10 best self-help audiobooks to kick-start 2024

Dr Kirren Schnack is here to tell you that your anxiety isn’t here to stay. As an Oxford-trained and practicing NHS clinical psychologist with twenty years experience, she offers a first aid kit of tools to help you understand what you’re going through and change how you’re feeling — and it might just be easier than you think. The ten chapters cover everything from dealing with stress to safely tackling trauma. The audio edition is read by the author, and features audio-exclusive guided meditations with calming soundscapes, plus a special Q&A with common anxiety-related questions.

Curiosity expert, Scott Shigeoka, is here to help open our minds, heal relationships, and connect across divides. At a time when tensions over race, religion, age, gender identity, rights, economic status, and more have fractured our lives, curiosity is the key to fostering connection, growth, and healing. Seek shows us how to unlock deep curiosity, strengthen this fundamental human skill and build courage. Read by the author, Seek is a  must-listen for our times; it will help shift perspectives, understand differences and lead a more curious life.

Author and founder of NutritionFacts.org, Dr. Michael Greger, deciphers the myriad claims around longevity and health maintenance. Drawing inspiration from diet and lifestyle habits of the world's centenarians and ‘blue zone’ regions where people live the longest, Greger provides simple evidence-backed methods to preserve the body's functions that keep us feeling youthful. He answers questions like, "Can an apple a day keep the doctor away?" or "Are carrots or berries better for your eyesight?" Read by the author, How Not to Age is filled with practical strategies for enjoying a long, healthy life – and for enjoying every moment of it.

If you want to become luckier in love in 2023, plug in and start listening to Closer to You by bestselling self-help author Vex King. King unpacks the role that self-love plays in your relationships, shares how to love unconditionally and intentionally, and gives practical tools and advice to help you be a more mindful romantic partner. Whether you’re looking to meet your perfect partner or want to build a stronger relationship with your significant other, King shares the skills and practices you need before you can embark on a meaningful, loving relationship that lasts.  

If you set lofty resolutions for yourself that never seem to stick, this is the new year listen for you! After the turmoil of the past few years, we should all treat ourselves with a little more kindness as we begin a brand new year, and Shahroo Izadi’s game-changing The Kindness Method will teach you to do just that. Whether you’re listening during your commute or you’re curled up at home on a winter evening, this self-help audiobook will show you how giving yourself a break and treating yourself with the kindness you deserve is the key to making changes that last. 

In What Happened to You?, Oprah Winfrey and Dr Bruce Perry unpack how our childhood experiences and past traumas can help us understand our personalities and the challenges we face as adults. With Winfrey sharing her own experiences alongside Perry’s groundbreaking research into brain development and trauma, this audiobook will help you understand the impact of your past experiences and give you practical tools to build resilience and begin your journey towards healing. 

Comedian Maddy Anholt’s relatable and surprisingly funny audiobook, How To Leave Your Psychopath, offers advice on how to leave a controlling or abusive relationship. Explaining the tactics that controlling partners employ, from gaslighting to negging, and sharing the red flags that are so easy to miss during the honeymoon phase, Anholt helps you understand why you are choosing the wrong type of partner. Her personal stories and advice will help you escape to a life of freedom and self-confidence if you are with someone who isn’t serving you. 

For former Googler Mo Gawdat, there’s a way to engineer anything to work better, even happiness. In Solve For Happy, Gawdat explains how by changing how we think and learning how to avoid what he calls “unhappiness traps”, we can make happiness our default, even during the most challenging times. Offering practical ways that you can use to bring more joy into your life, Gawdat’s bestselling self-help audiobook is for anyone who wants to learn how they can make every day feel more fulfilling, no matter what challenges they face. 

With so many ways that everyday life and its uncertainties can trigger anxieties, How to Calm Your Mind should be on everyone’s reading list for 2023. In this audiobook, productivity expert Chris Bailey shares how his experience of burnout led him to discover how to manage his anxiety and find calm. With solutions for dealing with stressful situations, both on and offline, to how to deal with the stress caused by our obsession with “busyness”, How to Calm Your Mind will give you a toolkit of strategies to help you start the new year as you mean to go on. 

Learn how knowing yours and your partners’ attachment styles can help you find love and keep your relationship thriving in the bestselling self-help audiobook, Attached. Written and narrated by psychiatrist and neuroscientist Amir Levine and psychologist Rachel S. F. Heller and packed with case studies and insights, Attached will teach you whether you are anxious, avoidant or secure in relationships. They will then explain how to use your attachment styles’ strengths to communicate your needs and build more fulfilling connections.