books : positive psychology....... .Talent Development Resources --..home page...site map

Lisa G. Aspinwall, Ursula M. Staudinger. A Psychology of Human Strengths: Fundamental Questions and Future Directions for a Positive Psychology

Dennis W. Bakke. Joy At Work: A Revolutionary Approach To Fun On The Job
We need to design organizations that encourage people to look beyond job security. Most executives have no idea how to create such an environment because they may never have experienced a joyful workplace themselves. But the love of work and accomplishment, the passion to serve, and the readiness to honor individual traits, gifts, and failings still exist in the human spirit. These qualities transcend industrialism and must be welcomed where we spend most of our waking hours -- the workplace.
> from author site dennisbakke.com

Martha Beck. Finding Your Own North Star

Martha Beck. The Joy Diet: 10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life

Tara Bennett-Goleman Emotional Alchemy : How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

Gregory Berns, MD. PhD. Satisfaction : The Science of Finding True Fulfillment
Berns has examined satisfaction from the inside out -- looking at the exquisite interplay between brain structure and experience -- and from the outside in. He has studied people who engage in an array of activities, including solving crossword puzzles, running ultra marathons and engaging in sadomasochistic sex. The explanation for why some people pursue these activities, and why they find them satisfying, can be found deep inside the brain. "I used to think that we want pleasure and happiness, and now I don't think that is the case at all," says Berns. "Happiness and pleasure are passive emotions, and you don't have to do much to achieve those feelings. I think of satisfaction in terms of a much more active component. Nature never said you had to be happy. It said you had to learn to adapt to the world." Satisfaction is one of a number of positive emotions such as joy, love and happiness to which psychologists and neuroscientists have only recently started paying attention.
> from review article For true fulfillment, seek satisfaction, not happiness, By Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, LA Times September 5, 2005

Marcus Buckingham, Donald Clifton, Ph.D. Now, Discover Your Strengths
The book does indeed propose a unique approach: focusing on enhancing people's strengths rather than eliminating their weaknesses. Following up on the coauthors' popular previous book, First, Break All the Rules, it fully describes 34 positive personality themes the two have formulated (such as Achiever, Developer, Learner, and Maximizer) and explains how to build a "strengths-based organization" by capitalizing on the fact that such traits are already present among those within it. Most original and potentially most revealing, however, is a Web-based interactive component that allows readers to complete a questionnaire developed by the Gallup Organization and instantly discover their own top-five inborn talents." [from Amazon.com review]

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention   [publisher:] "The creative excitement of the artist at her easel or the scientist in the lab. It comes as close to the ideal fulfillment as we all hope to accomplish, and so rarely do. Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi interviewed more than ninety of possibly the most interesting people in the world -- people like actor Ed Asner, authors Robertson Davies and Nadine Gordimer, scientists Jonas Salk and Linus Pauling..."  [longer review]

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The Evolving Self : A Psychology for the Third Millenium
"To contribute to greater harmony, a person's consciousness has to become complex... aware of and in control of one's unique potentials.. able to create harmony between goals and desires, sensations and experiences, both for oneself and for others. People who achieve this are not only going to have a more fulfilling life, but they are almost certainly more likely to contribute to a better future."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Finding Flow : The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life
"It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life.  When we are in flow, we are not happy, because to experience happiness we must focus on our inner states, and that would take away attention from the task at hand... The happiness that follows flow is of our own making, and it leads to increasing complexity and growth in consciousness."

Howard Raphael Cushnir.  Unconditional Bliss: Finding Happiness in the Face of Hardship  [book site: www.livingthequestions.org]

Dalai Lama, Herbert Benson et al. Mindscience - an East West Dialogue

Elaine de Beauport and Aura Sofia Diaz. The Three Faces of Mind: Think, Feel, and Act to Your Highest Potential
The Three Faces of Mind is based on 26 years of teaching and research. De Beauport's most innovative chapters focus on the activities of the limbic brain, which includes affectional mood and motivational intelligence. It turns out that practicing love and exploring the connections that link us to others is healthy and life-enhancing. De Beauport also reveals that creativity and spirituality are connected to intuitive intelligence. Practical exercises are peppered throughout the book making these insights into the mind not only edifying but practical. from book review by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat at spiritualityhealth.com

Ed Diener, Eunkook M. Suh.  Culture and Subjective Well-Being
"The question of what constitutes the good life has been pondered for millennia. Yet only in the last decades has the study of well-being become a scientific endeavor. This book is based on the idea that we can empirically study quality of life and make cross-society comparisons of subjective well-being (SWB)... The contributors analyze SWB in relation to money, age, gender, democracy, and other factors. Among the interesting findings is that although wealthy nations are on average happier than poor ones, people do not get happier as a wealthy nation grows wealthier... Ed Diener is Professor of Psychology and head of the Subjective Well-Being Laboratory at the University of Illinois. Eunkook M. Suh is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Social Behavior at the University of California, Irvine."

