Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

psychology

“The No Asshole Rule” by Robert Sutton, PhD

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Recommended to me by: Robert Sutton blog post (via Twitter)

It’s a rare business book that focuses on warmth, kindness, and peaceful, loving environments. This compassionate little book, subtitled Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, does so with clarity and conviction.

In this book, you’ll find:

  • A definition of assholes (also known as jerks, bullies, tyrants, etc.)
  • The costs of employing them
  • How to implement and enforce a “no asshole” rule, including heartening positive examples
  • How to avoid behaving badly ourselves, including a self-test
  • Survival tips for unavoidable asshole-ridden situations
  • What people get out of behaving badly

The main message:

Treat the person right in front of you, right now, in the right way.

I am delighted to discover that some corporations and academic departments value respect and kindness. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to follow their example.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Being Bodies” edited by Lenore Friedman & Susan Moon

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Recommended to me by: Catherine Holmes Clark, who also has a detailed site about her journey with environmental illness.

The sweet relief of reading about Buddhism from the perspective of women connected with their bodies took me by surprise. Until I read this book, I didn’t realize how much I’d been reading around a feeling of exclusion in The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield and other books about Buddhism centered on male experience.

Thirty-three essays by different Buddhist women are divided into five sections:

  • Body as Suffering – bringing awareness to the experience of chronic illness.
  • Body as Nature – the feeling of failure because giving birth brought pain, even with awareness.
  • Body as Gender – helping a daughter remain aware as she navigates adolescent self-judgment of her body.
  • Body as Vehicle – dealing with difficulties through “no more struggle,” “using poison as medicine,” and “seeing whatever arises as enlightened wisdom.”
  • Body as Self – navigating addiction to alcohol, compulsive eating, and the loneliness of being embodied.

Images from the essays have woven themselves into my awareness.

At my cutting board chopping carrots or parsnips, I think of Darlene Cohen’s essay, “The Only Way I Know of to Alleviate Suffering.” She writes about helping people with arthritis discover that they can cut carrots by bringing their awareness to the details of their bodies’ experience with the board, the knife, and the carrots.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to revel in the Buddhist perspective of women connected to their bodies.

Available at bookshop.org.

“When Food is Love” by Geneen Roth

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Recommended to me by: a client.

Geneen Roth has written several books about overcoming compulsive eating by removing external rules around food and listening to one’s own body instead. She also talks about the source of compulsive eating – not an internal lack of control, but a survival strategy to overcome the lack of external control in childhood.

In this book, she talks about her own history with intimacy, and the connections between how we treat food, and how we treat emotional connections in our lives. She reveals the neglect and emotional and physical abuse of her childhood, and shares stories from her “Breaking Free” workshops as well.

If you deeply explore one area of life, you will find the answers to every area. What you learn as you break free from your obsession with food is what you need to learn about intimacy:

Commit yourself.
Tell the truth.
Trust yourself.
Pain ends and so does everything else.
Laugh easily.
Cry easily.
Have patience.
Be willing to be vulnerable.
When you notice that you are clinging to anything and it’s causing trouble, drop it.
Be willing to fail.
Don’t let fear stop you from leaping into the unknown, or from sitting in dark silence.
Remember that everything gets lost, stolen, ruined, worn out, or broken; bodies sag and wrinkle; everyone suffers; and everyone dies.
No act of love is ever wasted.

The book is full of vivid metaphors and urgent truths. It is a call to turn inside, face one’s demons with gentleness and compassion, and find freedom.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Liberated Parents, Liberated Children” by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

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I liked How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk so much that I read the authors’ prior book.

“Liberated Parents, Liberated Children” was published first, by many years. It tells the story of how the authors and a group of other parents (fictionalized to protect privacy) learned respectful, compassionate communication and boundary skills from Dr. Haim Ginott.

Over 5 years, they and their families were transformed.

The skills (summarized below) are the same in both books. This book highlights each parent’s journey as they struggle to learn how to honor their children’s feelings, and their own feelings as well.  They share both immediate successes and frustrating stumbles.  Their dedication to finding a better way shines through the pages.

I am grateful to them for persevering, and for publicizing what they learned. I am grateful to Dr. Haim Ginott for creating these skills, and teaching them. I am grateful to all the parents out there dedicated to learning a better way. I wish my parents had had this kind of dedication and support.

