Book picks similar to
Mindlift: Mental Fitness for the Modern Mind by Kasper Van Der Meulen
personal-development
non-fiction
self-help
psychology
Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World
Timothy Ferriss - 2017
From iconic entrepreneurs to elite athletes, from artists to billionaire investors, their short profiles can help you answer life's most challenging questions, achieve extraordinary results, and transform your life.From the author: In 2017, several of my close friends died in rapid succession. It was a very hard year, as it was for many people. It was also a stark reminder that time is our scarcest, non-renewable resource. With a renewed sense of urgency, I began asking myself many questions: Were my goals my own, or simply what I thought I should want? How much of life had I missed from underplanning or overplanning? How could I be kinder to myself? How could I better say “no” to the trivial many to better say “yes” to the critical few? How could I best reassess my priorities and my purpose in this world? To find answers, I reached out to the most impressive world-class performers in the world, ranging from wunderkinds in their 20s to icons in their 70s and 80s. No stone was left unturned. This book contains their answers—practical and tactical advice from mentors who have found solutions. Whether you want to 10x your results, get unstuck, or reinvent yourself, someone else has traveled a similar path and taken notes. This book, Tribe of Mentors, includes many of the people I grew up viewing as idols or demi-gods. Less than 10% have been on my podcast (The Tim Ferriss Show, more than 200 million downloads), making this a brand-new playbook of playbooks. No matter your challenge or opportunity, something in these pages can help. Among other things, you will learn: • More than 50 morning routines—both for the early riser and those who struggle to get out of bed. • How TED curator Chris Anderson realized that the best way to get things done is to let go. • The best purchases of $100 or less (you'll never have to think about the right gift again). • How to overcome failure and bounce back towards success. • Why Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton believes that the best art will always be the riskiest. • How to meditate and be more mindful (and not just for those that find it easy). • Why tennis champion Maria Sharapova believe that “losing makes you think in ways victories can’t.” • How to truly achieve work-life balance (and why most people tell you it isn’t realistic). • How billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz transformed the way he engages with difficult situations to reduce suffering. • Ways to thrive (and survive) the overwhelming amount of information you process every day. • How to achieve clarity on your purpose and assess your priorities. • And much more. This reference book, which I wrote for myself, has already changed my life. I certainly hope the same for you. I wish you luck as you forge your own path. All the best, Tim Ferriss
Mindfulness for Beginners
Jon Kabat-Zinn - 2006
What if paying attention on purpose (and nonjudgmentally) could improve your health? Again, according to Dr. Kabat-Zinn--it can.On Mindfulness for Beginners, this internationally known scientist, bestselling author, and teacher who brought mindfulness meditation into the mainstream of medicine and society gives you immediate access to a practice that can potentially add years to your life, and will certainly enhance the quality of your moments and your years.Join Dr. Kabat-Zinn to:Explore five guided meditations that lead you breath-by-breath into the essence of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a program offered in medical clinics and hospitals around the world- Cultivate the Seven Key Attitudinal Factors of MBSR--qualities of heart and mind that lay the foundation for mindfulness practice and for seeing and accepting things as they are as a first step to working wisely and compassionately with stress, pain, illness, and sorrow as well as life's joys and pleasures- Free yourself from limiting perspectives, and become more intimate with your own boundless awarenessYou're already in the perfect moment for inhabiting this liberating awareness, which is always available, teaches Jon Kabat-Zinn. With Mindfulness for Beginners, he invites you to cultivate mindfulness as if your life depended on it, which it surely does, and experience the magnitude and beauty of who you already are.Course objectives: Apply an understanding of the concept of mindfulness- Utilize simple guided meditations led by Kabat-Zinn- List the ethical and attitudinal foundations necessary to cultivating mindfulness- Assess how we can choose where to focus our awareness- Plan to use mindfulness to help us develop compassion and insight into our true nature
Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It
Ethan Kross - 2021
Tell a stranger that you talk to yourself, and you're likely to get written off as eccentric. But the truth is that we all have a voice in our head. When we talk to ourselves, we often hope to tap into our inner coach but find our inner critic instead. When we're facing a tough task, our inner coach can buoy us up: Focus--you can do this. But, just as often, our inner critic sinks us entirely: I'm going to fail. They'll all laugh at me. What's the use?In Chatter, acclaimed psychologist Ethan Kross explores the silent conversations we have with ourselves. Interweaving groundbreaking behavioral and brain research from his own lab with real-world case studies--from a pitcher who forgets how to pitch, to a Harvard undergrad negotiating her double life as a spy--Kross explains how these conversations shape our lives, work, and relationships. He warns that giving in to negative and disorienting self-talk--what he calls "chatter"--can tank our health, sink our moods, strain our social connections, and cause us to fold under pressure.But the good news is that we're already equipped with the tools we need to make our inner voice work in our favor. These tools are often hidden in plain sight--in the words we use to think about ourselves, the technologies we embrace, the diaries we keep in our drawers, the conversations we have with our loved ones, and the cultures we create in our schools and workplaces.Brilliantly argued, expertly researched, and filled with compelling stories, Chatter gives us the power to change the most important conversation we have each day: the one we have with ourselves.
Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message
Tara Mohr - 2014
Mohr’s work helping women play bigger has earned acclaim from the likes of Maria Shriver and Jillian Michaels, and has been featured on the Today show, CNN, and a host of other media outlets. Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In gave many women new awareness about what kinds of changes they need to make to become more successful; yet most women need help implementing them. In the tradition of Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly, Playing Big provides real, practical tools to help women quiet self-doubt, identify their callings, “unhook” from praise and criticism, unlearn counterproductive good girl habits, and begin taking bold action. While not all women aspire to end up in the corner office, every woman aspires to something. Playing Big fills a major gap among women’s career books; it isn’t just for corporate women. The book offers tools to help every woman play bigger—whether she’s an executive, community volunteer, artist, or stay-at-home mom. Thousands of women across the country have been transformed by Mohr’s program, and now this book makes the ideas and practices available to everyone who is ready to play big.
A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)
Barbara Oakley - 2014
Engineering professor Barbara Oakley knows firsthand how it feels to struggle with math. She flunked her way through high school math and science courses, before enlisting in the army immediately after graduation. When she saw how her lack of mathematical and technical savvy severely limited her options—both to rise in the military and to explore other careers—she returned to school with a newfound determination to re-tool her brain to master the very subjects that had given her so much trouble throughout her entire life. In A Mind for Numbers, Dr. Oakley lets us in on the secrets to effectively learning math and science—secrets that even dedicated and successful students wish they’d known earlier. Contrary to popular belief, math requires creative, as well as analytical, thinking. Most people think that there’s only one way to do a problem, when in actuality, there are often a number of different solutions—you just need the creativity to see them. For example, there are more than three hundred different known proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. In short, studying a problem in a laser-focused way until you reach a solution is not an effective way to learn math. Rather, it involves taking the time to step away from a problem and allow the more relaxed and creative part of the brain to take over. A Mind for Numbers shows us that we all have what it takes to excel in math, and learning it is not as painful as some might think!
The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be
Jack Canfield - 2004
The Success Principlesâ„¢ will teach you how to increase your confidence, tackle daily challenges, live with passion and purpose, and realize all your ambitions. Not merely a collection of good ideas, this book spells out the 64 timeless principles used by successful men and women throughout history. Taken together and practiced every day, these principles will transform your life beyond your wildest dreams! Filled with memorable and inspiring stories of CEOs, world-class athletes, celebrities, and everyday people, The Success Principlesâ„¢ will give you the proven blueprint you need to achieve any goal you desire.
The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now
Meg Jay - 2012
Some say they are an extended adolescence. Others call them an emerging adulthood. But thirty is not the new twenty. In this enlightening book, Dr. Meg Jay reveals how many twentysomethings have been caught in a swirl of hype and misinformation that has trivialized what are actually the most defining years of adulthood. Drawing from more than ten years of work with hundreds of twentysomething clients and students, Dr. Jay weaves the science of the twentysomething years with compelling, behind-closed-doors stories from twentysomethings themselves. She shares what psychologists, sociologists, neurologists, reproductive specialists, human resources executives, and economists know about the unique power of our twenties and how they change our lives. The result is a provocative and sometimes poignant read that shows us why our twenties do matter. Our twenties are a time when the things we do--and the things we don't do--will have an enormous effect across years and even generations to come.
The Science of Getting Rich
Wallace D. Wattles - 1910
Wattles spent a lifetime considering the laws of success as he found them in the work of the world’s great philosophers. He then turned his life effort into this simple, slender book – a volume that he vowed could replace libraries of philosophy, spirituality, and self-help for the purpose of attaining one definite goal: a life of prosperity. Wattles describes a definite science of wealth attraction, built on the foundation of one commanding idea: “There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made…A thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.” In his seventeen short, straight-to-the-point chapters, Wattles shows how to use this idea, how to overcome barriers to its application, and how work with very direct methods that awaken it in your life. He further explains how creation and not competition is the hidden key to wealth attraction, and how your power to get rich uplifts everyone around you. The Science of Getting Rich concludes with Wattle’s rare essay “How to Get Want You Want” – a brilliant refresher of his laws of wealth creation.
