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Comment by Maven911 | Hacker News Reader

Speaking of which, any suggestions on any good books on anxiety from the HN crowd?

Four Agreements by Don Ruiz and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, definitely.

Also Seneca's Moral letters to Lucilius. The great thing about this and Meditations is that they're freely available online!

Meditations: http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.2.two.html

Seneca's Moral Letters: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius

Acceptance Commitment Therapy Made Simple by Russ Harris (He has several good books on the subject)

Things Might Go Terribly, Horribly Wrong: A Guide to Life Liberated from Anxiety by Kelly G. Wilson and M. Troy DuFrene

The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris is also good.

'The Mind Illuminated' by John Yates. Meditate!

I'll also add Ecclesiastes - there's perennial wisdom in that old book, and it doesn't demand a lick of faith.

Depending on the source of your anxiety you might find that "Enlightenment Now!" by Steven Pinker is helpful. It was for me with my anxiety about the course of humankind.

Reading the thesis / synopsis of this book, I feel I live on a different planet than Pinker. Not sure how this would make anyone struggling with the bottom of the Maslow hierarchy feel better ...

I am naturally pessimistic, so it is hard for me to swallow that the human experience is improving for people all over the world. However, Pinker presents a large amount of compelling data in "Enlightenment Now" about how we are actually progressing as a species. It is a good counterbalance to incessant negativity of the media.

anything by Eckhart Tolle

I greatly prefer The Power of Now over his other books. IMO he does not practice what he preaches as much as he used to, and that influences his writing in small ways. Just my unenlightened opinion, though.

Alan Watts was an alcoholic. We're all human and prone to temptation and addiction, and even the ego. Curious about the flaws of Eckhart, or maybe not..

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