4 Books to Help You Make a Positive Change in Your Life

“Follow Saint Paul’s advice: hora est iam nos de somno surgere! — it is time to get down to work! Both on the inside, building up your soul; and on the outside, right where you are, building up the Kingdom of God” (St. Jose Maria Escriva).

In the wildly shifting landscape of lockdown, pandemics, and global economic stress, many of us are trying to think of ways to move forward creatively in our work and personal lives.  But even before 2020 arrived, alteration, adjustment, and transformation were a regular part of life — albeit, perhaps, not so turbulently. The truth is, one of the only certainties about life is that it will change. We change, our circumstances change, the people around us change.

One of the best questions we can ask, then, is not how to make it all stop but how to do it well. How can we make positive changes in our lives?

These four books offer helpful frameworks, practical suggestions, and effective methods for implementing positive change in our work, personal, and spiritual lives. I have found the wisdom in these works to be useful in both my own life and in my clients’ lives.

“Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life”

In this book written to help you “build the perfect career, step by step,” authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans apply design thinking to the challenge of finding satisfying work that you love. A perfect career doesn’t have a single, simple solution: Most people could find contentment in several areas and, indeed, do, throughout the changing phases of their lives.

Innovative design thinking, unlike math or engineering, meets the need for creative problem-solving that finding a great career demands. It encourages “building your way forward” — asking good questions, thinking outside the box, engaging in creative collaboration, and prototyping different ideas until something works well. Design thinking is based on a bias toward action: ideas are meant to be tested, not merely considered.

This New York Times bestseller is the fruit of years of the authors’ own design thinking: Both are professors at Stanford who have spent decades teaching thousands of students how to design their lives after graduation. Lest you feel that you are too old to benefit from their teaching, Burnett and Evans insist that none of us is ever finished with the joyous work of designing our lives. Each of us lives in a world of changing circumstances and shifting interests. Design thinking provides us with tools to make positive changes in light of these dynamics.

“Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard”

Have you ever found yourself wanting to make a change but unable to find a way forward? Or feeling that you should make a change but unable to muster the motivation? In “Switch,” Chip and Dan Heath explore proven ways to “change things when change is hard.” In their respective roles as a business professor and a research analyst, the brothers have been invited to consult with numerous Fortune 500 Companies, as well as the U.S. Navy and the NFL. It’s no surprise that this book was a New York Times bestseller.

The premise is deceptively simple for a book packed with so much research. Change is difficult, they argue, because each of us has a rational side and an emotional side, and the two are often in conflict. The strength of our rational side is the ability to think long-term, but the weakness is a tendency to overanalyze or overthink. The strength of our emotional side is an instinctual response that gives us energy and drive; the weakness is its need for instant gratification.

Switch offers practical advice, examples, and true inspirational stories that show how we can learn to integrate our rationality and emotions. It also offers suggestions for when the problem is situational rather than personal. Positive change requires a clear path forward, and often, what stops us is our environment. The last third of the book focuses on how to reenvision and reshape the path to change — an essential tool for any work situation.

“The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions”

Author Emily P. Freeman’s podcast of the same name has nearly 3 million downloads, showing just how many of us are in need of gentle guidance as we try to make positive changes. Rather than allowing chronic hesitation or decision fatigue to overwhelm us, Freeman’s book suggests that we adopt the “simple, soulful” method of just doing the next right thing. 

Written from a Christian perspective, each chapter contains a reflection on a simple practice we might adopt in our decision-making, followed by a prayer to help us integrate it into our spiritual life. Suggestions include what might feel like countercultural ideas: “quit something” and “find a no mentor,” as well as encouragements to rethink our negative beliefs about God and how we might approach decision-making in His presence.

Are we suffering under false notions about God’s desire for our lives? Are we afraid to try things we like or change up devotional practices that just aren’t working? Do we have a fruitful way of inviting others into our decision-making process? Each theme offers significant content for reflecting on how we can make positive changes in our lives.

“Interior Freedom”

This book is neither a work of self-help nor, strictly speaking, a book about making changes. But it is a book that can change your spiritual life for good, if you let it. The author, Fr. Jacques Philippe, is a master of the interior life. His words are simple and gentle but speak straight to the heart of what so many of us struggle with: understanding and accepting ourselves and others in light of God’s design for human freedom.

Often, what holds us back from positive changes in our own lives is a misunderstanding of freedom. We feel guilt over the wrong kinds of things, although we rightly chafe at the true consequence of free will: evil. Sin makes us less free, but Christ’s redemption (which we share in through baptism), offers us a way forward. Fr. Jacques Philippe explains:

“The ability to remain untouched by evil is not acquired all at once. It is the fruit of a long process of self-conquest and grace that makes us grow in the theological virtues. It is an aspect of spiritual maturity, more a gift from God than the result of our efforts. But this gift will be given to us more quickly and surely, the more we strive for it, desire it, and try to practice the attitudes described here: rooting ourselves in God through faith and prayer; not blaming people and things around us for what isn’t going well in our lives and stop seeing ourselves as victims; resolutely shouldering responsibilities and accepting our lives as they are; and using our present capacity for believing, hoping, and loving to the full at every moment.”

This small book is packed with wisdom. Just a few paragraphs each day offer an excellent focus for meditation.

God’s design for creation involves growth and change. When we embrace an innovative approach, we can step away from the false and limiting belief that there is a particular, fixed, one-size-fits-all solution to our problems. As human beings, we are body-soul united: Our lives are an exercise in integration, in becoming persons who flourish in every aspect of ourselves. Let’s be unafraid to learn how to do that well by taking the next right step: living in “the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

Kerri Christopher is a life consultant. She helps individuals learn to discern well, discover their priorities, and make plans to move forward. From “what am I doing with my life?” to “why is my closet always a mess?,” she loves helping people sift through the tough questions by integrating the wisdom and truths of the Christian life with the best practices of human “self-help.” Kerri has both an MA and STL in theology and has taught at universities in the US and UK. With her British husband, she lives in London, where she enjoys discovering cozy pubs and beautiful architecture. You can find her online at Clarity Life Consulting.