What does your perfect Sunday afternoon look like?
Ordering takeouts from Deliveroo, getting cosy in your room, and sipping a glass of red? Or getting snug in your favorite spot under the sun, a cup of tea in one hand, and a great read in the other? However you prefer to take care of yourself and unwind, we can give you some of the Empress Mimi top picks that will complete your Sunday nirvana and help you to recharge and re-energise for the week ahead! Read on to never be at a loss as to what to read next again!
1. Poems by Rumi
“Woman is the light of God.”
-Rumi
Jelaluddin Rumi, was a mystic poet of the 13th century and one of the most passionate and profound poets in history - not to mention one of the best selling poets in the world. Rumi’s work articulates what it really feels like to be alive regardless of time, place, and culture - his words simply transcend time and space and will help you understand your path for love and the joy in the twists and turns of your daily life.
By reading Rumi’s poems, your material existence transcend and move toward inner peace, joy, and love.
We highly suggest Coleman Barks’ translations, “The Essential Rumi,” “The Book of Love,” and “The Big Red Book.”.
2. Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Dr Estes
Deep within every woman is a soul singer, an untamed thing, and an expressive force of power and passion. In Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Dr. Estes explores the different ways in which women can reclaim this soul-self.Through this remarkable book, we examine, retrieve, love, and understand the Wild Woman and come to understand how your vitality as a woman can be restored through “psychic archaeological digs” into the vast ruins of the female unconscious.
Dr. Estes offers new paths to those wild places inside you where creativity, meaning, passion, and joy reside. Women Who Run with the Wolves is a strikingly good companion for your spiritual journey which is both scientific and poetic, which is why we highly recommend this book.
3. Radical Self Love by Gala Darling
Radical self love is about channeling your inner bad-ass. Radical self love is learning new ways to push boundaries and live your dreams. Radical self love is a celebration of the everyday, and a shirking of the mundane. Radical self love is about realizing that you get to make your own choices, and that you don’t have to live out what someone else has prescribed for you.” -Gala Darling
This book talks about YOU and just how limitless your life can become when you love yourself. Gala Darling, the author of this wonderful book, offers suggestions and her own life’s anecdotes on how you must take care of yourself in terms of money, job, life, and attaining those things you do want to excel in.
This book is a complete must-have for your bookshelf. It encourages you to love yourself and rediscover the majestic facets of who we are. Highly recommended and will crack you open to the presence of your genuine power.
Oh and in case that didn't convince you, here's an image of Gala herself slayin' in the Honey Bunny set 🔥
4. The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
This best-selling book guides you to tidy up and declutter your home. With the help of the Japanese cleaning consultant, Marie Kondo, the book deconstructs the KonMari method which makes your path to escape the mess in your house and let go of the things that do not spark joy in your life.By reading the step-by-step instructions thoroughly, you will be able to eliminate clutter within a short span of time and see results that will make you feel empowered to keep your things in order and your whole life will change for the better.
Why do we recommend this? Because the confident, focused, and less distracted YOU will show up if you will have the courage to break free from your past and stay away from the negative aspects of your life.
5. The Four Agreements
“Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are.”
-Don Miguel Ruiz
Don Miguel Ruiz, a Mexican surgeon and author who turned from the field of science to spirituality after a near-fatal car accident spread these four guiding principles to live by:
Be impeccable with your word.
Don’t take anything personally.
Don’t make assumptions.
Always do your best.
In his book, The Four Agreements, he draws on the long tradition of the Toltecs, an ancient, indigenous people of Mexico and showed that we have been domesticated since our childhood. It explains how these internal, guiding rules are hurting us and what we CAN do to separate ourselves from it and provide a new set of
agreements within ourselves. Loved and recommended by everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Karlie Kloss, don't underestimate the impact this tiny book will have on your life (you can finish it easily in a couple of course - forego a couple of episodes during a Netflix binge and voila, a new you is born).
6. The Woman I Wanted to Be by Diane Von Furstenberg
"I wrote it with my blood," Von Furstenberg has said of the book and the process of writing it. "I was so honest that I felt like I was at the gynecologist, but my religion happens to be truth and I practice truth."
