You have experienced feeling lost and unmotivated at some point in your life. Wherein, no matter what you do, everything just feels pointless. You begin to doubt yourself and question whether there is meaning and reason behind your existence. Feeling such is inevitable, especially with the uncertainty of lives. But it doesn’t mean you should entertain these intrusive thoughts. Instead, what you should do is inspire yourself to find your life’s purpose.
Sometimes the best kind of inspiration and motivation comes from books. If you find yourself in this debacle, here are books for spiritual growth and guidance and self-discovery to assist you with your journey to learning and to accept yourself.
Eat Pray Love
This book is a detailed narration of writer Elizabeth Gilbert’s pursuit of spirituality and discovering what she wanted in life. Even though she had everything she could ever want, Elizabeth wasn’t okay. To find herself, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and traveled around the world.
Eat, Pray, Love emphasizes the importance of taking care of yourself. Take a break and choose to prioritize your peace and health. Unlike Elizabeth, you don’t necessarily have to travel around the world to experience an epiphany. You can simply consider spending a day just by yourself, doing things that can take your mind off the world.
Paper Towns
Paper Towns follows Quentin Jacobsen. The latter always had feelings for his schoolmate and neighbor, Margo. So when she climbs into his window, asking if he wants to go with her somewhere, he follows. But after this meeting, Quentin goes to school only to find out that Margo’s been missing. The former finds clues and believes it’s up to him to find the girl.
While the general plot is a bit unsettling, Paper Towns centers on the characters’ spiritual, physical, and emotional journeys towards their own self-discovery. The young adult book focuses on inspiring its readers to live life to the fullest.
My Wonderful Nightmare
Written by Alma Lightbody, My Wonderful Nightmare records Erin’s journey against ovarian cancer. Her fight with cancer has inspired her to write her soul through her journals, which helped her teach and share her story with others. Erin wrote about her experiences with conventional and alternative healing treatments in this book.
My Wonderful Nightmare isn’t just a narrative about ovarian cancer. It also tackles different themes such as acceptance and self-care. This book reminds you that it’s okay to hurt if you deal with grief. It encourages its readers to be expressive about what they’re feeling.
Just One Day
Just One Day centers on Allyson. It starts with the latte meeting Willem at an underground performance. After just one day of spending together, she wakes up to an empty bed beside her. Willem has left. Over the new year, Allyson decides to start a journey of coming to terms with the limits of her life and finding her almost-true-love.
This book fosters self-discovery as the story focuses on Allyson chasing for what she believes makes her happy. Throughout the story, she has realized one of her desires in life, and she bravely goes after it.
Man’s Search for Meaning
This book follows Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir. Viktor recounted how life was in the Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he states that we can’t avoid suffering, but we can determine how to cope and move forward. While working with the book, he also developed a theory known as Logotherapy, which states that contrary to some beliefs, the primary human drive isn’t pleasure. Rather, it is the pursuit of what we think is meaningful.