Gretchen Rubin’s Better Than Before fits right in with The Cultivated Life principle: how to grow for the better. This warm, down-to-earth book tackles the subject of personal habits and how to master them. Habits are the architecture of our lives, Rubin says, and changing habits involves knowing your personality. This forces us to examine exactly who we are and how we operate in the world. But once we identify these characteristics, we can begin to improve ourselves. It’s a fresh perspective I haven’t encountered before and the book greatly helped me in living a more settled, peaceful interior life.