Jim Donovan. Handbook to a Happier Life : A Simple Guide to Creating the Life You've Always Wanted
"How many times have you said, "All I want is to be happy"? So many of us get caught up in looking outside of ourselves for happiness when, in fact, happiness is something that you can choose at any time. The old saying "Happiness is an inside job" does not refer to working indoors. It means that it is we who choose whether or not we are happy."

Mark Epstein, M.D.  Going on Being: Buddhism and the Way of Change: A Positive Psychology for the West

Mark Epstein, M.D.  Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness ... [review]

Andy Fisher, David Abram.  Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life
[from Back Cover:] ".. offers an original introduction to ecopsychology-an emerging field that ties the human mind to the natural world. In order for ecopsychology to be a force for social change, Andy Fisher insists it must become a more comprehensive and critical undertaking. Drawing masterfully from humanistic psychology, hermeneutics, phenomenology, radical ecology, nature writing, and critical theory, he develops a compelling account of how the human psyche still belongs to nature. This daring and innovative book proposes a psychology that will serve all life, providing a solid base not only for ecopsychological practice, but also for a critical theory of modern society."

David Gershon, Gail Straub. Empowerment
Empowerment builds on two decades of work of its authors working with thousands of people to help them create their heart's desire. It is based on the premise that our thoughts and beliefs create the conditions of our life; if we want to bring about changes in our life we need to change our beliefs. The book assists readers in doing this. It covers seven areas of life -- relationships, sexuality, money, work, body, emotions and spirituality.

Pam Golden. Choose the Happiness Habit
"Are you as happy as you want to be right now?" "Do you have moments of happiness every day of your life?" Happiness is not something that comes to us. It is something we create now, today. Waiting for something to change in order to be happy is waiting to live your life. If you have only one life, month, week, or moment to live, let it be a happy one, a joyous expression of the gift of life. ... Pam Golden shows us the proven habits and traits of happy people. Book has been featured on Oprah.
eBook edition : Choose the Happiness Habit

Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence  "One source of a positive or negative outlook may well be inborn temperament...Developing a competency of any kind strengthens the sense of self-efficacy; making a person more willing to take risks and seek out more demanding challenges. And surmounting those challenges in turn increases the sense of self-efficacy. This attitude makes people more likely to make the best use of whatever skills they may have -- or to do what it takes to develop them."

Cliff Havener Meaning: The Secret of Being Alive
"Purpose, Meaning, Creativity, Spirit are the things that make us feel alive. Living without them is a mechanical imitation of life. .. the social systems we live in teach us to be "normal". "Normal" means to conform to rules, forms and processes without ever asking "Why?". It separates us from our deepest authenticity."

Barbara Held, Ph.D.  Stop Smiling, Start Kvetching : A 5 Step Guide to Creative Complaining
"I'm worried that we're not making space for people to feel bad," says Dr. Held, a clinical psychologist at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me... "Life is very hard. If you're having a hard time with something, it can make it harder to cope if you feel pressure to act O.K. when you're not."

Lois Holzman Performing Psychology : A Postmodern Culture of the Mind
"essays and stage plays by and about Fred Newman, the controversial American philosopher, psychotherapist, playwright and political activist for whom psychology, social action, human development and performance are one. The reader is invited into dialogues currently taking place among psychologists, philosophers, artists, and community activists on such topics as: the nature of human subjectivity; the relationship of theater to human development; the status of traditional science in a postmodern world; the process of therapy and diagnosis; and the re-initiation of creativity and growth."

Susan Kavaler-Adler The Creative Mystique : From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and Creativity

Jeff Keller. Attitude Is Everything: Change Your Attitude... and You Change Your Life

Corey L. M. Keyes, Jonathan Haidt. Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived The editors.. believe that during the past four or five decades psychology has focused too narrowly on human "illnesses, problems and weaknesses," and that "more work is needed in the areas of virtues; character strengths; and the social, psychological, and biological factors that enable human beings to flourish." To flourish is not only to be free of mental illness, but also to have positive mental health - to be filled with emotional vitality and to function positively in the private and social realms of life. Altogether, there are 23 contributors to this book.. from 9 different colleges and universities in the USA; from The Gallup Organization.. and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany. The chapters are all well organized, well written and extensively documented, some with several pages of references. [from mentalhelp.net review]

Richard Layard. Happiness: Lessons from a New Science
There is a paradox at the heart of our lives. We all want more money, but as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not speculation: It's the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes have more than doubled. The central question the great economist Richard Layard asks in Happiness is this: If we really wanted to be happier, what would we do differently? First we'd have to see clearly what conditions generate happiness and then bend all our efforts toward producing them. That is what this book is about-the causes of happiness and the means we have to effect it.

