Via Toni Jones - Evening Standard

Find your way to the smallest room in my home. You’ll have to navigate Juni, our 9-month-old mini Bernedoodle, who will want to tangle in your footsteps as you walk.  

But you’ll find it. It is a tiny space, a converted closet. 

It barely has room for one lamp and enough space for a laptop, a journal, and a pen. 

But look upward, and you will see shelves rising all the way to the peaked roofline. Shelves FULL of books. 

This is the place where I write at home. And this is where I keep my dozens and dozens of books on courage.

You may be curious, so I will list a number of them below, but if you fed to sodium pentothal and forced me to tell you which one was my favorite, that choice will be simple:  

“Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” by Susan Jeffers. 

If ever there was a book whose title best describes its innards, this is the one. Jeffers, in simple, honest prose, details the greatest permission slip to courageous acts I have ever read. You will never, NEVER, she says, escape fear. You won’t conquer it, outgrow it, or evade it. It will want to stop you from doing things beyond your comfort zone. And you have but one job in life:

To feel the fear, and do it anyway. 

I can quote Jeffers all day long. Or you can find some for yourself.  But all you really need to know is contained in the title. The rest, as they say, is commentary. 

…  

Here are some of my other favorite books which give me courage. 

Some may be familiar. Others may not. All of them are powerful. 

  1. Fire Starter Sessions by Danielle LaPorte
  2. Tiny, Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
  3. Do Hard Things by Steve Magness 
  4. The Places that Scare You by Pema Chodron
  5. Life is in the Transitions by Bruce Feiler 
  6. The Fear Cure by Lissa Rankin 
  7. Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad
  8. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown 
  9. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz 
  10.  The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer 
  11. The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck 
  12. Courage is Calling by Ryan Holiday

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Scott Simon