The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work


Shawn Achor - 2010
    If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe.             In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG—to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work.             Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential. Among the principles he outlines:      • The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see—and seize—opportunities wherever we look.    • The Zorro Circle: how to channel our efforts on small, manageable goals, to gain the leverage to gradually conquer bigger and bigger ones.    • Social Investment: how to reap the dividends of investing in one of the greatest predictors of success and happiness—our social support network  A must-read for everyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity, The Happiness Advantage isn’t only about how to become happier at work. It’s about how to reap the benefits of a happier and more positive mind-set to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives.From the Hardcover edition.

Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential


Barbara Oakley - 2017
    Our passions and talents may actually surprise us. In Mindshift, Barbara Oakley tells the stories of people who have overcome learning "handicaps" of all kinds—such as Imposter's Syndrome and advancing age—and shows how we can turn perceived weaknesses into strengths. For example, people may feel like they're at a disadvantage if they pursue a new field later in life; yet those who change careers can be fertile cross-pollinators—they bring valuable insights from one discipline to another. The power of simple persistence in building talent is also often underestimated. Dr. Oakley reveals the latest neuroscientific insights into how our brains change when we learn something new. She shares strategies for learning that are backed by brain science, including practical exercises to apply in our own lives.

The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting


Jason Fung - 2016
    But a key element in any successful nutritional health program is a tried-and-true method that most people haven't thought about—yet it could be revolutionary for taking health to the next level. This ancient secret is fasting. Fasting is not about starving oneself. When done right, it's an incredibly effective therapeutic approach that produces amazing results regardless of diet plan. In fact, Toronto-based nephrologist Dr. Jason Fung has used a variety of fasting protocols with more than 1,000 patients, with fantastic success. In The Complete Guide to Fasting he has teamed up with international bestselling author and veteran health podcaster Jimmy Moore to explain what fasting is really about, why it's so important, and how to fast in a way that improves health. Together, they make fasting as a therapeutic approach both practical and easy to understand. The Complete Guide to Fasting explains: why fasting is actually good for health who can benefit from fasting (and who won't) the history of fasting the various ways to fast: intermittent, alternate-day, and extended fasting what to expect when starting to fast how to track progress while fasting the weight loss effects of fasting how to ward off potential negative effects from fasting The book also provides tools to help readers get started and get through their fasts, including a 7-Day Kick-Start Fasting Plan and healing liquid recipes.

WomanCode: Perfect Your Cycle, Amplify Your Fertility, Supercharge Your Sex Drive, and Become a Power Source


Alisa Vitti - 2013
    Relieved and reborn, she made it her mission to empower other women to be able to do the same.Whether you are suffering from irregular periods, fertility issues, depression, or lack of sex drive, Alisa Vitti says that meds and anti-depressants aren’t the only solutions. Groundbreaking and informative, WomanCode educates women about hormone health in a way that’s relevant and easy to understand. And the five-step protocol can markedly improve health and overall quality of life.Bestselling author and women’s health expert Christiane Northrup, who has called WomanCode the "Our Bodies, Ourselves" of this generation, provides an insightful foreword.

Erosion: Essays of Undoing


Terry Tempest Williams - 2019
    She sizes up the continuing assaults on America's public lands and the erosion of our commitment to the open space of democracy. She asks: "How do we find the strength to not look away from all that is breaking our hearts?"We know the elements of erosion: wind, water, and time. They have shaped the spectacular physical landscape of our nation. Here, Williams bravely and brilliantly explores the many forms of erosion we face: of democracy, science, compassion, and trust. She examines the dire cultural and environmental implications of the gutting of Bear Ears National Monument—sacred lands to Native Peoples of the American Southwest; of the undermining of the Endangered Species Act; of the relentless press by the fossil fuel industry that has led to a panorama in which "oil rigs light up the horizon." And she testifies that the climate crisis is not an abstraction, offering as evidence the drought outside her door and, at times, within herself.These essays are Williams's call to action, blazing a way forward through difficult and dispiriting times. We will find new territory—emotional, geographical, communal. The erosion of desert lands exposes the truth of chnage. What has been weathered, worn, and whittled away is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our becoming.Erosion is a book for this moment, political and spiritual at once, written by one of our greatest naturalists, essayists, and defenders of the environment. She reminds us that beauty is its own form of resistance, and that water can crack stone.Preface: The turquoise triangle --Map of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments --The cutting edge of time: erosion of home --What love looks like: erosion of safety --This moment: erosion of democracy --Boom: erosion of belief --Coda: The liturgy of home