Marvin Levine. The Positive Psychology of Buddhism and Yoga : Paths to a Mature Happiness

David Thoreson Lykken. Happiness: The Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment

Salvatore R. Maddi, Deborah M. Khoshaba. Resilience at Work: How to Succeed No Matter What Life Throws at You

Daniel Nettle. Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile
Buy the couch or go for the resort vacation? Scientists around the world have explored such questions to learn what makes the human animal happy. In "Happiness," Daniel Nettle translates recent studies on brain systems, dopamine, anti-depressants, hallucinogens and the marketing of happiness.

Donald S. Neviaser The Inner View, Life Enhancing Perspectives

Fred Newman and Lois Holzman The End of Knowing: A New Developmental Way of Learning
'Fred Newman and Lois Holzman offer the alternative of "performed activity"--a non-academic way forward to develop and add meaning to our lives. The authors believe that it is through participation in cultural, educational and psychological projects that one can achieve personal enrichment. These projects and ideas have been formulated from 25 years of practice in the authors' own "anti-institution," a development community free of political and academic affiliations.' [Amazon.com]

David Niven. The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It
Based on scientific research and psychological studies of real people, these 100 practices, attitudes, and habits have been proven to transform an unhappy existence into a full and happy life. Experts have spent their careers investigating what makes people happy. While their methods are sound and their conclusions valuable, the results often remain hidden in obscure scholarly journals. At last, social scientist and psychologist David Niven, Ph. D., has cut through the scientific gobbledygook. After examining over a thousand of the most recent and important scholarly studies into the psychological traits of happy people and uncovering their most promising discoveries into the causes of happiness. Dr. Niven presents 100 easy-to-digest nuggets of advice... [Amazon.com]

Judith Orloff, MD. Positive Energy: 10 Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress, and Fear into Vibrance, Strength, and Love

"Dr. Orloff is the pioneer behind Energy Psychiatry, a new field that addresses the subtle energetic components of health and behavior. Energy Psychiatry blends the practice of mainstream medicine with an emerging scientific understanding of subtle energies, revered by many cross-cultural healing traditions as our life force. In Positive Energy, Dr. Orloff explains this exciting new discipline and how it led her to formulate ten essential prescriptions for boosting energy, improving relationships, and combating energy vampires." [from book jacket]

Norman Vincent Peale  The Power of Positive Thinking

Susan K. Perry, PhD.  Writing in Flow : Keys to Enhanced Creativity
"I don't believe that when you get into a creative place, you're giving up thinking" she says. "You're super-thinking, better and with more parts of your mind than you do normally. With a 'busy mind' you're fragmented, you're unfocused, distracted, too many things on your mind. You want to get to a place which is both loose, relaxed, and focused. What I found in my studies of flow are two things you need to do to get to this place where .. you can be most creative: to loosen up, and focus in."   [from interview]

Susan K. Perry, PhD.  Loving in Flow : How the Happiest Couples Get and Stay That Way

Christopher Peterson, Martin Seligman. Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification
Within the larger virtues of wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence (each accompanied by an introductory overview), contributors have written on associated qualities, including fairness, leadership, prudence, gratitude, bravery, love of learning, creativity, and curiosity. Each chapter includes a consensual definition followed by analysis of theoretical traditions and measures; correlates and consequences; development; enabling and inhibiting factors; gender, cross-cultural, and cross-national aspects; deliberate interventions; and future areas of research. A concluding chapter addresses assessment and applications. [Book News]

Robert M Pirsig.  Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance  - [online book]

I'm happy to be riding back into this country. It is a kind of nowhere, famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that. Tensions disappear along old roads like this. We bump along the beat-up concrete between the cattails and stretches of meadow and then more cattails and marsh grass. Here and there is a stretch of open water and if you look closely you can see wild ducks at the edge of the cattails. [from Ch. 1]

Stephen M. Pollan, Mark Levine. It's All in Your Head : Thinking Your Way to Happiness
Stephen M. Pollan, a New York City-based attorney, financial adviser, and career expert, is one of America's most-renowned financial experts. Mark Levine has been Stephen Pollan's collaborator for more than eighteen years. Together they have authored numerous books, including the national bestsellers Lifescripts, Live Rich, and Die Broke, and most recently, Second Acts. They have been nominated for three National Magazine Awards.
>> "With humor, humanity, and wisdom, puts the search for happiness firmly in place--within us." David Niven, Ph.D., author of "The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People"

Dennis Prager. Happiness Is a Serious Problem : A Human Nature Repair Manual

Cheryl Richardson Take Time for Your Life
"Making a daily or weekly practice of finding stillness in order to experience the power of silence is a key way to support your overall mental and physical health. We need noiselessness to return to our center. Stillness and solitude are curative -- a necessary balm needed to support a more spiritually oriented, authentic life." [from Cheryl Richardson's newsletter: Life Makeover For The Year 2000, April 24, 2000 -- from her site]

