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Actually good self-help authors have some tips for better living

(Maggie Chiang / For The Times)

For a good chunk of my life, I thought self-help books were a scam. They hawked simple five-step solutions for how to “get the guy,” “10x your productivity” or “discover a new you.” I’d finish reading, test out the author’s newfangled method for a week and then find myself back at square one: unsatisfied with some of my life habits, but at a loss for how to tackle them.

I repeated the same cycle for an endless conveyor belt of trendy workouts, diets and beauty regimens that are especially inescapable here in California.

Eventually I realized I needed to find better books — ones that guided my own curiosity, rather than laid out my problems and vowed to solve them.

So I and Times staffers and contributors joined forces to find an exciting, eclectic mix of actually helpful self-help authors. Their conversations with The Times about their latest books seek to answer timely questions of our modern existence.

Here are 7 ways you can kick-start your own path to self-discovery.

• Understand your brain. Long ago, our brains developed so-called cognitive biases, what writer Amanda Montell calls “innate psychological shortcuts that we’ve always taken to make sense of the world enough to survive it.” But these instincts may be working against us in the modern information era.
• Build a balanced late life. If you want to live until 100, Maddy Dychtwald argues in her research-based “Ageless Aging” that you must take a truly holistic approach to your health.” That includes managing your medical care like a CEO, tending to your psychological and spiritual health and improving your financial literacy.
• Master the art of being fearless. Zen priest Cristina Moon likes to approach life with her “belly button facing forward,” in other words, tackle challenges and opportunities without hesitation or dread. That’s just one of the crucial lessons she details in “Three Years on the Great Mountain,” where she tells the story of how she left her job as a human rights activist to train in a form of Japanese swordmanship called kendo at a Zen temple in Hawaii.
• Make peace with grief. Grief is often framed in America as a journey with a clear beginning and end. But in “The Grief Cure,” journalist Cody Delistraty combines field research with first-hand experience to show loss, in its many forms, is never that linear.
• Reframe your self-image. We all have different scripts for how our bodies should look, informed by our upbringings and the media. L.A. resident and culture critic Emma Specter reimagined her attitude toward her body with the help of a supportive community and a kind internal voice.
• Ignite your relationships with eroticism. Our ever-advancing phones, computers and TV screens have begun to mold and meddle with modern-day relationships. It’s these unsettling phenomena famed psychotherapist Esther Perel aims to tackle in her most recent live speaking tour, “The Future of Relationships, Love & Desire.” She charts a course for how to overcome the pervasive feeling of alienation and find more satisfaction in your physical encounters: “Sex is never just sex,” she told me recently. “Even when you think it’s hit and run and it’s supposed to not mean anything, the effort not to make it mean something is meaningful.”
• Rediscover hope during election season. Studies suggest cynics are often more depressed, heavier drinkers and lower earners than noncynics. But how do you avoid it in an election season?! Stanford psychology professor Jamil Zaki suggests in “Hope for Cynics” that we adopt a “hopeful skepticism.” “Being hopeful is not a matter of looking away,” he told Times reporter Deborah Netburn this month. “It’s a matter of looking more closely and more clearly.”

California is a place where you can choose your own spiritual adventure. I hope these conversations will pique a curiosity to look within.

The urge for temporary self-improvement may be tempting, but it’s self-discovery that will pay dividends to the very end.

Today’s top stories

This Backpack Boyz vape was found to contain more than two dozen pesticides, despite being declared clean by a state-certified lab.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

California’s legal weed industry is in tumult after a Times investigation found pesticides in cannabis products

• Records and interviews show California regulators have largely failed to address evidence of widespread contamination as the legal weed industry faces crumbling consumer confidence.
• A Times investigation in June found alarming levels of pesticides in cannabis products available on dispensary shelves across the state.
• Consuming weed that is contaminated with dangerous chemicals can have severe impacts on health including neurological damage and heart failure.

Sean “Diddy” Combs was denied bail after pleading not guilty to sex trafficking and racketeering charges

• An indictment unsealed Tuesday accused the music mogul of running a “criminal enterprise” that threatened and abused women.
• Federal prosecutors alleged Combs used his global business in the media, entertainment and lifestyle industries for the purpose of carrying out these crimes.
• A sex trafficking expert analyzed the allegations against Combs — and what his indictment means about our changing views on how sex trafficking works.

Gov. Newsom slammed a Southern California city that banned homeless shelters

More big stories

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• Donald Trump’s politics of hate have come for Taylor Swift, columnist Robin Abcarian writes.
• The Trump assassination attempts are just the beginning; imagine what is coming after the election, Jacob Ware and Colin P. Clarke argue in a guest opinion.
• Can legitimate campus protest be distinguished from antisemitism? This guide aims to help, write David N. Myers and Nomi M. Stolzenberg in a guest opinion piece.

Today’s great reads

Tie-dye artist Laura La Rue has taken a nontraditional path in raising her 16-month-old daughter, Lasca. “It’s very chill, and it’s not that crazy at all,” she says of living in a school bus in Ojai. “It’s baby heaven.”

How a single mom turned a converted school bus into a dreamy live-work haven in Ojai. Tie-dye artist and former model Laura La Rue is raising her 16-month-old daughter in a former school bus. “I’m trying to be present for my daughter,” she said.

Other great reads

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.

For your downtime

A view of Olafur Eliasson’s room-size light installation “Pluriverse assembly,” where ever-shifting arcs of light move across a black scrim, at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.

(©Olafur Eliasson)

Going out

Staying in

And finally … a great photo

Show us your favorite place in California! Send us photos you have taken of spots in California that are special — natural or human-made — and tell us why they’re important to you.

Today’s great photo is from Barbara DeLaRonde-Leach of Palm Desert: the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park in San Diego, where she sought a “reprieve from the desert heat” by attending a smooth jazz concert.

Barbara writes: “It was an afternoon/evening event at stunning venue located on the water at the marina. Acoustics and atmosphere were amazing, as were the spacious seating areas and grassy knoll where refreshments could be had.”

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Ryan Fonseca, reporter
Defne Karabatur, fellow
Andrew Campa, Sunday reporter
Hunter Clauss, multiplatform editor
Christian Orozco, assistant editor
Stephanie Chavez, deputy metro editor
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

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