100 books like You, Happier

This is another book that can inspire you in your daily life and change your perspective. A call for happiness!

Despite what we believe, happiness breeds success, and not the other way around… quite an important distinction. This very well-researched book by a specialist from Harvard University also argues that our brain is flexible enough to change whatever our age, and that it is always possible to mitigate our negative perception of reality.

This leads to a more positive way of thinking that will create the conditions to achieve what we want and lead an exciting life! After reading this book, you’ll be able to make happiness contagious and promote the cause like an activist! A must-read for the next generation. 

Known as the father of the new science of Positive Psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman shows how optimism enhances quality of life. He refutes the idea that some people are simply born more optimistic and shares how anyone can adopt a more positive outlook on life. This book is filled with simple techniques to break depression, boost your immune system and make you happier.

Learned Optimism offers simple, straightforward solutions to help anyone embrace a healthier mindset as they face and embrace challenging times. Applying the content of this book, anyone can learn to view life through a different lens, changing their perspective and navigating life’s difficulties more effectively.

Few people have the tools to handle tumultuous times and failure. Instead of allowing challenging times to crystalize their character, many folks respond to challenges and setbacks by curling up in a ball and crying. In You Are Awesome, Pasricha builds the case that you can actually turn your adversities into an advantage. You can tell yourself a different story and write a brighter future.

In You Are Awesome, you will find principles and practices that will help you navigate change, wrestle effectively with failure, and live an intentional life. You will learn how to establish routines to eliminate stress, change your perspective and grow stronger in the process.

Happiness is a Choice is a faith-based, definitive work that defines and helps people deal with the troubling elements of depression. Drawing from their professional training and counseling experience Minirth & Meier provide a thorough analysis of the factors that contribute to depression and offer solutions to cure it.

This book will deal with the vital connection between spiritual life and psychological health and establish basic steps that can be taken to recover from depression and maintain a happy, healthy, and fulfilling existence.

In this book, Burnett takes the readers on his own journey of discovery, trying to find out what it is that makes us happy. Along the way, he explores topics from love to work to relationships and discovers that happiness isn’t as simple as it might seem. Written in Burnett’s signature witty style, with personal anecdotes and laugh-out-loud moments, this book is easy to read, but packed with neuroscience. It will leave you thinking differently about what it really is we need in order to be happy.

I love how Ingrid’s background comes together so perfectly to create this book, which reflects the crux of her whole professional and personal focus. Her background in design and branding led her to delve deeper into the neuroscience between our instinctual responses to our environments and how this links to our mental health, which eventually led to her hugely successful TED talk, ‘Where joy hides and how to find it’ (which was where I initially discovered her work and became instantly fascinated in this topic). Ingrid champions the idea that we can all create more joy in our homes (and lives) and this book shares both the psychology behind why certain colours or spaces can have the power to make us feel anxious or happy, along with how to practically harness the power of joy to create a home that feels full of whatever joy means to you personally.

One of the most common category errors in neuroscience is the conflation of brains with computers.

Matthew Cobb, who is both a scientist and a historian of science provides a breathtaking and sweeping history of our understanding of the brain - and how it always seems to be epitomised by humanity’s most impressive engineering achievements.

So in the 19th century, the nervous system was described as a telegraph; in the 20th and 21st century, it became a computer.

Cobb shows how these evolving metaphors helped advance neuroscience, but also how overindexing on that computer metaphor is beginning to seriously limit our ability to grasp what the brain really is.

This was a much-needed cautionary examination of the increasing hype about neuroscience. Following a period in which neuroscience suddenly became a pop culture phenomenon, Brainwashed aims to tamp things down. The book takes issue with how mainstream media trumpeted studies that supposedly show how the brain “lights up” when we kiss, listen to music or engage in other activities. Satel and Lilienfied explain what brain scans and neuroscientific reports really reveal and don’t reveal.

I’m delighted with this book because it so aligns with the work I do. Dr. Taylor is a very well-known neuroanatomist, who has scientifically discovered so much about how the brain works, and I love how what she discovered lines up exactly with what we’ve discovered that I’ve written about extensively. In the few conversations I’ve had with her, I’ve been blown away by how much her research validates our process of Inner Bonding. This powerful book will help you to understand so much about yourself. 

Let’s face it, this book is heavy. It is a university textbook, so it requires hard work. But it is worth it.

This is a magical mystery tour into the bizarre wonders of our own brains: why spend a fortune exploring the world when you can explore your own brain sitting in a chair, for free?

By the end of it, I was left ruminating over how we really see and think and over reality itself. The book is your entry ticket to a world of wonder: your own brain.

The book is a massive antidote to all the pop psychology books out there, and will enable you to be a far more critical and insightful reader of such books.