The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
M. Scott Peck - 1978
"Psychotherapy is all things to all people in this mega-selling pop-psychology watershed, which features a new introduction by the author in this 25th anniversary edition. His agenda in this tome, which was first published in 1978 but didn't become a bestseller until 1983, is to reconcile the psychoanalytic tradition with the conflicting cultural currents roiling the 70s. In the spirit of Me-Decade individualism and libertinism, he celebrates self-actualization as life's highest purpose and flirts with the notions of open marriage and therapeutic sex between patient and analyst. But because he is attuned to the nascent conservative backlash against the therapeutic worldview, Peck also cites Gospel passages, recruits psychotherapy to the cause of traditional religion (he even convinces a patient to sign up for divinity school) and insists that problems must be overcome through suffering, discipline and hard work (with a therapist.) Often departing from the cerebral and rationalistic bent of Freudian discourse for a mystical, Jungian tone more compatible with New Age spirituality, Peck writes of psychotherapy as an exercise in "love" and "spiritual growth," asserts that "our unconscious is God" and affirms his belief in miracles, reincarnation and telepathy. Peck's synthesis of such clashing elements (he even throws in a little thermodynamics) is held together by a warm and lucid discussion of psychiatric principles and moving accounts of his own patients' struggles and breakthroughs. Harmonizing psychoanalysis and spirituality, Christ and Buddha, Calvinist work ethic and interminable talking cures, this book is a touchstone of our contemporary religio-therapeutic culture." -- Publishers WeeklyKeywords: MIND & BODY PSYCHOLOGY SOCIOLOGY RELIGION
The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills
Daniel Coyle - 2012
It is an easy-to-use handbook of scientifically proven, field-tested methods to improve skills—your skills, your kids’ skills, your organization’s skills—in sports, music, art, math, and business. The product of five years of reporting from the world’s greatest talent hotbeds and interviews with successful master coaches, it distills the daunting complexity of skill development into 52 clear, concise directives. Whether you’re age 10 or 100, whether you’re on the sports field or the stage, in the classroom or the corner office, this is an essential guide for anyone who ever asked, “How do I get better?”“The Little Book of Talent should be given to every graduate at commencement, every new parent in a delivery room, every executive on the first day of work. It is a guidebook—beautiful in its simplicity and backed by hard science—for nurturing excellence.”—Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit
“It’s so juvenile to throw around hyperbolic terms such as ‘life-changing,’ but there’s no other way to describe The Little Book of Talent. I was avidly trying new things within the first half hour of reading it and haven’t stopped since. Brilliant. And yes: life-changing.”—Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence
The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness
Ichiro Kishimi - 2013
Using the theories of Alfred Adler, one of the three giants of 19th century psychology alongside Freud and Jung, the authors explain how we are all free to determine our own future free of the shackles of past experiences, doubts and the expectations of others. It’s a philosophy that’s profoundly liberating, allowing us to develop the courage to change, and to ignore the limitations that we and those around us can place on ourselves.The result is a book that is both highly accessible and profound in its importance. Millions have already read and benefited from its wisdom. Now that The Courage to be Disliked has been published for the first time in English, so can you.
Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive & Creative Self
Manoush Zomorodi - 2017
Bored and Brilliant builds on that experiment to show us how to rethink our gadget use to live better and smarter in this new digital ecosystem. Manoush explains the connection between boredom and original thinking, exploring how we can harness boredom’s hidden benefits to become our most productive and creative selves without totally abandoning our gadgets in the process.Grounding the book in the neuroscience and cognitive psychology of “mind wandering”—what our brains do when we’re doing nothing at all—Manoush includes practical steps you can take to ease the nonstop busyness and enhance your ability to dream, wonder, and gain clarity in your work and life. The outcome is mind-blowing. Unplug and read on.
How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t: 14 Habits that Are Holding You Back from Happiness
Andrea Owen - 2018
From listening to the imposter complex and bitchy inner critic to catastrophizing and people-pleasing, Andrea Owen--a nationally sought-after life coach--crystallizes what's behind these invisible, undermining habits. With each chapter, she kicks women's gears out of autopilot and empowers them to create happier, more fulfilling lives. Powerfully on-the-mark, the chapters are short and digestible, nicely bypassing weighty examinations in favor of punch-points of awareness.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Stephen R. Covey - 1988
This book was wonderful education for people, education in how to live life effectively and get closer to the ideal of being a ‘success’ in life.But not everyone understands Stephen Covey’s model fully well, or maybe there are some people who haven’t read it yet. This is definitely true because we still see so much failure all around us. Now, I am not saying that by using Covey’s model, or anyone else’s model for that matter, you can become a sure-shot success, but at least we should have seen many more successes around us already judging by the number of copies the book has sold! So, where is the shortcoming?There are two main problems here, and we are talking only about the people who have read the book already. The first problem is that most people are too lazy to implement the ideals of Stephen Covey in their lives. They consider his masterpiece of a book as a mere coffee-table book or a book that you use for light reading when you are traveling and then forget all about it. They do not realize that this book contains life-changing information. Or, they take the information and do not make the effort to actually utilize it so that it becomes knowledge for them.The second problem is that a lot of people have a myopic view of Covey’s ideals. These are people who are impressed by the book already. If you ask them what the seven habits are, they can rattle them off end to end, but then they miss the larger picture. They do not understand that Covey was trying to tell more than he wrote in words. There are hidden implications in this book, yes, and a lot of people have just failed to see through them.That is what we are trying to do. We are trying to show you how Covey’s book, or rather, his model, was a complete model in itself. There was nothing amiss about it. If you implement it, there should be no aspect of your life that should go untouched. The only thing is that you have to understand these ideals and try to implement them in your life.But, before we barge into that area, it is extremely important to understand what these ideals are. What was the model that was propounded by Stephen Covey in his mega-famous book? We shall begin by trying to understand his model first, and then interpret it in such a way that it pertains to every aspect of our life