Each of these offers insight and fresh thinking about subjects that really matter to me. How we think, why we feel the way we do, how to live with joy and honesty – nothing too important!
The World Beyond your Head; how to flourish in an Age of Distraction
Matthew Crawford
In particular: that our capacity to give attention to externals is being consistently monetised for others’ profit, that we need to reclaim our right to undisturbed surroundings (‘an attentional commons‘); that devoting time and concentration to a skill like baking, motorbiking, woodworking, learning a language/ the ukelele creates ‘an ecology of attention‘ that’s hugely beneficial. We know this!!
The Fear-Free Organisation. Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform your Business Culture
Paul Brown/ Joan Kingsley/ Sue Paterson
Vital insights: a theory of Emotions that’s easy to understand and explain; the neuroscientific explanation of how it is that we feel (in sensory terms) before we think (in cognitive terms) so Descartes was wrong, it’s ‘I feel, and then I think I am’, not ‘I think, therefore I am’. How we need to feel limbically ‘safe’ in order to work well (hence the ‘fear-free’ organisation).
The Goddaughter Letters by Nancy Kline
Just read this. It’s like a manual for living a life with truth, joy and energy. Derived from a lifetime of challenging thinking about what really matters. Love. Intelligence. Clarity. Freedom. Equality. A steely intellect supports a light-touch delivery – don’t be fooled, this is a radical manifesto for independent thinking.
Remarkable Courage by Deb Cheslow
I quote this often because it offers such a comprehensive practical framework for building anything – a new business, a relationship, a way of living. Four key principles: High standards, Discipline, Accountability and Systems. Thinking about systems alone is a gamechanger – whether it’s the quality of your accounting system, or the value of your personal relationships, pretty much everything that surrounds us belongs in one kind of system or another. How good are yours?
Reading in Progress: You are the Placebo: Making your mind matter
Dr Joe Dispenza
I’m interested in this because it seems to be a rigorous examination of the science that explains/ links how the mind and body interract, to the benefit or detriment of both. The same thoughts drive the same behaviours which create the same brain chemistry which creates the same results… Becoming aware of this principle invites the question ‘How can we act to change the chemistry?’ and offers the exciting possibility of much greater brain plasticity than hitherto has seemed likely. Maybe it’s not ‘in the genes’ after all?
Tweet, post or email me your thoughts about these – and any suggestions of your own for books that spark great thinking.