Eng
Eng
July 17, 2026
September has always felt more like a new beginning to me than January. Returning to the city, to a routine and a full schedule, along with the first cooler evenings, always prompts me to reassess my goals, habits and how I spend my energy. This year, preparations for that fresh start begin while it is still summer, with books that offer different perspectives on success, change, creativity and our relationship with ourselves. From the endless selection of personal growth literature, we have chosen books that move beyond motivational clichés and offer ideas we can apply to everyday life. If we read them before the final summer sunset, we will enter September better prepared for all the beginnings we so readily associate with it.
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Emma Grede has built her career at the very heart of the contemporary business world, as the co-founder of Good American, a founding partner of SKIMS and a woman who has spent years helping to build globally recognized companies. In Start With Yourself, she turns her professional journey into a guide for anyone looking to define their goals more clearly and take greater control of the direction they are heading in. Her starting point is self-knowledge because, as she says, every major decision begins with understanding what we want, how much we are prepared to invest and which compromises we are willing to accept. Grede writes openly about ambition, confidence, money, motherhood and the pressures women face while building their careers. Her approach to the idea of work-life balance is also interesting, as she sees it as a series of conscious choices that evolve alongside our priorities.
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No matter how carefully we plan our lives, all it takes is for one circumstance to change for the version of the future we believed was certain to disappear. Cognitive scientist Maya Shankar knows that moment well. As a teenager, she was building a future as a professional violinist until a hand injury derailed her plans and forced her to reimagine her identity. That experience later shaped her work on how people respond to changes they did not choose. In The Other Side of Change, Shankar combines behavioral science with personal stories from people confronted with completely unexpected turns in their lives. She pays particular attention to questions of identity, loss of control and finding new possibilities in circumstances that initially seem like nothing more than a disruption. Her writing offers comfort without making easy promises that everything happens for a reason, while giving readers practical ways to approach uncertainty with greater curiosity.
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Even a life that looks fulfilling from the outside can be accompanied by the unsettling sense that people do not notice or value us, or that our contribution does not matter to anyone in particular. Jennifer Breheny Wallace calls this disconnect the “mattering gap” and begins with the simple human need to be valued for who we are and to know that our presence makes a difference to others. She began exploring the idea while working on her previous book, Never Enough, which examines achievement culture and the pressure to constantly prove our worth through results. Mattering explores how a sense of personal significance is built within families, friendships, romantic relationships, workplaces and communities. Through research and real-life stories, Wallace shows how much our well-being depends on relationships in which we feel seen and are also able to recognize the value of others. The book encourages us to choose the environments we belong to more carefully and consider whom we can show that they matter through our time, interest and support.
We often see emotions as forces that simply appear and take control of our lives. In Shift, psychologist and neuroscientist Ethan Kross explains that we possess a whole range of abilities that allow us to influence their intensity, duration and how we respond to them. His starting point is that no emotion is inherently good or bad, as its value depends on the situation in which it arises and the actions it prompts us to take. Drawing on psychological research, Kross shows how changing our perspective, directing our attention, talking to others and carefully shaping our environment can transform our emotional experience. The advice is practical enough to apply during a demanding workday, an uncomfortable conversation or a period of heightened stress, and this book could be particularly useful ahead of September and the return to schedules that often require us to manage numerous commitments, relationships and expectations in a single day.
When we think about a good life, we usually talk about happiness or a sense of purpose. Psychologist Shigehiro Oishi adds psychological richness to this familiar equation, a dimension created by varied experiences, curiosity and encounters with ideas that change our view of the world. A life can also be enriched by events that surprise us, take us beyond familiar surroundings and give us stories we will tell for years to come. In Life in Three Dimensions, Oishi combines psychological research with his own journey from a small Japanese town to an academic career in the United States. He shows how exploring new places, meeting different people and embracing occasional uncertainty can contribute to a fuller life. His ideas do not require a dramatic change in direction, as psychological richness can also be found in a new part of the city, a conversation we would not normally start or an activity we are trying for the first time.
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Writer Suleika Jaouad uses journaling as a way to understand change, preserve memories and find a creative response to periods when life loses its familiar structure. In The Book of Alchemy, she brings together what she has learned over the years about writing for oneself, along with questions and prompts that help readers begin their own practice. The book also includes contributions from artists and writers including Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, George Saunders, Elizabeth Gilbert and Jon Batiste, with each chapter opening up a different way of thinking about personal experiences. Jaouad presents the journal as a space where we can be more honest, curious and creatively free than in the rest of our everyday lives. If you have been thinking about trying this ritual yourself, summer offers enough slow mornings and long evenings to begin filling the blank pages before the September schedule picks up the pace of our days again.
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Ambition is often presented as a quality that should be constantly encouraged, even when the pace at which we chase results leaves us exhausted. In The Ambition Trap, Amina AlTai explores the moment when the desire for success begins to rely on fear of failure, the need for approval and the habit of measuring our worth through productivity. As a leadership coach who has worked with company founders, executives and former representatives of girlboss culture, she knows the cost of a professional life built on the constant need to prove oneself. AlTai helps readers recognize what drives their goals and connect their ambition with their personal values, natural abilities and a pace they can sustain over the long term. Much of the book is also devoted to rest, recovery and boundaries that allow work to remain an important part of life without taking over our entire identity. The Ambition Trap is excellent preparation for the new school year ahead, encouraging us to set new goals according to the life we want to lead, rather than only the results we want to achieve.
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