Gail Saltz, MD. Becoming Real: Defeating the Stories We Tell Ourselves That Hold Us Back
Saltz, an assistant professor of psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital.. provides a guide to a kind of narrative unconscious as it affects decision making. The author says that most people live according to stories about care and need that were created in childhood to help them stay attached to and feel safe with adults who often failed to give what was needed emotionally. Saltz finds five major groups of stories about oneself and others, and names them by their distinguishing traits: dependent, super achiever, self-defeater, competitor, perfectionist. ... Saltz recommends that one clearly articulate the "old story" and its cost to one now, and then "rewrite" it and act accordingly. Although the author's instructions for undergoing this process are specific and clear, this is not a quick fix self-help book, but is based on psychoanalytic technique that will take time and commitment. [Publishers Weekly]

Anne Wilson Schaef  Living in Process : Basic Truths for Living the Path of the Soul 

Books by Martin E. Seligman, PhD :

Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment

"To read this book is to walk with your head floating in clouds of possibility while your feet tread firmly on the ground of scientific research. Dr. Seligman gives us the tools to tap into our greatest strengths, so that we can live more joyously while making a greater contribution to loved ones, work and community."
- Joan Oliver Goldsmith , author of How Can We Keep from Singing: Music and the Passionate Life

"At last, psychology gets serious about glee, fun and happiness. Martin Seligman has given us a gift -- a practical map for the perennial quest for a flourishing life." - Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

"A revolutionary perspective on psychology.. a beacon for human behavior in the new century. Laypersons and professionals alike will find this book enormously enriching. It summarizes a huge literature, it provides concrete self-assessment tools, and it speaks with a joyful voice about what it means to be fully alive."
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Learned Optimism : How to Change Your Mind & Your Life

"We can control our thoughts as we can our muscles... One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think."

The Optimistic Child

What You Can Change... and What You Can't

Abnormality

The Science of Optimism and Hope

Al Siebert, PhD; Bernie S. Siegel The Survivor Personality: Why Some People Are Stronger, Smarter, and More Skillful at Handling Life's Difficulties...and How You Can Be, Too  "A few, however, reach within themselves and find ways to cope with the adversity. They eventually make things turn out well. These are life's best survivors, those people with an amazing capacity for surviving crises and extreme difficulties. They are resilient and durable in distressing situations. They regain emotional balance quickly, adapt, and cope well. They thrive by gaining strength from adversity and often convert misfortune into a gift."

C. R. Snyder, Shane J. Lopez. Handbook of Positive Psychology

Shelley E. Taylor, PhD. Positive Illusions : Creative Self-Deception and the Healthy Mind
"Optimism is an underrated resource. It gives you much more than people imagine it does." Shelley E. Taylor, PhD

Maryann V. Troiani, Michael W. Mercer. Spontaneous Optimism: Proven Strategies for Health, Prosperity & Happiness

People lose motivation because they feel safe in their comfort zone. Making any move involves risk, but those who do push themselves are more optimistic, successful and even healthier. Maryann Troiani, PsyD [Lifetime, Nov 2003]

Susan C. Vaughan, MD.  Half Empty, Half Full: Understanding the Psychological Roots of Optimism   "Columbia University research scientist and psychoanalyst Susan Vaughan argues that our fundamental view of life as half empty or half full is determined by our capacity for emotional self-modulation. Based on her years of experience as a therapist and researcher, Dr. Vaughan shows how a sense of control over feelings like anger, anxiety, sadness, and even elation promotes optimism and well being."

Scott W. Ventrella The Power of Positive Thinking in Business
[publisher review:]  "Ventrella, an adjunct professor at Fordham University's Graduate School of Business who works closely with the Norman Vincent Peale Center, adapts the principles of Peale's mega-bestseller, The Power of Positive Thinking, to the workplace. In keeping with Peale's teachings, Ventrella argues that although people often focus on external factors, the only meaningful limitations they face at work are self-imposed. In a logical, plausible text, Ventrella guides readers beyond self-destructive feelings ("It's awful when I make a mistake") and behaviors, arguing, for example, that the people who are willing to make mistakes often make the best decisions.

John Welwood Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path Of Personal and Spiritual Transformation

Ken Wilber Integral Psychology : Conciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy   "While attempting to include the best of modern scientific research on psychology, consciousness, and therapy, [this book] also takes its inspiration from that integral period of psychology's own genesis (marked by such as Fechner, James, and Baldwin, along with many others..). ... includes a discussion of around two hundred theorists, East and West, ancient and modern, all working, in their own way, toward a more integral view."
 

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positive psychology resources : articles sites.....emotional intelligence : books articles sites

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