Summer Reading Recommendations: Insights About Wellbeing, Overwork and Stress, Rest and Productivity, and Choosing Better for Ourselves
Gino Perrotte, M.A.
On a mission to connect us to our humanity | Conscious Communication Creator and Speaker | Public Speaking Expert | Travel Educator | Award-winning Lecturer | Advocate for Rest and the Slow Education Philosophy
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:
Empowered by the knowledge and wisdom in these books, I’m going to practice what I preach by taking an extended summer sabbatical. During this conscious pause from work and routine, I'll be creating space for rest -- less doing and more being.
In future newsletters and posts, I'll share insights that I gain during my summer sabbatical journey and hope that you will be inspired to enjoy resting, living, and learning as much as you enjoy working and producing, too.
Because work and rest are partners, I am curious to discover what new ideas, connections, and creative visions percolate to the surface of my consciousness when I slow down, relax, and give the seeds sown from these readings time to germinate and mature at a natural pace.
Recommended Reading
Honoring our Physical Body
"Today, on average, we spend around 70 percent of our lives sitting or lying completely still. Our sedentary lifestyle—desk jobs, long commutes and lots of screen time—is not only bad for our bodies. It can also result in anxiety, depression and a lower overall IQ."
"But there's good news. Even the simplest movements can reactivate our bodies and open up a hotline to our minds, improving our overall well-being and longevity."
"Veteran science journalist Caroline Williams explores the cutting-edge research behind brain health and physical activity, interviewing scientists from around the world to completely reframe our relationship to movement."
"When it comes to our health, we tend to live our lives as though our ailments—our stiff knees or frayed nerves or diminished eyesight—can change only in one direction: for the worse. Award-winning social psychologist Ellen J. Langer’s life’s work proves the fault in this negative outlook as well as the healing power of its alternative: mindfulness—the process of active noticing where we are not bound by past experience or conventional wisdom.
In The Mindful Body, Dr. Langer unpacks her assumption-busting findings and outlines her bold new theory of mind-body unity, along the way clearly demonstrating how our thoughts and perspectives have the potential to profoundly shape our well-being. Whether it is hotel chambermaids who lost weight when they simply came to see that their work constituted exercise, or patients whose wounds healed faster in rooms with accelerated clocks, she shows how influential our thoughts are to the state of our bodies."
Nurturing our Mind and Spirit
"Weaving her own deeply personal journey of awakening with her groundbreaking research, Dr. Miller’s book reveals that humans are universally equipped with a capacity for spirituality, and that our brains become more resilient and robust as a result of it. For leaders in business and government, truth-seekers, parents, healers, educators, and any person confronting life’s biggest questions, The Awakened Brain combines cutting-edge science (from MRI studies to genetic research, epidemiology, and more) with on-the-ground application for people of all ages and from all walks of life, illuminating the surprising science of spirituality and how to engage it in our lives..."
"We spend an average of just 47 seconds on any screen before shifting our attention. It takes 25 minutes to bring our attention back to a task after an interruption. And we interrupt ourselves more than we're interrupted by others.
In Attention Span, psychologist Gloria Mark reveals these and more surprising results from her decades of research into how technology affects our attention."
"This book reveals how we can take control, not only to find more success in our careers, but also to find health and wellness in our everyday lives."
"Many of us think of the arts as entertainment—a luxury of some kind. In Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture, and more are essential to our lives.
We’re on the verge of a cultural shift in which the arts can deliver potent, accessible, and proven solutions for the well-being of everyone. Magsamen and Ross offer compelling research that shows how engaging in an art project for as little as forty-five minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol, no matter your skill level, and just one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years."
"These thought-provoking teachings from respected Native American leaders and thinkers provide a connection with the land, the environment, and the simple beauties of life. This collection of writings from revered Native Americans offers timeless, meaningful lessons on living and learning."
