Books for exploring wellbeing
The following books have all had profound effects on my exploration with wellbeing and the self.
These are some of the ones that I come back to again and again for wisdom, clarity, support and exploration.
Let me know what impact these books have on you.
Also let me know your favourite books!
Enjoy!
Happiness
The How of Happiness
Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). The how of happiness: A scientific approach to getting the life you want. Penguin.
The How of Happiness gives you the research around happiness, what it is and what it isn’t and offers the interventions that are science backed with ideas and support to implement practices into your life.
This is a pretty comprehensive book and provides a lot of information. If you have the time commitment, this is great to get you started with the science and the exercises.
Quotes:
“Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it’s not out there is that it’s inside us.”
“Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present oriented.”
“Happiness, more than anything, is a state of mind, a way of perceiving and approaching ourselves and the world in which we reside.”
The Happiness Trap: how to apply the science of happiness to accelerate your success
Seppälä, E. (2016). The happiness track: How to apply the science of happiness to accelerate your success. Hachette UK.
This book is perhaps more approachable and more recent than ‘The How of Happiness’. The author goes from the perspective we are busy, overworked and stressed. She offers the latest research in boosting your energy, managing your emotions to move towards success and peak performance.
Quotes:
“When the speed of our lives makes us feel stressed, drained, and overextended, we blame ourselves. After all, everyone else seems to be keeping up. To succeed, we believe we just need to hang in there and keep going—pushing past the pain, past our limits, and past our well-being. When we do achieve our goals by rushing, straining, and keeping up, we don’t necessarily feel good; we might experience a sense of relief, but that relief comes with a high price tag: burnout, disconnection, stress. But isn’t the point of all that hard work and suffering to be happy? Isn’t the idea that success will bring happiness?”
“Every day, we have a choice about how we interpret our lives. We have the choice to either focus on what we want and don’t yet have (say, better work habits), thereby feeling down. Or we can focus on what we do have (say, loyalty and integrity). Every one of us has at least one aspect of ourselves (and probably many more!) for which we can be grateful. When we take note of our positive qualities and are grateful for them, we become more self-compassionate—not to mention that we start to see ourselves in a much more realistic and positive light.”
Happier
Ben-Shahar, T. (2007). Happier: Learn the secrets to daily joy and lasting fulfillment. McGraw-Hill Companies.
Happier takes us through different theories of happiness and gives us ideas, straightforward guidelines, support and encouragement to integrate happiness into our lives.
Happier is relatively short and accessible.
“Happy people live secure in the knowledge that the activities that bring them enjoyment in the present will also lead to a fulfilling future.”
“In Aristotle's words, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
“Incremental change is better than ambitious failure. . . .Success feeds on itself.”
“the best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
“Things do not necessarily happen for the best, but I can choose to make the best of things that happen.”
Meaning:
Man’s search for meaning:
Frankl, V. E. (1985). Man's search for meaning. Simon and Schuster.
In this seminal book, Viktor Frankl shares his experiences during the second world war as a survivor of the Nazi death camps.
Frankl shares his theories of meaning from his lived experiences and from his patients as a psychiatrist.
He argues that we cannot avoid suffering, however we can choose how we cope with it, moving forward with renewed purpose. Further he quotes “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.” Therefore, if we have meaning and purpose in our lives, we can overcome even the greatest trauma’s and thrive.
Quotes:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour.”
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”
Mindfulness
Dr Danny Penman & Professor Mark Williams: Mindfulness. The eight week meditation programme for a frantic world
Thinking theory
Dr Russ Harris: The confidence gap. From fear to freedom
Self-Exploration & Adventure
Some of my favourite books that support with self-exploration or get me inspired for adventure are:
Liz Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love
Brene Brown: Braving the Wilderness & Daring Greatly
Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist
Cheryl Strayed: Wild
Michael Palin: Himalaya
Eastern/Buddhist philosophy
Dalai Lama: The art of happiness: A handbook for living.
Robert Wright: Why Buddhism is True
Pema Chodren: When things fall apart
David Michie: Buddhism for busy people (2004)