by Joanne Archibald | Dec 9, 2022 | Coaching, Up
We are human BEings, not human DOings.
In the past two weeks, I have heard or read this saying, so popular among personal development professionals, no fewer than five times. Do you think the universe is trying to tell me something? I don’t know, but the repetition certainly made me pause, put down my eternal to-do list, and think.
This time of year, it’s easier than usual to get caught up in doing. Whatever your beliefs, the holiday season is a busy time. There are family gatherings, dinners with colleagues and clients, end-of-year parties with hobby groups and friends, and school shows and fetes, not to mention all the associated buying, wrapping, baking, cooking and decorating that we consider absolutely necessary to the festive fun. Add to that the pressure to complete work projects before taking time off, or use up budget before the end of the calendar year, plus any administration that has to be performed at year end… Yes, December is a month where DOING really does top the agenda for many of us.
It’s rather odd, when I think about it. Christmas, the festival I celebrate at this time of year, is really all about being and feeling rather than doing. The seasonal songs speak of “comfort and joy”, feeling merry, light and bright, and – my favourite, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, tells us explicitly that the greatest gift we can offer another person is that of love, giving our heart. The messages are all about who we are and how we behave towards each other, yet the actions we undertake are too often quite divorced from seasonal notions of cheer, hope and peace to all men.
So, this festive season, whatever you will be celebrating, I offer you these very practical and immediately applicable ideas for stepping out of (or at least turning down) DOING mode and putting a bit more BEING into your personal and professional life.
- Make a morning to-be list
Most of us have some kind of to-do list that is constantly being elongated, then shortened, then re-elongated. Some of us even extend to creating a daily to-do list at the start of the morning. A few of us (yep, me) even add one thing they’ve already done that day in order to have something to cross off straight away and feel smug about. But what about your to-be list? If your to-do list is your destination, what comes up when you think about how you want to travel?
Why not, alongside your to-do list (or indeed instead of, for the really brave of heart), make a morning to-be list, noting down HOW you want to feel, behave, and generally move through the day? It might say: gentle, methodical, calm, peaceful. Or perhaps: energetic, loving, enthusiastic. Or maybe: courageous, joyful, patient. At work, the to-be list might read: “be an approachable manager”. Or it might just say “today I choose to be flexible”. Write these things down to make them feel as much of a commitment to yourself as your list of tasks. Then, keep the to-be list in mind as you move through your day, letting them steer your reactions and choices.
- Make an end-of-day “I was” list
To bookend my previous suggestion, try taking a moment at the end of each day to think about who you were today and how you felt. Think about how you behaved, the choices you made, and the reactions you had all day and consider how you felt and how you were. You can even start from what you did to get to what you were. I spoke up about my doubts about our new marketing strategy in the team meeting: I was courageous today. I explained to my child why she couldn’t have sweets after dinner instead of just saying no: I was a calm and patient parent today. I ate salad for lunch: I was healthy and self-caring today. Thinking about your day in this way helps you remember that your worth does not reside in what you do but who you are and how you choose to be. This exercise gives you an opportunity to celebrate a different kind of achievement.
- Consider your to-be when making to-do decisions
Knowing how you want to be and feel (today or in life more generally) can really help when you have decisions to make, especially when you‘re having to choose between several – often conflicting – options. A simple example: when faced with the choice between going for a lunchtime run, working through and getting home early, or eating out with a colleague, your to-be list can help you decide. Going for a run makes me a healthy person, and I’ll feel disciplined; eating with my colleague makes me sociable, and I’ll feel connected. You can apply the same process in the professional realm. A team member regularly misses deadlines: how do I want to feel about the way I deal with this? What kind of person do I want to be? Let the answers to those questions steer your next move. By considering how you want to feel and who you want to be, you make sure that your BE is driving your DO, which will create greater alignment with your wider purpose and aims.