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference


Malcolm Gladwell - 2000
    Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.Gladwell introduces us to the particular personality types who are natural pollinators of new ideas and trends, the people who create the phenomenon of word of mouth. He analyzes fashion trends, smoking, children's television, direct mail, and the early days of the American Revolution for clues about making ideas infectious, and visits a religious commune, a successful high-tech company, and one of the world's greatest salesmen to show how to start and sustain social epidemics.

What Are You Hungry For?: The Chopra Solution to Permanent Weight Loss, Well-Being, and Lightness of Soul


Deepak Chopra - 2013
    "What Are You Hungry For?" is the breakthrough book that can bring weight under effortless control by linking it to personal fulfillment in every area of a reader's life. What are you hungry for? Food? Love? Self-esteem? Peace? In this manual for "higher health," based on the latest findings in both mainstream and alternative medicine, Deepak Chopra creates a vision of weight loss based on a deeper awareness of why people overeat - because they are trying to find satisfaction and wind up using food as a substitute for real fulfillment. Repudiating the failed approaches of crash dieting and all forms of deprivation, Chopra's new book aims directly at the problem of finding fulfillment. When that problem is solved, he argues, normal eating falls into place automatically, and the entire system of mind and body achieves what it really desires. "Everyone's life story is complicated, and the best intentions go astray because people find it hard to change," writes Chopra. "Bad habits, like bad memories, stick around stubbornly when we wish they'd go away. But you have a great motivation working for you, which is your desire for happiness. I define happiness as the state of fulfillment, and everyone wants to be fulfilled. If you keep your eye on this, your most basic motivation, then the choices you make come down to a single question: "What am I hungry for?" Your true desire will lead you in the right direction. False desires lead in the wrong direction." Wherever you are in life, this book will help point you in that right direction.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business


Charles Duhigg - 2012
    Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.They succeeded by transforming habits.In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick


Wendy Wood - 2019
    That means that almost half of our actions aren't conscious choices but the result of our non-conscious mind nudging our body to act along learned behaviors. How we respond to the people around us; the way we conduct ourselves in a meeting; what we buy; when and how we exercise, eat, and drink--a truly remarkable number of things we do every day, regardless of their complexity, operate outside of our awareness. We do them automatically. We do them by habit. And yet, whenever we want to change something about ourselves, we rely on willpower. We keep turning to our conscious selves, hoping that our determination and intention will be enough to effect positive change. And that is why almost all of us fail. But what if you could harness the extraordinary power of your unconscious mind, which already determines so much of what you do, to truly reach your goals?Wendy Wood draws on three decades of original research to explain the fascinating science of how we form habits, and offers the key to unlocking our habitual mind in order to make the changes we seek. A potent mix of neuroscience, case studies, and experiments conducted in her lab, Good Habits, Bad Habits is a comprehensive, accessible, and above all deeply practical book that will change the way you think about almost every aspect of your life. By explaining how our brains are wired to respond to rewards, receive cues from our surroundings, and shut down when faced with too much friction, Wood skillfully dissects habit formation, demonstrating how we can take advantage of this knowledge to form better habits. Her clear and incisive work shows why willpower alone is woefully inadequate when we're working toward building the life we truly want, and offers real hope for those who want to make positive change.

Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth


Jim Merkel - 2003
    The spread includes not just food and water, but all the materials needed for shelter, clothing, healthcare, and education. How do you know how much to take? How much is enough to leave for your neighbors behind you—not just the six billion people, but the wildlife, and the as-yet-unborn?In the face of looming ecological disaster, many people feel the need to change their own lifestyles as a tangible way of transforming our unsustainable culture. Radical Simplicity is the first book that guides the reader to a personal sustainability goal, then offers a process to monitor progress to a lifestyle that is equitable amongst all people, species, and generations. It employs three tools to help readers begin their customized journey to simplicity:>It builds on steps from Your Money or Your Life so readers can design their own personal economics to save money, get free of debt, and align their work with their values.It uses refined tools from Our Ecological Footprint so readers can measure how much nature is needed to supply all they consume and absorb their waste.Combining lyrical narrative, compassionate advocacy, and absorbing science, Radical Simplicity is a practical, personal answer to twenty-first century challenges that will appeal as much to Cultural Creatives and students as to spiritual seekers, policy makers, and sustainability professionals.Jim Merkel quit his job as a military engineer following the Exxon Valdez disaster and has since worked to develop tools for personal and societal sustainability. He founded the Global Living Project to further this work and conducts workshops around North America on this topic.

