By African American Fiction Author Denise Turney

Your healing process is ongoing. It takes courage and work to heal. But that doesn’t mean that your healing process has to be hard. After all, too much struggle and you could become tempted to quit. Face it. There’s no getting around it. In this world, maintaining inner health requires more than thought. If you’re serious about getting and staying well, you’re going to have to take inspired action, including reading books you’re guided to.

Magical Thinking Is Not Part of Your Healing Process

It can’t be overstressed that you have to take smart actions to heal. Magical thinking is not going to save you. Instead, learning, growing and paying attention are healing keys. Reading empowering books can be a shortcut to healing.

Howbeit, reading a lot of books, including popular self-help books, may never be enough if you don’t take the right actions. For example, to gain the most from self-help books, commit to completing exercises and worksheets in those books.

Types of worksheets you might find in self-help books include questionnaires that are used to measure your self-esteem. Others include visualization exercises designed to help you identify your core beliefs. Examples of core beliefs are “life is good”, “life is hard”, “people are kind” and “I succeed when I give my best”.

Books Offering Healing

Surprisingly, some exercises in self-help books are easy to put into practice. Yet, that doesn’t mean that the work won’t dig deep. This happened to me years ago. After experiencing frustration and disappointment, I started reading self-help books. For years, that proved to be rewarding.

At the start of one of the books, the author shared that most people who buy self-help books not only don’t finish reading the books, they also don’t complete the exercises. I took that as a challenge. Before I knew it, I was committed to finishing each self-help book I bought.

More importantly, I was committed to completing each exercise and worksheet in the books. While working on one exercise, I broke down in tears. To this day, it surprises me how much of an impact that simple exercise had on me.

Your Healing Process Exercises in Self-Love

It was an exercise in self-love. Was I ever shocked to learn how hard it was to stand in front of a mirror and repeat “I love you” to myself. Had thought it would be a piece of cake. Actually, at first glance, I thought the sheer mention of the exercise was silly.

By the time I finished that book, I knew I had to work on loving myself, and I did. It was one of the strongest, most clear parts of my healing process.

Reading that book and doing the exercises proved to be an eye opener. Yet, that’s just one way how reading books can help you to heal. Safely looking into the inner workings of a successful person’s life can also prove beneficial.

Committed to Your Healing Process

For instance, if you’re committed to healing from addiction, procrastination, workaholism or a habit that keeps you from living your best life, reading an autobiography or biography about people who have faced the same challenge could keep you from feeling alone or isolated.

Keep reading about how those people overcame the challenge and you might reinforce your belief that you can overcome this challenge too. By way of these lessons, you may regain inner health. You may feel better about yourself and about life in general. The effects can be far reaching.

Although inner health and success (career success, rewarding relationships, etc.) may not appear connected, they are. Additionally, just as poor physical health can drain your energy, weak inner health can suck the life out of your mental stability, hopes and happiness.

Good Inner Health a Hallmark on Your Healing Process

Get into the habit of beating yourself up and you might not notice how your inner health is declining. In fact, make depreciating yourself a habit, and you might start to think that going through the day feeling “humdrum” is normal. If you want to increase your energy and live a joyful life, don’t let this be your path.

Stir up your courage. Ask to receive inner wisdom. Seek out guidance from the Creator. Trust the healing process. Furthermore, take inspired action. As again, it’s not enough to simply want a healing. Additionally, it’s not enough to just think about living with inner health. You have to take the right actions.

Self-Care Priorities

Even more, you might have to take the right actions over and over again. Keep your focus on the outcomes that you want to experience. Stay focused on your fitness goals, relaxation strategies, career successes and the health of your relationships.

Also, keep your self-love and self-care practices top of mind. Reading books, including self-help books and a powerful autobiography or biography can offer motivation. At the start of your healing journey, you might not feel as if you need motivation. But that can change and fast.

Should you feel mentally or emotionally exhausted, a primary source of healing might come through books. Reading about someone else’s courage to overcome offers conviction. This happened to me when I was a kid, trying to make something good of my writing dreams.

More Ways Books Aid Your Healing Process

Learning of other people’s success commitments proved healing for me. Just knowing that someone had surmounted hard odds was energizing. For you, self-help books might provide techniques, strategies and insights that you can use to shift your beliefs away from loss. Other ways that books could help your healing process include:

• Lower your defenses so you can receive healing
• Build connection with people dealing with similar challenges
• Offer clear pathways thru hurt to healing
• Provide tools to take smart action
• List treatments and healing organization resources

Ongoing Mental Healing

In turn, you might incorporate healthy, loving actions into your daily routines. There’s so much good that can be found in books. Despite what they look like, books are not just words on pages. After all, books are written by people who’ve faced their own challenges. Effective self help books are authored by people who have spent hours, maybe years, interviewing, surveying and studying children and adults.

Writers of these books have the skill to share medical and scientific results without being judgmental. It’s this approach that could draw you closer, make it easier for you to accept new healing actions. Keep going. Don’t ever give up on yourself. Long term emotional and mental healing could be closer than you think.