- Offer be-based recognition
So often in life, especially in the workplace, we receive recognition – that is to say positive feedback – for what we have done, the things we have achieved. While it’s good to get compliments on a brilliantly delivered presentation, a well handled negotiation or excellent quarterly sales, they don’t quite feed the soul the same way as a “You are” compliment. A compliment about who we are speaks to our essence and cannot be taken away, while a “you did well” is ephemeral and can vanish if we mess up or fail. Try offering yourself and those around you more recognition for what you/they are and see how it feels. What does it feel like to look in the mirror and say “You are insightful and perceptive”? Or “You are caring, loving and patient”? (As opposed to “You came up with good ideas in the meeting” and “You spent time making great cakes for the school bake sale”.) Tell your assistant “You are organised and methodical”. You can even make it an image. How would the newest member of your team feel to hear “You are a real breath of fresh air”? Or maybe your spouse gets “You are my rock”. The only rules are it has to start with “You are”, it has to be positive, and – above all – you have to mean it wholeheartedly.
In a world that values achievement and accomplishment highly, it can be hard to recentre ourselves as human beings rather than human doings. But doing so will not mean you get less done or that you’ll drop the ball; it will actually make the things you do more powerful because they will be more aligned with who you are and how you want to feel. The choices you make and activities you accept will be driven not by external expectations and pressures but by the very core of who you are, who you want to be, and how you want to live your life. Make your “do” a result of your “be”, and watch much of the hustle and hassle of your to-do list melt away.
Do you feel harried, stressed and overwhelmed by life? Is your day-to-day to-do list stopping you from starting the projects that really matter to you? At work, do you constantly tend to the urgent at the expense of the important? You can leverage my dynamic energy, intelligent insights, and laser focus to gain perspective on your situation and implement practical change to work, live and feel better every day. Contact me to find out more about working together.
by Joanne Archibald | Nov 1, 2022 | Coaching, Up
In my intercultural coaching work, I support mainly, though not exclusively, two client profiles. The first are companies in which teams from different countries need to work together. This is often done on a project basis, bringing people to collaborate with clients and colleagues they do not know that well; sometimes it is the result of a takeover or merger, and other times it is the consequence of an internal reshuffle that reassigns roles and redraws team boundaries. I recently worked with a French HQ team working on a project with their firm’s British subsidiary, to help them understand and adapt their behaviours for better results with their anglo-saxon colleagues. The other typical type of clients are managers in charge of multicultural teams. I have run numerous workshops for big NGOs, helping recently promoted managers navigate both their new responsibilities and their culturally diverse teams.
Whatever the profile type, I am almost always asked the same questions:
Can we overcome the challenges of working across cultures? How?
My answer is always the same too:
Yes! But why stop at overcoming challenges and obstacles, when – with a little thought and effort – you can turn those challenges into opportunities and advantages?
Here’s how.
- Know thyself
The first step towards greater cultural awareness and the ability to leverage difference to your advantage is to get to know your own culture.
Two fish are cruising around their tank one day when they pass an older fish coming from the other direction. “How’s the water?” asks the solo swimmer. “What water?” reply the young sprats. That’s culture. It’s the water we’re swimming around in that we do not even realise is there.
One way of discovering the values and shared references that underpin the society that shaped you is to consider your country’s proverbs and sayings; these often convey deeply held beliefs. It’s also important to think about your personal culture, which is influenced by many other things, ranging from your profession (you’re a lawyer? maybe you value justice…) to your hobbies (do you value creativity, fitness, fair play?) and your religion (charity? fidelity? humility?).
- Educate others
A simple way of helping culturally diverse teams work together is to organise team meetings in which people of different cultures take the realisations they’ve made about their own culture (see step 1!) and share them with their workmates. Maybe Guillaume explains that he and his countrymen tend to keep work and private life very separate, but that it is important in France for colleagues to lunch together. Next up, Victoria might explain that British people are quite open and direct in the way they express themselves as a rule, but that when it comes to offering any kind of negative feedback, they will do so less explicitly as diplomacy is paramount. It might help to read books like Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands or Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map, for extra insights. So many misunderstandings and so much frustration can be avoided simply by knowing your own culture and then helping others to understand it too. It opens the way to easier communication by acknowledging the elephant in the room and giving everyone permission to voice their differences.
