anxiety-related disorders, and may at times be a little heavy for reluctant readers.

Some highlights include Dr. Johnson’s approach to breaking down habitual behaviors to get a better grip on them, and tuning into your internal narrative. Psychologists will find it useful for its potential relevance in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

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Walter Mischel was the acclaimed self-control psychologist behind the famous Marshmallow Test, which looked at the intricacies of delayed and instant gratification in kids.

During the second half of the ‘60s, he conducted his first studies with preschoolers—offering them either “a single marshmallow now or two marshmallows in ten minutes.”

He followed up these children’s later development to look at their academic performance, obesity rates, and other variables, paving the way for many more researchers to build on his findings.

This book is more than a useful overview of how to enhance your self-control; it also gives the reader an absorbing look at one of the most eye-opening experiments in modern psychological history.

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In this book, Dr. Kelly McGonigal introduces readers to the what, how, and why of willpower from numerous perspectives. She draws not just on psychological research, but on medical and neuroscientific insights to consider the up and downsides of self-control.

Readers who are curious about the impacts of willpower on our physical health, cognitive capabilities, and emotions will enjoy this informative read, in which McGonigal consistently references relevant studies.

It considers the roles of mindfulness, nutrition, mindset, and self-compassion in self-discipline, and includes practical advice regarding productivity, habits, and procrastination.

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At 240 pages, Emeritus Professor Rachlin’s The Science of Self Control is not very long, but it packs in vast quantities of deep, scientific insights about self-control.

This is a textbook; an academic read for big fans of solid data, and it includes a lot of experimental research to examine various key principles of self-regulation – how it relates to decision-making, behavior, and more.

Because it is admittedly a textbook, you will find charts, diagrams, and – on occasion – numerical data. Nonetheless, Professor Rachlin somehow does an excellent job of making this quite a fascinating read for anyone with interest in behavioral science.

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