10 books like Gratitude

In 2009, I dislocated and broke my ankle in the Honolulu airport. Bedridden after surgery, I remembered a friend had given me a copy of The Secret. I read it in one sitting and had an epiphany! I have been manifesting my entire life but didn’t know that it’s name was Law of Attraction. This book catapulted me on my spiritual journey and forever changed my life. I realized I am a deliberate creator and can manifest any desire I want. 

This book has opened many doors for me. It talks about ho’oponopono, an ancient Hawaian prayer/mantra. The story is about the author meeting this old doctor who healed an entire ward of a mental hospital by using this practice. He teaches the author about ho’oponopono and later this book has had the power to spread this wonderful tool around the world to millions of people.

The author's writing is so fluid and fascinating that is like reading a romance. Ho’oponopono is based on gratitude, forgiveness, and love. Since then I use ho’oponopono every day to find peace and healing.

A lawyer who finds himself going through very rough times in his life, both financially and emotionally. At that point, he started to choose selflessness as a way of life and his road started to go down a dangerous path. He regains his balance thanks to gratitude. He starts writing gratitude messages, small letters just to say thank you. The more he writes the more he feels better and suddenly his life changes. Now he's successful in business and love.

I can’t recommend enough writing thank you messages during your days to people you know, clients, and everyone that comes to your mind. And I thank the author for this precious idea.

This is a star-filled book where each celebrity shares what they are most thankful for. Among others, you can find stories by Alicia Keys, Jeff Bridges, Sheryl Crow, B.B. King, Francis Ford Coppola, Dave Grohl, Stan Lee, Forest Whitaker, Ringo Star, and many many more. I have found this reading very profound as you can see the humble side of these celebrities and how they are thankful for all the gifts they received along the way. Every story is different and some are really intriguing but the common point is they do not forget to be grateful and that is the main message they leave in the heart of readers.

"This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them. This is a murder mystery," the young narrator tells us. It begins with a brutal death by stabbing; fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is arrested for killing Wellington, the neighbor’s poodle. Normally I don’t read murder mysteries. I don’t really care who done it – after all, the author holds all the cards and sets up the clues. Mark Haddon’s mystery is different. True, the author holds all the cards, but he tells the story through an Asperger/autistic teenager. I am completely engaged. I care about this kid; I want him to find the real dog murderer. Haddon uses the trope of the child sleuth – Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Harriet the Spy – to frame a poignant story and portray an unexpected hero. Make no mistake: This is not a… show more.

When a young person thinking about studying psychology asks me to recommend a single book to illustrate why I love the field of psychology, I always recommend this book. Steve helped to popularise scientific books about the mind at a time when fellow academics often looked down on popular science. Thankfully such books are now seen as vital outreach, ensuring research gets out of academia and into the wider public. This book takes one aspect of the mind – the uniquely human capacity for language – and looks at it from every angle, from neuroscience to evolution, and from clinical and cultural perspectives. His writing style is wonderfully clear, often entertaining, and educational. 

This book deservedly won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. It is simultaneously a history of autism, and a history of the concept of neurodiversity. It reaches back to the origins of the internet and the dark history of eugenics in the Holocaust. And it reaches forward into contemporary ideas about respecting, accepting, and celebrating differences in the mind, particularly of autistic people.

Maria Cantacuzino’s favourite emotion is forgiveness. I agree with her it is a powerful emotion and a good way to live. Maria founded a unique and important charity, The Forgiveness Project, which helps victims forgive the perpetrators of their crimes by understanding their back story, and gives perpetrators a chance to understand the feelings of their victim and apologise. There is a very close link between forgiveness and empathy, because when a victim forgives a perpetrator they are setting aside the immediate desire for revenge and hate, to understand the reasons why a person might have done bad things. And when a perpetrator apologises to a victim, they are no longer seeing the person as an object but can now see the person as a subject, with feelings such as pain and loss. Maria explores the limits of forgiveness and argues there are no limits, however awful the crime. Her… show more.

This was published many years ago and profoundly affected how we understand the dying and introduced the five emotional stages of grief. This book helped me understand and support my patients. The five emotional stages occur in other losses in life, not just death. When my life suddenly changed, I mourned the loss of my old life and went through the five stages of grief. Recognizing didn’t prevent the pain, but Kubler-Ross helped me humbly accept my turmoil.

Nurses who tend to the dying will tell you that end-of-life dreams and visions are part of the natural dying experience. The authors are hospice nurses who witnessed the over-and-over repeating patterns of a process that now has a name: Nearing Death Awareness. Our culture doesn’t like to talk about dying, and end-of-life behavior is an unknown. The authors show that NDA can be comforting: The lucid dad who says, “My mother’s here!” But NDA behavior can sometimes be alarming, too – I discovered this to be true when my own mom was dying – and the great thing about this book is that it’s a practical handbook for all of us who don’t know what to expect when death comes. Final Gifts illuminates, educates, and ultimately comforts.