Book Review

Love in a Business Book? For the last two years I have written about love on February 14th – Valentine’s Day. This year, I am taking a different approach and doing a combination book review and author interview.

Silas Marner by George Eliot is the story of a miserly, misanthropic weaver who loses his stash of gold but gains a young orphaned baby girl with shiny golden hair. The love affair between the weaver and the child is extremely poignant, and it has gotten me thinking about a very specific kind of love: altruistic love.

What do you want more of? This is an important question in positive psychology circles. For me, the answer is more and better integration in my life. I find myself trying to balance a continual series of trade-offs between work and home. I want change, but behavior change is a finicky phenomenon. Sometimes, life presents conditions for a perfect storm of epiphany. The confluence of two recent events nudged me closer to cracking the “code of life integration.” […]

What separates people who achieve lofty goals from people who procrastinate with even simple things? Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide is the best and most comprehensive resource I have come across on this topic.

I’ve seen a vast increase in the breadth and complexity of social integration in my lifetime. In his book, Nonzero, Robert Wright traces this integration to ongoing evolution of non-zero-sumness leading to greater interdependence and greater social complexity. He discusses technologies that pull us together and common threats that push us together.

Films that intrinsically revolve around the study and exploration of character are a terrific medium for a journey through the VIA character strengths. A new book published this summer, Positive Psychology at the Movies by psychologists Ryan M. Niemiec and Danny Wedding perfectly lays the landscape for this wonderful journey of positive psychology in film.

Your brain has a mind of its own – a cartographer. Every action, thought, memory, habit, talent, and trouble is recorded in the firing pattern of neural networks in your brain. Why is a bad habit so hard to break? Why is the electric slide effortless for some and befuddling to others, no matter how hot the disco? Dr. Norman Doidge’s book “The Brain that Changes Itself” chronicles the history of neuroplasticity (the brain changing itself).

Can money buy happiness? (Ch. 6). Are happier people healthier? (Ch. 3). Do happier people get paid more? (Ch. 5). Are religious/spiritual people happier? (Ch. 7). Are some people just born happier? (Ch. 9). These are all components of the concept of psychological wealth.

If you have not read it, I highly recommend Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis. One of Haidt’s metaphors, more thoroughly explained in the book, is the very accessible image of…

Here is what will happen to you when you read George Vaillant’s book, Spiritual Evolution: During the chapter “Joy,” you may cry. During the chapter “Love,” you will want to call home to say Hi. You will be inside a colossal head fake – a situation in which you’re learning but it seems like you’re playing.

After I turned down the corner on the fifth page that I wanted to share with my positive psychology peers, I decided that a review of Better: A Surgeon’s Notes…

In the spirit of the Oscars, I nominate Sonja Lyubomirsky’s book, The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want for best single book about positive…

Psychological Capital introduces both a significant stream of research and an important framework for the application of positive psychology to organizations.

Over the last year, I have started to develop my stories. At first, they simply came out as part of speaking to audiences of lawyers about positive psychology. Eventually, I realized that I was just doing what many of those I admire do also.

I had the pleasure of hearing Mike Morrison, VP and Dean of University of Toyota, speak at last month’s Global Well-Being Forum (formerly the International Positive Psychology Summit) at Gallup’s…

I recently started reading Gail Sheehy’s 1974 classic bestseller, Passages. The subtitle of the book, is “Predictable Crises of Adult Life.” Passages chronicles the different life stages men and women…

I have recently read Susan Segerstrom’s Breaking Murphy’s Law and was surprised to learn that much of her research has been with law students. Dr. Segerstrom focuses on the relationship between optimism and immune system functioning…

Coaching as a Science, an Art, and a Discipline BOOK REVIEW: Positive Psychology Coaching: Putting the Science of Happiness to Work for Your Clients. by Robert Biswas-Diener and Ben Dean…

Last night I went to hear a child psychiatrist named Edward M. Hallowell give a talk on his new book “The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness.” Dr. Hallowell has a practice and center in Sudbury, MA that takes a strengths-based approach to treating children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Worry/Anxiety and Child Learning Disabilities. Despite working with a clinical population, Dr. Hallowell is a positive psychologist. (Well, really he is a positive psychiatrist, but that’s just as good!) In his talk he talked about how he is in the business of helping people “unwrap their gifts.” He explained that he often uses a metaphor with kids when explaining ADD. “You have a Ferrari brain; a really terrific and speedy brain,” he said, “the only thing is that you have Chevy breaks. We have to work on improving the breaks.” […]