Do you have time off during the holidays? Despite busy, noisy celebrations, will you have quiet time by a fire or in a sun-filled room to curl up under a quilt with a book? Here are three books you might enjoy.
Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life
by Gregg Levoy. New York: Three Rivers 1997.
Do you feel a yearning, or curiosity about something you’ve never done before? While you could use this book for career planning, it’s more of a treasure hunt for whatever may be calling out to you that you haven’t yet given your full attention. It could be a desire to have a child after never wanting one before (Levoy interviews a woman for whom this was the case), a call to volunteer for the environment or world hunger, a return to the dancing, painting or hiking you loved when you were younger.
Of all the self-help books I’ve recommended in thirty-five years of practice, this is the book that people consistently thank me for suggesting. They tell me how the book has changed their life.
Levoy is a former journalist with no formal psychology training, but he wrote the best self-help book I’ve ever read. I use this book for courage to write my novel.
What I love about this book
Clients, students, and friends come alive when they read it. They connect to new or old dreams that excite them. Also, Levoy is brutally honest about struggles with inertia and fear, ways we sabotage ourselves. Fortunately, he offers the steps we can take in order to progress. My favorite line about resistance: “You shall know the truth and it shall make you nap.”
Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words
by Kim Rosen, Carlsbad, CA, Hay House 2009
Has a poem ever brought you out of a funk? Poetry can sometimes be the perfect medicine for loneliness, confusion, depression, or grief. Soothing sounds or rhymes, startlingly original images, or inspirational invitations to take action, can pull us out of our downward spiral. Poet Kim Rosen offers ten poems that have helped her and her workshop audiences. Each chapter features one poem. She shares how each one healed or inspired her in some way.
Try this sample:
Ever feel that you’re becoming disconnected from yourself in the busyness of work and relationships? Listen to Derek Wolcott:
“Give back your heart/to itself, to the stranger/who has loved you all your life” From “Love After Love,” taken from p. xx (Roman numeral 20 in the Introduction) in Rosen’s book.
What I love about the book
1) It comes with a CD of the poems, some read by their authors.
2) These poems are easy to understand and relate to, even though the poets are topnotch. You may have assumed that you can’t understand or like poetry because you don’t like abstract or experimental poems a teacher or friend may have imposed on you in the past. With this book you can make friends with a down-to-earth poem or two, friends you can carry symbolically in your emotional first aid kit.
Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength and Happiness
by Rick Hanson, Ph.D. New York: Harmony, 2018.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could erase painful or self-critical thoughts and replace them with joy, inner peace and kindness toward yourself? Based on the latest neuroscience research, you’ll learn how to activate twelve inner strengths that are already hard-wired into your brain. Some examples are grit, gratitude, compassion and courage.
What I love about this book.
Like a car repair manual or a cookbook, the advice is clear and practical. You build on strengths you already have as you learn step by step how to use them to wipe out your negative feelings.
