Book Review

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.

I want to add to Lisa’s review of the book Focus by discussing prevention and promotion focus. Both kinds of focus can sometimes work together. For example, with the goal to exercise more, promotion-focus gives people enthusiasm for the gain of better fitness, and prevention-focus keeps them vigilant in the long term to avoid losing the fitness they built up.

Master communicators can garner early attention to new science and simplify messaging in ways that appeal to larger non-expert audiences. I credit Arianna Huffington for helping positive psychology principles into mainstream conversation and popularizing many research findings.

Ran enlists the help of several luminaries along the way, including Barbara Fredrickson, Sonja Lyubomirsky and Philip Zimbardo, to help him to understand the science of his experiment. Ran also learns from the individuals he meets at truck stops, gas stations, and motels and realizes that the “ride of your life” can take place even if you never leave your hometown.

From Paul Dolan’s talk about his new book, Happiness by Design, I gained 3 important insights to shape my thinking about happiness in the new year.

Context is everything and those of us who seek to reenergize clients facing big changes need to follow the endlessly repeated advice from the Kenny Rogers song, “… know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.” Eliminate some of the gamble and read Megan McArdle’s book on failing well, along with yesterday’s book on quitting.

In Mastering the Art of Quitting, Peg Streep and Alan Bernstein unpack systematically and skillfully what it means to quit from public myth to personal consequence. Nobody wants to be known as a quitter, yet we live in an unpredictable world where the capacity to move on with agility and minimal regret can be a huge advantage.?

In The 3 Promises, David Pollay illustrates a beautiful way of living and sets out a simple formula to help us get there.

Although it has only been out for two weeks, The Upside of Your Dark Side has stirred some spirited discussion. I want to add a few comments, addressing four myths that have been raised about the book.

The Upside of Your Dark Side feels like a mass media expansion of this basic hypothesis, that “life worth living” isn’t about gaining happiness any more than it is about avoiding misery. The true good life is a life of your whole self. That’s how we grow and that’s how we develop, not just in bits and pieces, but in wholeness.

I highly recommend this book as a source of ideas for enhancing your leadership skills, whether you lead yourself or thousands of people. The many stories of positive outcomes will help you see that you can make a difference by making small changes. Want ideas for your small change? There are more than 70 strategies and practices clearly labeled throughout the book.

With this book, you will learn how kidding yourself is a power that your brain uses for good. Even if we are kidding ourselves, explains Hallinan, self-delusion serves a valuable role in our lives.

I wish I had the room in this article to share all of the many insights I gained from this book. It has helped me to understand myself a bit better, and stand a bit taller in my general prevention-focused mindset. Though I still do have promotion envy, I also see where I can and do embrace a bigger picture. Beyond myself, this book has helped me to understand other important people in my life, including my family, my friends, my co-workers, and my clients.

If recent articles on ways to use character strengths whetted your appetite for information about pragmatic ways to use your knowledge of strengths to make a positive difference in the world, then you are ripe for Ryan Niemiec’s book, Mindfulness and Character Strengths: A Practical Guide to Flourishing. This book explores ways that character strengths can be used in mindfulness practices, and it demonstrates ways that mindfulness helps us enhance and appreciate character strengths.

What is the purpose of this book? It is about how to scale up excellence. Essentially, this isn’t about scaling up in a strictly economic sense, but rather in a psychological sense. How do we take something that’s really good, and share it to make a larger something that’s truly excellent?

The main message of this book is that it doesn’t work to focus only on the cognitive aspects of psychological well-being if you want to increase human flourishing. There are many processes involving the physical body that contribute to psychological well-being. If you have a serious interest in positive psychology and mental health, then reading Positive Psychology and the Body is a must.

Ungifted is an amusement park for the mind, and an intellectual pursuit that will both enlighten and inspire. If you want to be an educator at any level, this is a book you need to read. If you aim to recruit the best human capital you can find, Kaufman has some tips. If you need some parenting advice, it’s in there. If you are seeking new ideas on how to do and be your best, get a copy.

Watching movies with from a strengths perspective is fun. It is an easy and educational way of doing something that already gives so many of us pleasure. Ryan Niemiec and Daniel Wedding know their movies. They show the reader of their recently updated book how to add another layer to the viewing experience and come out stronger for it.

What are the mindsets and preconditions that are present before we can make a choice to be happy? Shawn Achor’s new book outlines the 5 hidden keys that we can all embrace and enact. In every section, Achor provides a helpful list of ways to make this exercise very practical.

In a nutshell, Yes. This book is a fun example of what happens when smart writers are able to synthesize a swath of multi-disciplinary research and weave it into a practical framework that facilitates behavior change. The framework and its lessons provide me with a big picture strategy for being more thoughtful and intentional in my daily decision-making.