I hit a self-help trifecta this last month (and a good thing) too.

I mixed Adam Phillips‘ good advice to live the life you have (instead of the one you didn’t get or might sometime achieve, maybe…) with The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t) by Brene Brown.

The first wrenched me into a reality check — living for an unrealistic and narrowly projected tomorrow while at the same time gnawing at my (to me) dreadful past was not going to be a successful life strategy.

The second gave me a massive dose of the goodness of neuroscience. We can change our habits; in fact there are actual, easy to follow steps. I started by walking two miles each day — no matter what. I wanted a ‘keynote’ habit — a habit that could lead to other good habits. At first it didn’t seem to make any difference, but now it is — slowly, slower than I want, but, it turns out, one foot in front of the other in the right direction with the right rewards is actually a good way to get somewhere.

The third book gave me a name for the godawful weight I’ve been carrying around for, umm, decades. Shame. Brown’s research on the ways that shame disrupts intimacy, feeds anger and causes isolation is unlocking the doors to a shit-ton (sorry, there’s no other phrase for it) of shameful dark energy that’s been causing me so, so much pain.

I would have taken a lot from the Phillips or the Brown anyway — I’ve read my fair share of self-help, popular neuroscience and inspiring memoir over the years, learning things that have literally kept me alive, but then I forget it. Sometimes it feels like I start over from scratch in my process of becoming a joyful human being every few months — mind like a sieve I guess.

But with Duhigg’s book on how to make insights and goals into habituated action to glue it all together? At last — a means to getting on and staying on the delightful path of living my life now, without being ashamed of it, and maybe even toward feeling joyful about it.

I am so grateful to these writers. So very grateful.