Atomic Habits was good, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck was tacky millennial garbage, and the surprising recommendation I got from here, the Enchiridion by Epictetus, has been monumentally helpful.

I'm aware this pouty "I dunno what to dooo" thread asking for book recommendations is a completely original idea and has never been posted on this board or site, ever.

I don't have the image but you need the Fucking Adulting Like A Motherfucking Boss Literary Universe
Also it's OK to post genuine emotions, to feel lost and confused, this fucking "durr internet hate machine" ironic le stoic bullshit was never true and only tourist newfags think it was
Also also don't read Memeitations

>>24510551 (OP)
Not sure if you are already doing this, but I'm in my 20s and the thing that is helping me more than reading is writing, specifically a journal. Not "Dear diary today I gooned to futanari hentai and smoked weed" but explaining who you want to become and plan out small changes to make that happen. Buy one of those tiny pocket notebooks with the top spiral that detectives use in movies and write a list before you go to bed of what you will do the next day. Modern self-help books aren't worth reading since you can just find a summary that has all the main points. The ideas in them are often very basic and self explanatory. Just pick a goal, find a simple and easy daily habit that helps achieve it, and attempt it every day without beating yourself up for failing. Build up from there. If your issue is you don't know what goals to set or who you want to become, then analyze yourself through writing and long walks. Books that have influenced the direction my life has gone: The New Testament (I'm not really Christian), Ecclesiastes, Siddhartha by Hesse, some of Being and Time by Heidegger, some Plato (Euthypho, Laches, Parmenides, Gorgias, Symposium, Republic), Work and Days by Hesiod, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. A lot of the knowledge in those works isn't immediately applicable to everyday life (nor was it intended to be), but they slowly change how you think about the world.

>>24510664
I want to become someone that goons to futanari hentai

>>24510551 (OP)
Read Petrarch's Secretum and familiarize yourself with death as a reality rather than an abstract concept.
Maybe go to some open casket funerals or spend some time in a senior care home.
Everything else will flow from this.
Christians were better Stoics than any of the Stoics ever proved to be, so read the Bible rather than them.

>>24510551 (OP)
>Bachelor Pad Economics - Aaron Clarey

You're already a faggot by dint of being OP. You will be double-AIDS by not reading and doing per the above.

>>24510551 (OP)
what you need more is an instrospection and discipline to work your way out of any shitty position you're in rn. Don't listen to neetniggers living on their parents allowance. Work on yourself via instrospection, exercising, and work for yourself via having a job that stimulates your mind somehow and allows for further progression.
If you really want some book reccs, read Kafka's Metamorphosis and Bible

youre a lost 20 something year old just like 90% of every other lost 20 something year old for the last 10,000 years of human society. No book will give you the secrets that youre looking for and anons posting self help books or 300 year old german philosophy books are gonna make you waste your youth.
turn off your pc and go outside, get a job and mingle with people your age, the rest will sort itself out.

>Sun & Steel is good if you're a nerd prone to rumination and introspection.
>Seligman's Learned Optimism is the one thing that kickstarted my long, arduous climb from a decade long depression and helped me understand the mechanics behind it and pessimistic/optimistic outlooks. It's been years since I read it but afair everything he says is based on research and statistics instead of vibes.
>Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son have a ton of good advice, especially for someone with an absent father.
>I personally enjoy essays from the likes of Waldo Emerson and Montaigne and believe that reading them will improve anyone's life.
>Travel essays aren't directly useful but I find them comfy and good for preserving one's capacity to dream. Camus' ones are nice and I have seen anons recommend Montaigne's before.
>Catcher in the Rye might be useful if you suffer from arrested development. Tip: if you resent Holden, you probably do.
>A funny book you can revisit endlessly like Fear & Loathing or Gargantua and Pantagruel is good for your mind too.
>Keep clear from /x/ schizophrenia, tradlarping and anything resentful.
All that aside, move nigga! You can't read your way out of this. Books will help but you gotta move. Start practicing a sport, go out to places in your city you've never been to, take classes on things you have always wanted to learn. Move!

>>24510645
i have the chart for you.

Self-help books generate self-hate and these authors know this well and they much the parasite on the body of the host. Issues of the mind cannot be remedied with mind. Cognition, abstraction, conceptualisation are all oil on the fire of the time. It can only be doused by non-perpetuation. Thoughtlessness, ubiquity, and nothingness are the only cures. Whatever outward practice allows for this inward state is medicine. I wrote this for you. I don't love you.

>>24510551 (OP)
The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer might help you fight some peace at that age when you feel a lot of pressure and just endless emotion

>>24510664
I don't know about that list or the goal and routine fetishism people go on and on about, but I also recommend writing down your thoughts. I feel like most people don't get much space or time to just let their thoughts and feelings on this or that form properly. We're always doing something, or with company, or actively distracting ourselves. Making self reflection a conscious activity by just sitting down and writing what comes to mind and following it where it goes does much to remedy this.

*This*
Has 'self-help' title. But there is no advice contained therein. Because any advice will just make you gay unless the advice in question is the 10 Commandments which is so OG and classic. Just read le gewd memoir.

>>24510551 (OP)
>December 2011
Hope whoever made that pic is doing ok these days

>>24510742
>just become a plumber or HVAC nigger bro
excon NPC vocations

>>24510551 (OP)
I feel people who have the right answer won’t be here on 4chan.

Self-help books are pure entertainment and extremely addictive
Don't waste your time reading them and also don't postpone actually living your life and making concrete steps to fix your life because you're waiting for the perfect book to solve all of your problems
Self-help is about selling books, it's not about fixing your life

>>24510551 (OP)
try "modern man in search of soul". jung corrects what stoicism overlooks. marcus aurelius tells us that things external to us do not harm us, only our internal estimation of them, amd that we have complete control of our estimation of things. we do not have complete control of our estimation of things. if we did, there would be no such thing as patience or willpower. people could quit heroin and cocaine at a moment's notice. simply put:
>I could be trapped inside a nutshell and consider myself a king of infinite space, if only I didn't have bad dreams. (Hamlet)
everyone has lost their temper, and reached a point where if someone told you to simply change your estimation what was bothering you, you'd beat the shit out of them. it's only human. jung explores this with his concept of the shadow and the persona. he teaches that we can discover our innerworkings and give vent to them when need be, rather than simply claiming they aren't there. we can find identify the things that we are not able to express about ourselves in our persona, and find controlled, safe methods of releasing them, before they build to a breaking point. for example:
>"Swearing has the same soothing effect upon our angry passions that smashing the furniture or slamming the doors is so well known to exercise; added to which it is much cheaper. Swearing clears a man out like a pen’orth of gunpowder does the wash-house chimney. An occasional explosion is good for both." (idle thoughts of an idle fellow)

>>24512092
>I also recommend writing down your thought
I just do it here.

>>24510551 (OP)
Read psycho cybernetics, it helped me stop hating myself so much.
Still, I find the exercises lacking, right now i'm reading the next book the same autor wrote: the power of self image psychology