Book Announcement

Today is the launch day for the eBook of Kathryn Britton’s new must-read guide to writing:Sit Write Share This book should be a resource in your personal library like a great cookbook is a staple in your kitchen. Kathryn suggests that people approach writing with an experimental mindset. Likely some of her 55 experiments will become favorite go-to staples that appear frequently on your writing menu, while others will help you think holistically about planning a dinner party — presumably the book or long-form piece that you want to write.

Is this book going to help you dissent and defy? Quite possibly. This is also a book about excellent communication, effective change management, and meaningful interpersonal and emotional intelligence. At its core, this book is designed to change the way that its readers see the world and act within it.

August 31 is the launch date for the new book, The Business of Race: How to Create and Sustain an Antiracist Workplace and Why It’s Actually Good for Business. At first blush, the title says it all: who the book is for, why it matters, and what we can aspire to achieve. But as a curious person and a long -time friend of Margaret Greenberg, I wanted to know more.

This is the second part of an interview of Henry Edwards about his book, The Daily Better. Today we dig a little deeper. We talk about better ways of making decisions than being driven by fear. We also discuss the impact he has had on the world views of his high school students and explore his plans for a future book targeted for them and their age peers.

In 2019, Henry Edwards published The Daily Better: 365 Reasons for Optimism. I interviewed him on December 12 about why he wrote the book. I learned that he personally changed his world view to be more open and hopeful and that he hopes his book will help others do the same.

Mud and Dreams is a book to be savored completely and often. In this day and age, it is a welcome reminder that not only are we “hybrid creatures, both mud and dreams,” but also that our dual nature is something to celebrate and rejoice in, as it is our very gift of humanity that lets us fall deeply in love with life and all it has to offer.

ANNOUNCEMENT: On May 24, we will have a Positive Psychology News webinar featuring Alex Goldfayn, author of Selling Boldly: Applying the New Science of Positive Psychology to Dramatically Increase Your Confidence, Happiness, and Sales.

Sir Anthony Seldon interviewed Martin Seligman on the occasion of Dr. Seligman receiving an honorary degree from the University of Buckingham on March 28 in New York City. I was there to capture the highlights.

As the calendar bends towards Valentine’s Day, Happy Together is a wonderful book for you and the important people in your life. It provides a dazzling array of easy-to-implement exercises to keep your relationships strong and energetic. The Pawelskis demonstrate that relationships can get better with age, like fine bottles of wine.

Joanna Thompson recently published A to Z: Your Navigator to Success, a clear, readable guide to actions leading to greater well-being and career success. For each letter of the alphabet, there is a topic that she has seen work either in her successful career working in financial markets or in her work with people in talent development and coaching. As she told me in our interview, “My book is essentially a distillation of tips I wish I had known earlier. In this sense it offers some short cuts to the top.”

Celebrating the birthday of the 3rd book in the PPND series and announcing the new page of consolidated references.

We all strive to be brave. If we are brave enough for long enough, we will sometimes fail. How do we cultivate the resilience to get back up and be brave again?

Gretchen, you are indeed an accomplished author and I do enjoy your books. You achieve a lightness and self-discovery that many academic books lack, and yet you still root much of your work in the scientific findings that I value.

Prosocial motivation drives taking action with the intention of helping others. We explore the benefits of prosocial motivation at work. Maybe helping others comes to you naturally. Or maybe being prosocially motivated is a new muscle you want to flex. In either case, here are a few things to keep in mind so your helping doesn’t backfire on you.

There is a lot of compelling evidence across industries, continents, and sectors that positive and virtuous practices pay off. Organizations make more money, are more productive, achieve higher quality, produce higher customer satisfaction, and create higher employee engagement. Moreover, evidence suggests that these relationships are causal. When virtuous practices improve, organizational outcomes improve as well.

I recently interviewed Robert Biswas-Diener, author of the new book book, The Courage Quotient. We explored courage, strengths, self-doubt, and the future of positive psychology. My first question came from my 10-year-old, who wanted to know, “How do you measure courage? What would be a unit of courage?”

What if friends, somewhat new to positive psychology, asked you what’s going on in the field? Perhaps they are just curious, or perhaps they want to include topics from positive psychology in classes (college, high school, Sunday school, business) and need to feel confidently grounded in the relevant research. Where would you send them? After reading Jenny Anderson’s Positive Psychology; An Anthology, I have a great answer.

Dr. Tali Sharot just released her book, The Optimism Bias; A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain. The optimism bias is the inclination to overestimate the likelihood of encountering positive events in the future and to underestimate the likelihood of experiencing negative events. The book is a neuroscientist’s contribution to an increased understanding of the biological basis of optimism.