Mental health is a topic that remains a bit taboo and stigmatized in our society. I still get a bit nervous when I speak or write publicly about it as if some law firm is not going to hire me if they find out I have a diagnosis. However, that is not something I really need to worry so much about anymore and I want to help destigmatize mental health and hopefully share information that might help anyone going through anything near as bad as what I had to go through.
I have experienced a relatively long period of more or less good mental health the last couple of years and I have found that, along with the massive support from my family and a calm environment, reading has made an enormous contribution to that.
Rather than just regurgitate the lessons I have learned I wanted to direct people to the expert writers whose work I based my current approach to art and mental health on. These books are not a replacement for proper psychiatric treatment but can do a whole lot to bolster and complement any medication or therapy that you might be taking. Most of these books are simple to read and are written for the general public.
Great Books for Tackling Depression:
With my condition I deal with mania and depression. I haven’t found a great way to handle mania other than medication, which works quite well. Depression on the other hand, at least in my case, is very responsive to certain small changes you can make in your behavior and thinking and these books detail some of the tactics you can use.
The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs
by Dr. Steven Ilardi
To anyone suffering from depression this book offers some relatively easy and affordable mitigation and coping tactics. It includes very simple solutions like how light cardio (something as simple as brisk walking) and preventing social isolation can be powerful tools for mitigating depression symptoms and provides some discussion on the clinical research backing up the suggestions made by Dr. Stephen Ilardi. It also has other tips on nutrition and health that may prove helpful. For a lot of people the tactics in this book might work in cases where antidepressant treatments might be failing. One note is that depression causes and symptoms are a bit different between ordinary clinical depression and bipolar depression, but I still found the suggestions here very effective in my case.
What To Say When You Talk To Your Self
by Shad Helmstetter
This is a really good book for people who have a very negative and self critical internal monologue going on all the time. It discusses the value of talking to yourself with respect, encouragement and kindness, like you would with a friend. This is something that can make a very big difference in many areas of your life. If you ever saw scenes where 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy psyches himself up in front of the mirror before a big meeting, well it turns out there is something to that after all.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
This is a book about learning to get lost in the joy of engaging in an activity. Csikszentmihalyi is cited in the work of a lot of performance and expertise writers for a reason. You can get a lot of joy in your life by learning to do things for the joy of doing the thing itself, without worrying about rewards that may or may not come later. Great masters in art and music often experience this state of “flow” when they engage in activities just for the joy of the activity itself and it is one of the major motivators for elite level performance. Like a great runner that just loves running. An important factor that you want to keep in mind is your goal. You should have large (long term), medium, small and micro goals. When you move your pen through the sheet, you want to have a goal in mind for that and connect your actions to your goals; being totally present and focused when engaging in creative work.
Great Books on Expertise, Productivity and Performance:
Having a thing you pursue in life and getting lost in how to do it well can have really positive impact on your overall mood and mental health. I have read a lot on the topic of performance and expertise looking for some tactics that could help improve my skills as an artist and writer. I’ve gone pretty deep into some of the reference material cited by a few of these authors, but it’s not necessary I think to go that far to put this stuff into practice.
The War of Art
by Stephen Pressfield
This book talks about the resistance that seems to form against us when we want to produce art and how an artist must perform the same journey from zero to one every single day while battling resistance to produce the art that we are capable of producing. It helps to properly frame the struggle that we face as artists, writers and entrepreneurs. Pressfield also has other books on creativity such as Do the Work, The Artist’s Journey and Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t that are worth a look at for further reading.
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
by Angela Duckworth
This is one of many books I’ve read on becoming an expert and it’s probably the most approachable one and a good jumping off point. It’s about the importance of hard work over talent when it comes to getting good results in creative fields. Duckworth stresses the importance of connecting a large vision (big dreams) with small, achievable, daily goals.
Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success
by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness
This book is super cool. It talks about the importance of stress and rest in achieving optimal growth and has a lot of extremely useful tips derived from masters in fields as diverse as sculpture and Olympic level racing. My favorite take-away is the importance of having an external purpose for doing the things you do, as in, you don’t do these things for yourself but for the benefit of someone else (it can be your community, someone you love or God). One big revelation is that you don’t need to have an innate external motivator, it’s something that you can just assign yourself from thin air and still get a good result.
The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results
by Gary Keller
This book is great, it’s about simplifying your goals and focusing on what the one most important thing you could be doing at any particular time that will produce the best results for you is. To always try to have one priority (singular), rather than multiple priorities (plural) and constantly be in search of the most high impact thing you could be doing.
How to Become a Straight-A Student: The Unconventional Strategies Real College Students Use to Score High While Studying Less
by Cal Newport
This is an amazing book if you want an extremely efficient way to become a great student at the college or graduate school level while still having a lot of time left over for a social and romantic life. I think the most valuable piece of advice for me here was how important time management is and to plan basically one day at a time. You want to have long term goals in mind, but the war is really for today (echoing some ideas from The War of Art). Time management is probably the most critical factor for students as far as how well they will do in education that is under their control. I have found that the same tactics that will allow a Harvard student to become an honor student will also help a creative writer/artist manage their time.
Great Resources on Philosophy:
I’ve recently been learning more about philosophy. I think I’ve been searching for ancient ways of dealing with adversity and guides on how to understand, think about and live life. This is a very deep and somewhat arcane pool of knowledge but there is a lot of interesting stuff there. I am particularly drawn to the Stoic and Epicurean schools (two dueling Greco Roman philosophical schools that don’t seem so far apart to me these days).
Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition (An audio/video course from The Great Courses)
by Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.
This overview of the history of philosophy and the concepts of knowledge from the most ancient beginnings of history to present day issues is really good. A great overview.
How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life
by Massimo Pigliucci
This is a modern distillation of Stoic thinking that tries to provide a simple guide for how to practice stoicism. It’s certainly a lot more approachable than trying to use Meditations by Marcus Aurelius as your main initial source, although I recommend reading both as one can help understand the other. I’m really drawn to stoicism because of its framing of the nature of reality as something ordered by Providence (an almost secular Providence at that) and its encouragement that we pursue a life of virtue, courage, justice and temperance when it comes to things that we have under our control. To live in the moment, not worrying about the past or future too much and as for things beyond our control… don’t even worry about those.
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