The Guilty Feminist: From Our Noble Goals to Our Worst Hypocrisies


Deborah Frances-White - 2018
    My goals were noble but my concerns were trivial. I desperately wanted to close the pay gap, but I also wanted to look good sitting down naked.From inclusion to the secret autonomy in rom-coms, from effective activism to what poker can tell us about power structures, Deborah explores what it means to be a twenty-first-century feminist, and encourages us to make the world better for everyone.The book also includes exclusive interviews with performers, activists and thinkers - Jessamyn Stanley, Zoe Coombs Marr, Susan Wokoma, Bisha K. Ali, Reubs Walsh, Becca Bunce, Amika George, Mo Mansfied and Leyla Hussein - plus a piece from Hannah Gadsby.

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks


Kathleen Flinn - 2011
    Flinn's "chefternal" instinct kicked in: she persuaded the stranger to reload with fresh foods, offering her simple recipes for healthy, easy meals. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School includes practical, healthy tips that boost readers' culinary self-confidence, and strategies to get the most from their grocery dollar, and simple recipes that get readers cooking.From the Trade Paperback edition.

No. More. Plastic.: What you can do to make a difference – the #2minutesolution


Martin Dorey - 2018
    Start now. All it takes is 2 minutes of your time.'I read this book yesterday and I've done three things today and that is testament to Martin's brilliant vision and ideas. Now it's your turn!' Chris Packham'Once, plastic was the miracle material. Now it's the monster. We all need to cut down our plastic consumption and join Martin's #2minutesolution anti-plastic movement. I'm in.' Julia BradburyOpen this book with your children, give it to your friends. Share your #2minutesolution on twitter and instagram and inspire others. Martin Dorey, anti-plastics expert, has been working to save our beaches from plastic for the past 10 years. His Beach Clean Foundation and global call to arms #2minutebeachclean has been taken up by people all over the world, and has proven that collective small actions can add up to a big difference. Together we can fix this.

Storms Of My Grandchildren: The Truth About The Climate Catastrophe And Our Last Chance To Save Humanity


James Hansen - 2009
    James Hansen—the nation’s leading scientist on climate issues—speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: The planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return.Although the threat of human-caused climate change is now widely recognized, politicians have failed to connect policy with the science, responding instead with ineffectual remedies dictated by special interests. Hansen shows why President Obama’s solution, cap-and-trade, which Al Gore has signed on to, won’t work; why we must phase out all coal; and why 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a goal we must achieve if our children and grandchildren are to avoid global meltdown and the horrific storms of the book’s title. This urgent manifesto bucks conventional wisdom (including the Kyoto Protocol) and is sure to stir controversy, but Hansen—whose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in the 1980s when he first warned Congress about global warming—is the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide.Hansen paints a devastating, all-too-realistic picture of what will happen in the near future, mere years and decades from now, if we follow the course we’re on. But he is also an optimist, showing that there is still time to do what we need to save the planet. Urgent, strong action is needed, and this book will be key in setting the agenda going forward to create a groundswell, a tipping point, to save humanity—and our grandchildren—from a dire fate more imminent than we had supposed.

The Power Is Within You


Louise L. Hay - 1991
    Hay expands her philosophies of loving the self through:- learning to listen and trust the inner voice;- loving the child within;- letting our true feelings out;- the responsibility of parenting;- releasing our fear about growing older;- allowing ourselves to receive prosperity;- expressing our creativity;- accepting change as a natural part of life;- creating a world that is ecologically sound where it's safe to love each other;- and much more.She closes the book with a chapter devoted to meditations for personal and planetary healing.