Book picks similar to
Transformative Experience by L.A. Paul
philosophy
psychology
non-fiction
vervaeke
Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization
Scott Barry Kaufman - 2020
In this groundbreaking book, Kaufman picks up where Maslow left off, unraveling the mysteries of his unfinished theory, and integrating these ideas with the latest research on attachment, connection, creativity, love, purpose and other building blocks of a life well lived.Kaufman's new hierarchy of needs provides a roadmap for finding purpose and fulfillment--not by striving for money, success, or happiness, but by becoming the best version of ourselves, or what Maslow called self-actualization. While self-actualization is often thought of as a purely individual pursuit, Maslow believed that the full realization of potential requires a merging between self and the world. We don't have to choose either self-development or self-sacrifice, but at the highest level of human potential we show a deep integration of both. Transcend reveals this level of human potential that connects us not only to our highest creative potential, but also to one another.With never-before-published insights and new research findings, along with exercises and opportunities to gain insight into your own unique personality, this empowering book is a manual for self-analysis and nurturing a deeper connection not only with our highest potential but also with the rest of humanity.
How We Think
John Dewey - 1910
Basing his assertions on the belief that knowledge is strictly relative to human interaction with the world, he considers the need for thought training, its use of natural resources, and its place in school conditions; inductive and deductive reasoning, interpreting facts, and concrete and abstract thinking; the functions of activity, language, and observation in thought training; and many other subjects.John Dewey’s influence on American education and philosophy is incalculable. This volume, as fresh and inspirational today as it was upon its initial publication a century ago, is essential for anyone active in the field of teaching or about to embark on a career in education.
The Age Of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes It Hard To Be Happy
Michael Foley - 2010
The bad news is that these turn out to be the very things most discouraged by contemporary culture. This knotty dilemma is the subject of The Age of Absurdity - a wry and accessible investigation into how the desirable states of wellbeing and satisfaction are constantly undermined by modern life. Michael Foley examines the elusive condition of happiness common to philosophy, spiritual teachings and contemporary psychology, then shows how these are becoming increasingly difficult to apply in a world of high expectations. The common challenges of earning a living, maintaining a relationship and ageing are becoming battlegrounds of existential angst and self-loathing in a culture that demands conspicuous consumption, high-octane partnerships and perpetual youth. In conclusion, rather than denouncing and rejecting the age, Foley presents an entertaining strategy of not just accepting but embracing today's world - finding happiness in its absurdity.
Lost Knowledge of the Imagination
Gary Lachman - 2017
Through our imagination we experience more fully the world both around us and within us. Imagination plays a key role in creativity and innovation.Until the seventeenth century, the human imagination was celebrated. Since then, with the emergence of science as the dominant worldview, imagination has been marginalised -- depicted as a way of escaping reality, rather than knowing it more profoundly -- and its significance to our humanity has been downplayed.Yet as we move further into the strange new dimensions of the twenty-first century, the need to regain this lost knowledge seems more necessary than ever before.This insightful and inspiring book argues that, for the sake of our future in the world, we must reclaim the ability to imagine and redress the balance of influence between imagination and science.Through the work of Owen Barfield, Goethe, Henry Corbin, Kathleen Raine, and others, and ranging from the teachings of ancient mystics to the latest developments in neuroscience, The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination draws us back to a philosophy and tradition that restores imagination to its rightful place, essential to our knowing reality to the full, and to our very humanity itself.
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Philip E. Tetlock - 2015
Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts’ predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight, and Tetlock has spent the past decade trying to figure out why. What makes some people so good? And can this talent be taught? In Superforecasting, Tetlock and coauthor Dan Gardner offer a masterwork on prediction, drawing on decades of research and the results of a massive, government-funded forecasting tournament. The Good Judgment Project involves tens of thousands of ordinary people—including a Brooklyn filmmaker, a retired pipe installer, and a former ballroom dancer—who set out to forecast global events. Some of the volunteers have turned out to be astonishingly good. They’ve beaten other benchmarks, competitors, and prediction markets. They’ve even beaten the collective judgment of intelligence analysts with access to classified information. They are "superforecasters." In this groundbreaking and accessible book, Tetlock and Gardner show us how we can learn from this elite group. Weaving together stories of forecasting successes (the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound) and failures (the Bay of Pigs) and interviews with a range of high-level decision makers, from David Petraeus to Robert Rubin, they show that good forecasting doesn’t require powerful computers or arcane methods. It involves gathering evidence from a variety of sources, thinking probabilistically, working in teams, keeping score, and being willing to admit error and change course. Superforecasting offers the first demonstrably effective way to improve our ability to predict the future—whether in business, finance, politics, international affairs, or daily life—and is destined to become a modern classic.
