I was looking through these titles rather cynically, and wondering if it would be pretentious of me to recommend The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha or the Discourses of Epictetus, and then I saw it:
The Inner Game of Tennis, by Timothy Gallwey
Yes... yes! I'll gladly recommend this over any book of philosophy. (Different philosophers click with different people.) Granted, I was thirteen and a tennis player when I first read it, but I haven't played tennis seriously in over twenty years, and I still use the lessons in this book any time I practice anything physical. Dancing, chopping onions, running, lifting weights, you name it. I use it anytime I need to do something where the real intelligence at work is not part of my conscious mind, including controlling my emotions, but it works best with physical skills.
Gallwey wrote some other "Inner Game" books, but he was a Division I college tennis player, and this was his first book. This is the book he wrote about the sport he knew, without knowing it would be a best-seller. I don't know if the others were written to the same level of quality.
I would absolutely recommend the Roman Stoics. The privileged ones lived like kings, but were prone to lose everything if the political climate changed. Their lives were absolutely unpredictable and they found ways of dealing with it in their heads. One can read advice from a philosopher/teacher who was later killed by his disciple (Seneca, forced to commit suicide by Nero), maybe the best Roman emperor ever (Marcus Aurelius) or a slave who was freed only later in life (Epicetus). Those guys knew that nothing was theirs forever but dealt with it in a graceful way.
Having gone though Epictetus's Enchiridion several times, it's certainly something you have to pick through. There is a balance between emotions and objectivity that is lost in stoicism.
The Inner Game of Tennis, by Timothy Gallwey
Yes... yes! I'll gladly recommend this over any book of philosophy. (Different philosophers click with different people.) Granted, I was thirteen and a tennis player when I first read it, but I haven't played tennis seriously in over twenty years, and I still use the lessons in this book any time I practice anything physical. Dancing, chopping onions, running, lifting weights, you name it. I use it anytime I need to do something where the real intelligence at work is not part of my conscious mind, including controlling my emotions, but it works best with physical skills.
Gallwey wrote some other "Inner Game" books, but he was a Division I college tennis player, and this was his first book. This is the book he wrote about the sport he knew, without knowing it would be a best-seller. I don't know if the others were written to the same level of quality.