Diane Von Furstenberg, wife, mother, grandmother, fashion designer, philanthropist, and one of the most influential women of our time gives us her reflections about becoming the woman she wanted to be.
“The Woman I Wanted To Be" is about as personal as a memoir gets. It gives us a private look at a public woman.
This book will help you with the constant pressure to be “sure of yourself and get everything mapped out”. Even Von Furstenberg admits not always knowing what to do, but give emphasis on staying true to yourself, and knowing who it is you want to be. This is a beautiful heartwarming book that shows that behind every powerhouse of a woman, there is a story of perseverance and strength.
7. The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein
Gabrielle Bernstein, New York Times best-selling author teaches us how to transform fear into faith to live an enlightened life.
Each story and lesson helps readers renounce the need to take control in order to relax into a sense of confidence and freedom, and live in a state of flow.
Gabrielle says, "My commitment with this book is to wake up as many people as possible to their connection to faith and joy. In that connection, we can be guided to our true purpose: to be love and spread love. These words can no longer be cute buzz phrases that we merely post on social media. Rather, these words must be our mission. The happiness, safety, and security we long for lies in our commitment to love."
The Universe Has Your back will give you power and control in a world that can make you feel completely powerless.
8. How to Love Yourself (and Sometimes Other People): Spiritual Advice for Modern Relationships by Meggan Watterson and Lodro Rinzler
If you want to experience more love and stability in all forms of relationships, this one’s our pick for you. This book is a hip and smart guide for spiritual seekers.Uniquely told from the point of view of authors Meggan Watterson and Lodro Rinzler, this book supports staying anchored in self-love as you traverse the natural cycle of a relationship.
This book will teach you to love yourself no matter what and that you deserve self-love and the love of others. Meggan and Lodro are not experts on how the man or woman of your dreams fall in love with you nor are they experts in running the “perfect relationship”. They are spiritual teachers who will give you the learning that relationships have a life of their own and share deeply personal, honest anecdotes, and spiritual practices to assist you with the inevitable ups and downs of love in all forms.
9. Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini
You know that sneaky voice in your head, giving you all of your self-doubts? That is your Mean Girl. She’s good at her job in keeping us ladies in our comfort zones. Too scared to chase the life you’ve always dreamed of.
Melissa Ambrosini, the author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, created a life beyond her wildest dreams by mastering her Mean Girl. Now that’s a way to say enough’s enough!
Through this inspiring guide, Melissa provides a constructive plan for creating your path to a helluva life - one that’s fabulously healthy, wildly wealthy, and bursts with love.
10. You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero
Renowned world travelling success coach and author Jen Sincero offers tips on ending self-sabotage and design the life that you desire. In this book that serves up 27 bite-sized chapters of inspiring stories, easy exercises, sage advice, and the occasional swearing.
If you are ready to make changes, this book will definitely help you: identify the self-sabotaging behaviours and beliefs that stop you from getting close to your dreams, storm past your fears to take big and exciting risks, figure out how to make some cash already - basically, it will show you how to create a life you love, and how to create it now. After you read You are a Badass, you’ll have a better grasp why you are how you are, how to love everything that’s a constant, change what you don’t love, and casually use The Force to kick some serious ass.
11. Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life by Gary John Bishop
'Here's what you've forgotten: You're a fu*king miracle of being.''
-Gary John Bishop
A straightforward handbook that will remove you from furiously running on that wheel like a hamster and stop the tiredness of feeling f*cked up. Gary John Bishop gives you the advice and tools needed to demolish the heavy load that’s weighing you down. It’s definitely not the other people that stand in your way, it’s not your predicament that blocks your ability to thrive, it’s the negative self-talk you keep telling yourself. Basically, the great barrier that’s holding you back is yourself.
In Unfu*k Yourself, Bishop leads you through a series of seven assertions:
I am willing.
I am wired to win.
I got this.
I embrace the uncertainty.
I am not my thoughts; I am what I do.
I am relentless.
I expect nothing and accept everything.
Lead the life you were meant to have—Unfu*k Yourself.