How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain: The New Science of Transformation
Andrew B. Newberg - 2016
In this original and groundbreaking book, Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Robert Waldman turn their attention to the pinnacle of the human experience: enlightenment. Through his brain- scan studies on Brazilian psychic mediums, Sufi mystics, Buddhist meditators, Franciscan nuns, Pentecostals, and participants in secular spirituality rituals, Newberg has discovered the specific neurological mechanisms associated with the enlightenment experience--and how we might activate those circuits in our own brains. In his survey of more than one thousand people who have experienced enlightenment, Newberg has also discovered that in the aftermath they have had profound, positive life changes. Enlightenment offers us the possibility to become permanently less stress-prone, to break bad habits, to improve our collaboration and creativity skills, and to lead happier, more satisfying lives. Relaying the story of his own transformational experience as well as including the stories of others who try to describe an event that is truly indescribable, Newberg brings us a new paradigm for deep and lasting change.
The Art of Explanation - Making Your Ideas, Products and Services Easier to Understand
Lee LeFever - 2012
Your product or service works beautifully - but something is missing. People just don’t see the big idea - and it’s keeping you from being successful. Your idea has an explanation problem.The Art of Explanation is for business people, educators and influencers who want to improve their explanation skills and start solving explanation problems.Author Lee LeFever is the founder of Common Craft, a company known around the world for making complex ideas easy to understand through short animated videos. He is your guide to helping audiences fall in love with your ideas, products or services through better explanations in any medium. You will learn to:• Plan: Learn explanation basics, what causes them to fail and how to diagnose explanation problems.• Package: Using simple elements, create an explanation strategy that builds confidence and motivates your audience. • Present: Produce remarkable explanations with visuals and media. The Art of Explanation is your invitation to become an explanation specialist and see why explanation is now a fundamental skill for professionals.
The Warrior's Meditation: The Best-Kept Secret in Self-Improvement, Cognitive Enhancement, and Stress Relief, Taught by a Master of Four Samurai Arts (Total Embodiment Method TEM)
Richard L. Haight - 2020
Richard L Haight, award-winning author of The Unbound Soul and master of four samurai arts, shares the best-kept secret in self-improvement, cognitive development, and stress relief, which he calls the Warrior's Meditation.
For people of all backgrounds, genders, and ages.To get a picture of the Warrior’s Meditation, imagine a battlefield scenario with a single Samurai stands surrounded by multiple opponents. A novice’s attention would jump from opponent to opponent in an anxious attempt to defend himself. Such a strategy soon tires the warrior, who will be defeated. An expert warrior will spread his attention evenly in all directions but still experience anxiety as he mentally plans his strategy. His thought and anxiety may be his downfall if his opponents are truly skilled. A master’s attention, like the expert’s, is spread evenly, but he remains as calm as the surface of a still lake. With no predetermined idea of what his actions might be, his body takes the right action without a single thought.You may wonder how the Samurai’s experience bears any resemblance to your modern life. After all, no armies or assassins seem to be trying to attack you or your town. In one way, we modern people are not so different from the Samurai. With our busy lives, we don’t have time to spend hours a day in meditation. Instead, we need a meditation that allows our actions in a high-pressure, fast-paced world to flow from a depth of awareness. The Warrior’s Meditation helps you access and express from that depth naturally.Surprisingly, a significant body of scientific research verifies the benefits associated with regular meditation practice. Below are some of the benefits that one is likely to experience through daily meditation:
Boosts health through improved immune function, decreased cellular inflammation and pain.
Boosts happiness by increasing positive emotion while decreasing anxiety, depression, and stress.
Improves your ability to introspect, which provides a more holistic, grounded life perspective.
Improves your social life as it increases emotional intelligence and compassion while reducing feelings of insecurity.
Improves your brain by increasing grey matter in areas related to paying attention, positive emotions, emotional regulation, and self-control.
Reduces emotional reactivity.
Improves memory, creativity and abstract thinking.
The Warrior's Meditation is unlike any meditation. This method is flexible in application, which allows it to blend with whatever your day has in store. Through short daily sessions, these benefits will open up to you through your active life. No longer do you need to retreat from life to meditate, for with the Warrior's Meditation, you can bring calm, clear awareness and vibrant life with you wherever you are. Eventually, you will fully embody meditation as a way of being, not just a doing.
Open your eyes to incredible new depths of awareness that help to bring out your greatest inner qualities - begin reading The Warrior's Meditation today!
What Is This Thing Called Science?
Alan F. Chalmers - 1976
Of particular importance is the examination of Bayesianism and the new experimentalism, as well as new chapters on the nature of scientific laws and recent trends in the realism versus anti-realism debate."Crisp, lucid and studded with telling examples… As a handy guide to recent alarums and excursions (in the philosophy of science) I find this book vigorous, gallant and useful."New Scientist
The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are
Daniel J. Siegel - 1999
Daniel J. Siegel presents a groundbreaking new way of thinking about the emergence of the human mind, and the process by which each of us becomes a feeling, thinking, remembering individual. Illuminating how and why neurobiology matters, this book is essential reading for clinicians, educators, researchers, and students interested in human experience and development across the life span.
