I responded to the question,

Hi all, Nearly an year ago, I faced a life-shattering crisis that completely wrecked my world view. Since then I have rebuilt up from scratch, and I have found that a lot of the things that I used to believe were false. Books such as Man’s Search for Meaning have been very pivotal in that regard. What books could you recommend for the same?

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I’ll answer your question first, then suggest something I consider more important, having survived several life-shattering crises.

• The Tao Te Ching, especially Ron Hogan’s translation (freely downloadable here: http://beatrice.com/wordpress/tao-te-ching)
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
• Getting Things Done, David Allen
• Gimp, Marc Zupan
• Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows
• Leadership Step by Step, Joshua Spodek (full disclosure: me, https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-Others/…)

The suggestion I consider more valuable is to focus more on active behavior than relatively passive reading. Of course, still read. But it’s easy to read more and more, telling yourself you’re getting more perspective. You are, but nothing changes your perspective like actually moving.

Even if you don’t know what will work best—meditation, fitness, art, music, travel, cooking, gardening, starting a business, etc—starting with something, even if you soon abandon it, will lead you to things you love and that develop you faster than reading alone. Plus activity will make what you read more meaningful.

I include my book because it’s specifically a book of exercises that lead to developing social and emotional skills designed to build on each other.

People voted it up so I’m sharing it here.

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