 One of the best ways to improve your mental health is to read books about how to improve your mental health. So one of your goals going into 2019 should be to read more mental health books. So in this video I'm going to tell you about my five favorite mental health books of 2018. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health. So I try to make videos to help you improve your mental and emotional well being. If you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So yeah, I read a ton of books and it's one of the main reasons why I am constantly able to make videos and educate you about how the brain works or you know, different studies and everything like that. Like I hope you understand like nothing I'm telling you is really that original. All right. Like I just get a bunch of knowledge and then I give it out to you. So I will say that reading is something I didn't do for a very long time, but it's something that I reached recently in the last couple of years started doing a ton. All right. So I'm going to talk about five books that came out this year that are really great and I highly recommend. But before I do that, did you know I have books? Some of you have already picked up a copy of Rewire Your Anger. That's a book that I just wrote about a month or so ago and it's all about anger management. It's a short read. Then I have two other books that I wrote last year. One is called Hope, How I Overcame My Depression, Anxiety and Addiction. That is my story and I might redo it in a few years or something like that, but that is my entire story. All right. And then my other book that I wrote is another short book and it's called Caught in the Crossfire. And that's a book for anybody who was affected by a loved one's addiction. Throughout that book, I give a bunch of intervention strategies and all that. So that book can really be used if you have a loved one who's struggling with an eating disorder or some other kind of toxic behavior because I go over different intervention strategies. And the main goal of that book is to help you maintain your own mental health during that type of situation. All right. So all three of my books are available on the Kindle app. A lot of people are like, but I don't have a Kindle, Chris. You don't need a Kindle. If you have a smartphone, a tablet, or a computer, you can download the Kindle app for free. All right. So let's get started with my favorite books of this year in no particular order. But this first book is probably my favorite one, Lost Connections by Johan Hari. Like some of you have heard me mention this book over and over and over again. I just talked about a study from this in the movie review I did of Bird Box the other day. And like, you guys, this is such a phenomenal book. I did like a 30 minute video on this book doing like this depression experiment. This book, this book, the way I explained that video I did like, I wish I could like articulate how I grew and I overcame my depression and got to the amazing place I'm at today. But like reading that book really helped me understand it. So I made a video called the depression experiment based on that book. So I highly recommend you check it out. But this book, it talks about a lot of the reasons why we're depressed that have absolutely nothing to do with chemical imbalances in our brain. All right. Like you guys, chemical imbalances are real, but they're a very small fraction of our depression. And it's important that we understand that. So please, if you get any book on this list, please get Lost Connections by Johan Hari. And by the way, all these books will be listed down in the description as well as in the pinned comment. My next favorite book of 2018 is Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by Dan Harris. So Dan Harris is a news anchor for Good Morning America. And if you type in like news anchor panic attack or panic attack on air, that's Dan Harris. All right. This dude had a full on panic attack in front of millions upon millions upon millions of people. So his first book called 10% Happier talks about how he found meditation. And I love Dan Harris because he's just a normal guy who was skeptical about meditation, but he just started doing it and saw his life get better. I can relate to that a ton. So this new book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, him and his buddy, Jeff, they got on a bus and did this cross country thing. And they like did a tour. They stopped at different places. But like Jeff Warren is amazing. They called him like the meditation but Giver, like he can help you learn how to turn anything into meditation. And there's a lot of great examples through that book. There's a lot of different practices as well. But throughout their journey, like they stopped at like a police station where they're practicing meditation. They stopped at a military academy. They go to kind of like a center for like troubled teens and they talk about meditation. And then they do like different talks in different places where they talk about people's objections to meditation. But like, like listen to the book title Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. So if you're somebody who thinks that you cannot meditate, this book is for you. Meditation is the number one free thing that you can do to improve your mental health. The only reason I started meditating is because the science is there to back up how beneficial meditation is for everybody. Next we have Big Potential by Sean Aker. I think this was one of the first new books I got this year. So Sean Aker is actually a professor of positive psychology