Books for Travel: Personal Development

Traveling from my couch is one of my great addictions! Even when I am traveling, as the landscape rushes by the window of my airplane or the glass of my bus, I love to dive into books. I have made it my mission to share with you the readings that have allowed me to escape, both in time and space. To break down this monumental task, I have already written about novels for travel, books to reflect on travel, and stories from great travelers. Here is the latest installment in the series: books that connect travel and personal development, two of my great passions!

Travel and personal development: two of my favorite passions combined! With a background in psychology, I'm passionate about personal growth, philosophical reflections on the meaning of life, overcoming challenges, and self-actualization...

Since the famous Eat, Pray, Love, books in this genre have continued to multiply. They typically feature a character (often female) who thought she had it all, only to lose everything or realize that the life she is living is not the one she dreams of... and she embarks on a journey of self-discovery, often more about inner travel than external travel.

I have read very few of them because I find that they often fall into the same patterns, and at times, some of these books are disguised positive psychology manuals, recycling the same theories behind sometimes awkward dialogues with the > of the work.

However, this theme of travel and psychology or personal development, interests me greatly, so I still wanted to share with you some reading ideas that enable physical and especially inner travel by following the journey of a hero or heroine in search of self.

This writer and coach invites us to follow, in her book Your Second Life Begins When You Realize You Only Have One, Camille, guided by a strange specialist: a routineologist!

I was intrigued by the idea of a routineologist when I read the back cover. After all, travel also has this dimension of escaping routine! So, consulting a specialist in >, why not?

Do I recommend this book? Not necessarily. Tomorrow is Another Day left me with mixed feelings. Easy to read, with a fluid style, its main faults are its overwhelming naivete, its cliched script, and its excessive use of current stereotypes, all within a female universe. A book written by a woman for women. A bias that I find absolutely unjustified and unnecessary for the story. The male characters are superficial and interchangeable. And to top it off, there's a moralizing side: the mother who knows better than her (adult) daughter what is good for her and guides her after her own death through her will.

But, despite all these flaws, this book remains quite pleasant to read, very fashionable on the side of >, self-actualization and midlife crisis, and is a major style figure in this genre of personal development novel.

A light novel worthy of romantic comedies, which certainly lacks depth and nuance, but possesses some phrases and ideas that can spark a deeper reflection on life and aspirations...

The Man Who Wanted to Be Happy takes us to Bali (not a bad destination) to meet an old healer... and himself. I immediately connected with the title and the setting of the story, featuring a somewhat lost main character... even though at times I found it challenging to stay engaged in the narrative (due to the pitfalls of the genre that I mentioned in the introduction).

Other books by the same author that I would like to take the time to discover: The Day I Learned to Live, The Gods Travel Incognito, The Philosopher Who Wasn't Wise. If you've read them, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

From François Lelord, I devoured Hector's Journey or the Search for Happiness and followed it up with Hector Wants to Change His Life, published in 2014, not realizing that I was jumping from volume 1 to the last volume, number 5, skipping the 4 intermediate books: > (2005), The New Journey of Hector: In Pursuit of Time (2006), > (2010).

I liked the initial premise: a psychiatrist traveling to understand, give meaning, gain perspective... Obviously, it speaks to me! Between a coming-of-age story and a tale for adults, Hector's stories offer a tender look at the world from the perspective of a man who is sometimes lost and sometimes found. All seen through the lens of a Parisian psychiatrist in search of renewal.

Replay is a rather different novel from the previous ones, which almost justifies its place in this section! While the first pages give the impression that this book is a science fiction novel (which earned it the World Fantasy Award in 1988), the boundary of style blurs as the pages progress.

Initially, you are a spectator, captivated by the stakes of this new life (and the subsequent ones) that presents itself to the hero, Jeff, who dies from a heart attack at 43 only to wake up, very much alive, at 18. The author presents us with bittersweet life moments.

Then, from spectator to actor. The stakes of these reincarnation loops become intimately intertwined with our own lives. It doesn't matter what Jeff will do. Ultimately, what matters is what we would do. If we had multiple lives. And if we only had > to live...

Well, I have reached the end of this reading list for traveling with this fourth installment >. If you've missed them, I invite you to take a look at the previous three installments: novels for travel, travel stories, and books reflecting on travel.

Of course, I still have dozens and hundreds of books to discover... and I hope you'll help me in this task by sharing new reading ideas in the comments!

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