"Encouraging self-reflection and introspection for greater awareness and self-leadership, Dare? to be Free inspires a relentless courage to overcome, break expired or underserving cycles, and lean into courageous behaviors and difficult conversations.
It encourages an honest self-revealing leaning towards creating positive impact, relationships, climates, and cultures. Ultimately, it seeks to encourage learning, relearning, and unlearning by peeling back the layers of hearts for overall healing, wholeness, and well-being."
Recognizing Overwork and Stress
Recommended by LinkedIn
"Deeply researched and written for everyone from leaders to individual contributors, Never Not Working is the essential guide to identifying workaholism in yourself and others and starting on the road to recovery."
"...workaholic behavior is unhealthy and counterproductive for workers and for organizations. It's time to fight back. Malissa Clark—a preeminent researcher on the culture of overwork—shows you how in Never Not Working. Clark examines overwork and burnout, not just from the individual's perspective but from an organizational perspective too. She delivers a comprehensive, nuanced definition of workaholism, busting myths along the way—working long hours, it turns out, doesn't automatically make you a workaholic. She also helps you assess whether you're falling prey to the phenomenon and whether you're creating workaholics in your organization."
"We can’t avoid stress. But we can embrace it and transform it.
Whether we’re facing deadlines, difficulties with family or friends, personal crises, or just the uncertainty of the world—stress is the ocean we swim in. Even our negative thoughts can trigger our body’s stress response so we rarely experience periods of ease and deep restoration."
"Dr. Epel shows us how we can 'stress better'—by training our minds and bodies to shift towards a flexible, beneficial stress response that can actually enhance health. You will develop a more robust mindset, build the resources you need to turn stress into strength, and fill your days with more joy, connection, and ease."
Cultivating Rest and Productivity
"How can you keep your energy, happiness, creativity, and relationships fresh and thriving in the midst of never-ending family demands, career pressures, and the stress of everyday life? In Sacred Rest, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, a board-certified internal medicine doctor, reveals why rest can no longer remain optional.
Dr. Dalton-Smith shares seven types of rest she has found lacking in the lives of those she encounters in her clinical practice and research-physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sensory, social, creative-and why a deficiency in any one of these types of rest can have unfavorable effects on your health, happiness, relationships, creativity, and productivity. Sacred Rest combines the science of rest, the spirituality of rest, the gifts of rest, and the resulting fruit of rest. It shows rest as something sacred, valuable, and worthy of our respect."
"Our current definition of 'productivity' is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?"
"Newport lays out the key principles of 'slow productivity,' a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for cultivating a slower, more humane alternative.
From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment."
Choosing our Future
"Many of us view the future as incredibly distant, making us more likely to opt for immediate gratification that disregards our health and well-being in the years to come. People who are able to connect with their future selves, however, are better able to balance living for today and planning for tomorrow."
"...Your Future Self describes the mental mistakes we make in thinking about the future and gives us practical advice for imagining our best future so we can make that vision a reality."
"If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."
"Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal."
"What can we do, starting now, to make our older years a time of happiness, purpose, and yes, success?"
"Drawing on social science, philosophy, biography, theology, and eastern wisdom, as well as dozens of interviews with everyday men and women, Brooks shows us that true life success is well within our reach. By refocusing on certain priorities and habits that anyone can learn, such as deep wisdom, detachment from empty rewards, connection and service to others, and spiritual progress, we can set ourselves up for increased happiness."
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.
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.
As an award-winning educator, speaker, and study abroad program leader, my goal with this newsletter is to educate, empower, and inspire us (most often through travel) to increase our conscious communication skills so that we can better connect with ourselves and others in confident, meaningful, and heartful ways.
On a mission to connect us to our humanity | Conscious Communication Creator and Speaker | Public Speaking Expert | Travel Educator | Award-winning Lecturer | Advocate for Rest and the Slow Education Philosophy
8moMaribel Paulino Dare? to be Free is on the list :)