at Harvard University. And one of my favorite books of all time is called The Happiness Advantage. That was his first book. So he takes a lot of psychological studies and gives evidence of what can help you improve your mental health and your happiness overall. So in this book, Big Potential, it talks about what I keep trying to teach all of you. Like when it comes to our Facebook group or our Discord server, but basically it's how we can improve our happiness by being part of a group, right? By having a support group. Now a lot of his book talks about like in the workplace and how we succeed better together, right? And he has scientific evidence to back it up. But the entire time I read that book, I was thinking about mental health as a whole, right? People who struggle with depression or anxiety or addiction or eating disorders or trauma or whatever it is, like being in a group greatly helps us. But what I love about that is and something you'll see throughout like most of these books that I recommend is that there's scientific evidence that backs it up. That's what I'm looking for in a book. Like I read a lot of nonfiction books and I want science to back up what people are talking about in that book. Then there's a yes brain. If you are a parent, get this book. Stop what you're doing. Go down below. Click the link. Get this book. This book is written by Dr. Daniel Siegel as well as a co-author. I forgot their name. But anyways, Dr. Daniel Siegel is my favorite neuroscientist and I just realize how nerdy that sounded. But anyways, Dr. Daniel Siegel, he's the one who taught me how much meditation helps the brain, right? So not only is he like a neuroscience when it comes to mindfulness meditation and how it affects the brain. He's also somebody who works a lot with childhood brain development, all right? So this book, it's amazing because so many of us as parents, right? Your kids freaking out and you tell them to calm down or stop it or whatever. Like, you guys, I cannot stress enough to the parents out there. Children do not have the ability to calm down, all right? So in this book, they give you realistic strategies to help your child deal with anger, to deal with anxiety. Like, it was such a phenomenal book and every single parent. I wish I could have every single parent read this book. Another book that I wish every parent could read by Dr. Daniel Siegel is Parenting from the Inside Out. I'll go ahead and link that down below too. And the fifth book is Un-Fuck Your Brain by Dr. Faith Harper. She is probably my favorite author and she's super cool. Make sure you follow her on Instagram at The Intimacy Doctor. She writes a ton of books. She is so cool. Like when you read her books, you laugh and you get educated. Like she, she, I can relate to her a lot because she's like a hard ass, but she's also very compassionate and kind and she knows her stuff. One of these days I'm going to bring her on my channel. She's awesome and she's very responsive in DMs and stuff. Don't go flooding your DMs because I said that, but she is very responsive online and she has a bunch of books. Like the first one I read was about Un-Fuck Your Brain, but she also has some about depression and anxiety. They just sent me an advanced copy of like her new coping skills book. She writes so many books and she's so amazing. Like, like my favorite author, favorite, favorite, favorite author is Dr. Faith Harper. Like go read all of her books. Oh, what the heck? I'm going to throw in a bonus book. So the most recent book that I'm reading is by Charlemagne the God and it's called Shook. All right. Anxiety playing tricks on me. So I actually stumbled across this book and I'm currently in the middle of it. So it's amazing so far. Charlemagne the God was on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah and he was explaining this book and basically what he's doing is encouraging, you know, Black America to go get mental health help. So I, for those of you who don't know, I'm actually half black. And there's a lot of mental health issues in the African-American community. I know my family has struggled with it. I know a lot of people in the African-American community struggle with it and Charlemagne the God who is like in like the hip hop community and he grew up like in the hood and like running drugs and stuff like that. Like for him to inspire young people or just all people, you know, to get mental health help is absolutely amazing. I'm loving the book so far. By the way, I do audio books. I listen to them like right here on my computer screen. You can see the audible app on my computer. Like I'll listen to it while I'm working or while I'm editing or while I'm driving. I have like actual books too that I need to start reading. But anyways, like I will do a book review of that book. There's so many, so many great little nuggets of information in there. So I hope you check it out. But again, all the books I mentioned will be listed down below and remember the best way to improve your mental health is to educate yourself about your mental health. If you have any mental health book suggestions that you would like me to check out, leave them down in the comments. I love book suggestions, even though I'm behind on my reading. So I need to catch up. All right, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos. This is my third video today, baby. And a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You're all amazing. And if you'd like to become a patron and get some exclusive content, take a tap right there. All right, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.