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware
Andy Hunt - 2008
Not in an editor, IDE, or design tool. You're well educated on how to work with software and hardware, but what about wetware--our own brains? Learning new skills and new technology is critical to your career, and it's all in your head. In this book by Andy Hunt, you'll learn how our brains are wired, and how to take advantage of your brain's architecture. You'll learn new tricks and tips to learn more, faster, and retain more of what you learn. You need a pragmatic approach to thinking and learning. You need to Refactor Your Wetware. Programmers have to learn constantly; not just the stereotypical new technologies, but also the problem domain of the application, the whims of the user community, the quirks of your teammates, the shifting sands of the industry, and the evolving characteristics of the project itself as it is built. We'll journey together through bits of cognitive and neuroscience, learning and behavioral theory. You'll see some surprising aspects of how our brains work, and how you can take advantage of the system to improve your own learning and thinking skills.In this book you'll learn how to:Use the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition to become more expertLeverage the architecture of the brain to strengthen different thinking modesAvoid common "known bugs" in your mindLearn more deliberately and more effectivelyManage knowledge more efficientlyPrinted in full color.
Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
Rudolf Arnheim - 1954
Gestalt theory and the psychology of visual perception form the basis for an analysis of art and its basic elements.
Leisure: The Basis of Culture
Josef Pieper - 1948
Pieper shows that the Greeks understood and valued leisure, as did the medieval Europeans. He points out that religion can be born only in leisure - a leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture.He maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture - and ourselves.These astonishing essays contradict all our pragmatic and puritanical conceptions about labor and leisure; Josef Pieper demolishes the twentieth-century cult of "work" as he predicts its destructive consequences.
Toward a Psychology of Being
Abraham H. Maslow - 1961
Only by fully appreciating this dialectic between sickness and health can we help to tip the balance in favor of health." Abraham MaslowAbraham Maslow's theories of self-actualization and the hierarchy of human needs are the cornerstone of modern humanistic psychology, and no book so well epitomizes those ideas as his classic Toward a Psychology of Being.A profound book, an exciting book, its influence continues to spread, more than a quarter century after its author's death, beyond psychology and throughout the humanities, social theory, and business management theory.Of course, the book's enduring popularity stems from the important questions it raises and the answers it provides concerning what is fundamental to human nature and psychological well-being, and what is needed to promote, maintain, and restore mental and emotional well-being. But its success also has to do with Maslow's unique ability to convey difficult philosophical concepts with passion, precision, and astonishing clarity, and, through the power of his words, to ignite in readers a sense of creative joy and wholeness toward which we, as beings capable of self-actualization, strive.This Third Edition makes Abraham Maslow's ideas accessible to a new generation of psychology students, as well as businesspeople, managers, and trainers interested in applying the study of human behavior to management techniques.An energetic and articulate scholar, Professor Maslow was the author of more than twenty books, including Eupsychian Management; Psychology of Science; Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences; Motivation and Personality; and Principles of Abnormal Psychology (with B. Mittelmann). He also edited New Knowledge in Human Values and wrote nearly one hundred articles. His teachings continue to be a staple for psychologists and psychology students."Capacities clamor to be used, and cease their clamor only when they are well used. . . . Not only is it fun to use our capacities, but it is necessary for growth. The unused skill or capacity or organ can become a disease center or else atrophy or disappear, thus diminishing the person." Abraham MaslowToward a Psychology of Being, Third EditionAbraham Maslow doesn't pretend to have easy answers, absolutes, or solutions that bring the relief of finalitybut he does have a deep belief in people. In this Third Edition of Toward a Psychology of Being (the original edition sold well over 100,000 copies), there is a constant optimistic thrust toward a future based on the intrinsic values of humanity. Professor Maslow states that, "This inner nature, as much as we know of it so far, seems not to be intrinsically evil, but rather either neutral or positively 'good.' What we call evil behavior appears most often to be a secondary reaction to frustration of this intrinsic nature." He demonstrates that human beings can be loving, noble, and creative, and are capable of pursuing the highest values and aspirations.This Third Edition will bring Professor Maslow's ideas to a whole new generation of business and psychology readers, as well as anyone interested in the study of human behavior.
The Tacit Dimension
Michael Polanyi - 1966
Polanyi aims to show that science must be understood as a community of inquirers held together by a common faith; science, he argues, is not the use of 'scientific methods' but rather consists in a discipline imposed by scientists on themselves in the interest of discovering an objective, impersonal truth.