I thought I’d share with you one of the books I recommend the most often to my clients (although I don’t like the title): “Ten Days to Self-Esteem”, by David Burns. It’s a remarkable book!
The reason I don’t like the title is that it’s about much more than self-esteem (and it doesn’t only take 10 days… the number ten refers to the number of lessons or chapters in the book). Some of the life changing topics covered by this awesome book include: Feel the way you think, and how to change the way we think, acceptance, self esteem (conditional versus unconditional), perfectionism, and procrastination.
It’s all about teaching you the tools of cognitive therapy – in essence, how to identify irrational thoughts, and how to change our inner dialogue (the way we talk to ourselves) to make us feel better – as in happier, more confident, etc…
It’s in a workbook format, so after presenting the text with the information on certain subjects, the book guides you to write things down in various exercises to put into application what you just read. It’s very practical, and clearly written. If you’re interested, you can get more information about the book from Amazon through the PsyMontreal Bookstore.
In my next blog post, I’ll share with you what the book says about self-esteem, and how conditional self-esteem leads to many negative consequences, while Unconditional Positive Regard leads to wellbeing and much more positive emotional state.
Photo credit: Federico Bebber