READING can be healing, and is a good place to start recovering after a year of uncertainty, struggle, and loneliness.
Every year, the UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center comes out with its list of annual feel good titles. These, says Jessica Stillman in an Inc.com article 8 Books to Read for a Kinder, Happier 2021, will not “only improve your individual life, but help us all start thinking through how we can heal our society too.”
Stillman selected eight books from those recommended by a research center, “if you’re searching for reasons to be hopeful about our collective future.” Written by journalists, historians, psychologists, and even a former surgeon general, these show us how friendships, hope, kindness, and valuing time can make a difference.
1. Friendship by Lydia Denworth
Friendships have sustained many of us during the pandemic. And it’s not just about warm, fuzzy feelings. In her new book, Denworth, a journalist, says that “a boatload of science shows friendship offers a host of surprising mental and physical benefits.”
“The science of friendship gives you permission to hang out with your friends and call it healthy,” she adds. “You’re not being indulgent.”
2. Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
To get a taste of what you can find in this book by Bregman, a historian, Stillman suggests that we check out another of his heartwarming articles, The Real Lord of the Flies. This, she says, makes us feel a little more hopeful afterwards.
Now imagine, “what a whole book on the science of the positive side of human nature could do for you?” Hope, indeed, floats and uplifts.
3. Perception by Dennis Proffitt and Drake Baer
This new book explains the science of a branch of psychology called “embodied cognition,” which believes that we just don’t think with our brains, but with our bodies, too.
With this, “our physical shape, capabilities, and current state of being profoundly shape how we perceive the world.”
“If we are going to have a better understanding of ourselves and our fellow human beings, we need to appreciate the startling individuality of everyone’s experience.”
4. The Kindness of Strangers by Michael McCullough
This fascinating and uplifting book traces the development of human altruism from a psychologist’s point of view. For those that believe in Darwin’s theory, it asks how kindness and morality in humans evolved out of self-interested apes.
5. The Upswing by Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett
This book by a political scientist (Putnam) and an entrepreneur (Garrett) “draws a parallel between the Gilded Age (1870-1900) and our own troubled times, using the comparison to draw hopeful conclusions about how we might pull ourselves from our current mess.”
Its subtitle—How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again—is hopeful, and makes us realize that there is much we can learn from the past.
6. Time Smart by Ashley Whillans
Time is currency, and it pays to value it. By explaining her research on money, time, and well-being, Whillans “makes a strong case that we’d be happier, more socially connected, and more satisfied with our work if we valued our time more, valued wealth less, and kept our need for free time in mind when making everyday decisions about our lives,” Greater Good says of this book.
7. Together by Vivek Murthy
Former surgeon general Murthy believes that even before the pandemic, America was in the midst of a loneliness epidemic. With that, he offers advice on how we can overcome what he calls “this destructive scourge” to our mental and physical health.
8. Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman
Self-actualization, the full realization of one’s creative, intellectual, and social potential, sits on top of Maslow’s famous “hierarchy of needs.” In this book, Kaufman, a psychologist, digs into recent research on the concept and brings the idea of self-actualization up to date. To experience it, Kaufman says “There is an art of being. But now there is a science of being.”
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the United Kingdom-based International Public Relations Association (Ipra), the world’s premier association for senior professionals around the world. Millie Dizon, the Senior Vice President for Marketing and Communications of SM, is the former local chairman.
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