From the book’s inside cover:

Find out how the mood in your home can change when you respond:

To crying with: “A scratch can hurt.”
(Instead of “Stop crying. It’s only a scratch.”)

To accidents with: “The milk spilled. We need a sponge.”
(Instead of “Now look what you did!”)

To misbehavior with “Walls are not for writing on. Paper is for writing on.”
(Instead of “Bad boy! No more crayons for you!”)

To messiness with: “It would be really helpful if you would put the juice back in the fridge.”
(Instead of “Why can’t you ever clean up after yourself?”)

To rudeness with “You really hate it when Aunt Harriet pinches your cheek.”
(Instead of “You’re making a big fuss over nothing. Aunt Harriet loves you.”)

To whining with: “It’s really hot for you in here, isn’t it?”
(Instead of “How can you feel hot? It’s cool in here.”)

To carelessness with: “Kids, the door’s open!”
(Instead of “Shut the door! What’s wrong with you?”)

To sibling fighting with “You two are really angry with each other. Why don’t you each write down what happened.”
(Instead of “I don’t care who started it! I just want it ended!”)

Highly recommended to anyone who wants to interact more peacefully and successfully with outer or inner children.

Available at bookshop.org.

“How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk” by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

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I read the occasional parenting book to find out how I should have been treated as a child, and to learn how to treat myself and others better now.

This book advocates treating children as lovable, capable beings deserving of respect. This shouldn’t sound radical, right?

The examples and exercises teach many concrete, immediately applicable skills, including

  • Respect their feelings
  • Listen receptively
  • Jointly look for solutions to recurring issues
  • Praise descriptively
  • Expect positive results

The lessons are illustrated with both Do and Don’t cartoons of children and parents interacting.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who interacts with children, or who wishes their parents had been more skilled.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires” by Esther and Jerry Hicks

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Recommended to me by: Emma McCreary, and Jeannette Maw

This is the original source for the term “Law of Attraction”, as described by “Abraham” (a collective of Non-Physical Beings) and conveyed through Esther Hicks.

The Law of Attraction is defined as:

  1. Ask (we are doing this all the time with our desires)
  2. Source answers immediately
  3. Allow the response (by matching its vibration – this is the hard part)

According to the book, humans are here to experience contrasts that illuminate our preferences, which lead to desires, which lead to manifestation. We are meant to exist in a state of joyous trust and expectation, which allows our desires to manifest.

If desires are not manifesting, it is because either our vibrations/emotions are not allowing them, or because our attention/requests are focusing on what we don’t want. It is easy to interpret this as victim-blaming, although the book tries to avoid that.

At the same time, it is clearly stated that we are here to experience contrasts, so there is nothing wrong with negative experiences.

It is also emphasized that our emotions are signposts for our thoughts and beliefs, so there is nothing to be gained by denying our emotions, and everything to be gained by noticing them. A list of 22 emotions is arranged from highest vibration (joy) to lowest (despair).

Thoughts are said to attract similar thoughts, so improving vibration is a gradual, incremental process.

The second half of the book contains exercises or games to improve our vibration. To my surprise, several of them are already an important part of my life.

  • Express appreciation and gratitude.
  • Notice how you feel, and look for thoughts that feel true and also make you feel slightly better. Repeat.
  • Meditate.
  • Clear clutter, gently and incrementally.
  • Notice the essence and feeling of what’s desired, and look for ways you already have that, or can easily bring it in.

One I plan to add to my toolbox:

  • At each transition in your day, pause and set an intention for the next segment.

I am less engaged by the games that involve pretending, or ignoring what is happening right now.

Before reading Jeannette Maw’s Good Vibe Blog, I was very skeptical about the Law of Attraction, in part because I had heard about it filtered through many layers of interpretation. I’m glad I encountered her non-judgmental take on it, and that Emma McCreary suggested reading the original source.

I still balk at the idea that reality is entirely malleable. I feel very uneasy and ungrounded with that thought, so I will continue to believe that there are essential truths underlying our experiences.

At the same time, I also believe that it is beneficial to notice our internal environment, and seek out thoughts and experiences that feel better. I see a lot of wisdom and power for healing in this book.

I am sitting with the question of whether our desires are all trustworthy. Is there truly enough abundance to accommodate everyone’s desires? What about environmental limitations, and desires which cause harm to others?

I recommend the book if you want clarity on what the Law of Attraction really is, and if you like reading new ideas and keeping the parts that work for you.

Available at bookshop.org.