Summer Reading Recommendations: Insights About Our Senses, Emotions, and the Benefits of Solitude and Rest

In this month's newsletter, I present my favorite books that I've read over the past year and encourage you to add them to your summer reading list, too. These offer insights for tuning into and caring for ourselves though our senses, emotions, solitude, and rest.

Empowered by the insights in these books, I’m taking time this summer to seek solitude and rest and get out of my head and into the world. I hope that my own journey inspires you to take time to enjoy living and learning as much as you enjoy working and producing, too.

Prefer watching or listening vs. reading? View this LinkedIn Live Learning Lesson.

For those of us who learn better by watching and listening vs. reading, you can gain insights shared in this newsletter by watching this LinkedIn Live Learning Session (33:26 minutes) from May 2023.

In this LinkedIn Live event, I present insights from two of the books in this list of recommended reading to help us better understand and manage burnout by 1) sharing an official definition of burnout, 2) explaining the three dimensions that characterize this syndrome, 3) looking at the definition of Sensitivity and it’s potential connection to burnout, and 4) sharing tips to avoid the exhaustion of overstimulation.

Recommended Reading

1. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (2021) by Brené Brown

"If we want to find the way back to ourselves and one another, we need language and the grounded confidence to both tell our stories and to be stewards of the stories that we hear. In Atlas of the Heart, we explore eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human and walk through a new framework for cultivating meaningful connection."

2. Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions (2022) by Batja Mesquita

"A pioneer of cultural psychology argues that emotions are not innate, but made as we live our lives together."

"We may think of emotions as universal responses, felt inside, but in Between Us, acclaimed psychologist Batja Mesquita asks us to reconsider them through the lens of what they do in our relationships, both one-on-one and within larger social networks."

3. Sensitive: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too-Much World (2023) by Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo

"Everyone has a sensitive side, but nearly 1 in 3 people have the genes to be more sensitive than others—both physically and emotionally. These are the people who pause before speaking and think before acting; they tune into subtle details and make connections that others miss. They tend to be intelligent, big-hearted, and wonderfully creative; they are wired to go deep, yet society tells them to hide the very sensitivity that makes them this way. These are the world’s 'highly sensitive people,' and Sensitive is the book that champions them."

4. Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World (2023) by Gretchen Rubin

"Life in Five Senses is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives—and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love."

5. The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs (2022) by Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter 

"Burnout is among the most significant on-the-job hazards facing workers today. It is also among the most misunderstood. In particular, we tend to characterize burnout as a personal issue―a problem employees should fix themselves by getting therapy, practicing relaxation techniques, or changing jobs. Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter show why this is not the case. Burnout also needs to be managed by the workplace."

6. Surviving Teacher Burnout: A Weekly Guide to Build Resilience, Deal with Emotional Exhaustion, and Stay Inspired in the Classroom (2022) by Amy L. Eva PhD

"Written by an educational director at the Greater Good Science Center, Surviving Teacher Burnout is a 52-week self-care guide for teachers that features simple, low-lift strategies for increasing resilience and fostering greater well-being, confidence, and hope. Grounded in research-based positive psychology, the book offers tons of practical activities and journal-style prompts to help you cultivate feelings of gratitude, optimism, mindfulness, forgiveness, empathic joy, self-compassion, purpose, and curiosity—so you can return to your classroom each day with renewed energy and inspiration."

7. Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude (2017) by Raymond M. Kethledge and Michael S. Erwin

"We are losing solitude without even realizing it. To find solitude today, a leader must make a conscious effort. This book explains why the effort is worthwhile and how to make it. Through gripping historical accounts and firsthand interviews with a wide range of contemporary leaders, Raymond Kethledge (a federal court of appeals judge) and Michael Erwin (a West Pointer and three-tour combat veteran) show how solitude can enhance clarity, spur creativity, sustain emotional balance, and generate the moral courage necessary to overcome adversity and criticism. Anyone who leads anyone-including oneself-can benefit from solitude. With a foreword by Jim Collins (author of the bestseller Good to Great), Lead Yourself First is a rallying cry to reclaim solitude-and all the benefits, both practical and sublime, that come with it."

8. Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less (2016) by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang 

"Overwork is the new normal. Rest is something to do when the important things are done—but they are never done. Looking at different forms of rest, from sleep to vacation, Silicon Valley futurist and business consultant Alex Soojung-Kim Pang dispels the myth that the harder we work the better the outcome. He combines rigorous scientific research with a rich array of examples of writers, painters, and thinkers—from Darwin to Stephen King—to challenge our tendency to see work and relaxation as antithetical. "Deliberate rest," as Pang calls it, is the true key to productivity, and will give us more energy, sharper ideas, and a better life. Rest offers a roadmap to rediscovering the importance of rest in our lives, and a convincing argument that we need to relax more if we actually want to get more done."

Let me know what you think.

If you read any of these recommended books, I'd love to know which insights you found most interesting and helpful. Leave a comment on this newsletter or send me a message here on LinkedIn.

In the spirit of managing burnout by preventing exhaustion, I plan to give my brain a rest and take July and August off from writing this newsletter. So, the next one will be published the first week of September.

Happy summer!

About this newsletter:

Conscious Communication is a tool that connects us to ourselves and to others in meaningful ways. As with any tool, the more skillful we are at using it, the better the results we achieve. Communication is an important tool because when we do it well it leads to better relationships.

For more than 20 years, I’ve worked with thousands of people from all over the world to increase their consciousness and improve their business communication and public speaking skills so that they can get to the good stuff in life, faster.

So, my goal with this monthly newsletter is to share my expertise in the field of interpersonal communication as a leader, award-winning educator, and coach who helps people transform their work and lives through conscious communication.

These lessons are concise highlights from the intensive work I do in my Ivy League and top tier collegiate classrooms and with private and corporate clients. I'm happy to share these with you here to help you become a more effective communicator.