- Adopt an anthropological attitude
When interacting with people from other cultures, check your judgement at the door. Remind yourself that with most attitudes and behaviours, there’s no right or wrong, good or bad, there’s just my way and your way, our way and their way. The more you can approach difference with a curious, intrigued and detached attitude – like an anthropologist – the more you can learn and, ultimately, adapt.
- Create a team charter
To take cultural understanding to the next level, I encourage culturally diverse teams and their managers to create their own team charter. This consists of defining your team’s values and preferred behaviours and attitudes. It’s a chance for everyone to consider all the different cultures around the table and then agree on a way of being and working together that suits this particular group. Subjects to reflect upon might include how the team feels about punctuality, whether it values socialising outside of work, how it deals with conflict, what it expects from managers and staff members, how it chooses to make decisions. This is an opportunity to bring people together and put in place working methods that can raise the team’s level of collaboration, improve performance and productivity, and boost individuals’ sense of belonging, mutual respect and wellbeing.
- Play to your strengths
Another way of leveraging the massive potential that a multicultural team offers is to take into account individual and cultural strengths when assigning projects or tasks. Without, of course, buying into stereotypes, pigeonholing people or denying them the chance to learn, it can be beneficial to consider team members’ natural cultural strengths when handing out jobs. For example, maybe you have a presentation to make to an American client with an empiric, application-based reasoning style. She will need facts, figures and examples to be persuaded that your product is right for her company. You might want to choose your Canadian team member, who shares this mindset, to lead the sub-group working on that particular PowerPoint, rather than the French or Italian colleagues, who both have a theoretical, principles-based method of reasoning in which a theoretical argument is built based on a concept to show the logical thought behind a proposal. Of course, you have to take variation within a culture into account (not all Brits are funny, not all Germans are punctual), but by considering cultural fit you can help your team play to their natural strengths and perhaps even offer opportunities for them to help each other grow. Maybe you ask an implicit communicator to partner an explicit communicator on a delicate negotiation to help the latter develop a feeling for extreme diplomacy. Perhaps your deadline-dependent project is headed up by someone from a culture that values time planning and punctuality, assisted by someone from a time-flexible culture so they can learn from and balance each other.
Ultimately, the two keys to keys to working successfully across cultures are awareness and communication: know your own culture, understand other people’s cultures, then talk, share, and grow.
Are you finding it hard working with other cultures or within a multicultural team? Are you managing people from different cultural backgrounds to your own? Does your company have offices in multiple countries and require staff to work across borders? Working with an experienced, dynamic and practical intercultural coach can help you and your company not just overcome the challenges of our globalised and multicultural society but also unleash the potential of cultural diversity to boost performance and gain competitive advantage. Contact me to find out how we can work together.
by Joanne Archibald | Oct 1, 2022 | Coaching, Up
I was recently regaling a close (and willing!) friend with a few stories of funny things my children have said and done of late. For example, my seven-year-old daughter who loves to read Dog Man has taken to exclaiming “Oh boy, this is gonna be great”, which is hilarious given her cut-glass English accent. I was also recounting how, when my four-year-old son colours, he does so as if his life depends on it: the tongue is sticking out, he can’t keep from standing up on his chair, the concentration is so intense it’s almost audible. “Ah,” sighed my friend, “”We should all be a little more like Sam, I think – so enthusiastic and wholehearted.”
Her words got me thinking. I could definitely do with being a little bit more like my children – in many ways. One day, I will surely need them to teach me how to type a document using only my brainwaves, or to configure whatever we’re using instead of smartphones 20 years from now. The mind reels. But for now, there is already a lot I can learn from them. It may be the adult’s job to teach our children to read, swim and cross the road safely, but we can definitely benefit from taking a leaf out of their wise little books now and then – both in our personal lives and the professional sphere.
Here are my top seven life lessons we can take from children – our own and other people’s!
- Live 100%
Despite the fact that I devised my slogan “life with purpose and on purpose” years before having children, it is only since having them that I have witnessed someone truly putting this into practice. When my son is building with Kapla, his focus is absolute. It’s a full-body experience that absorbs all his attention. When my daughter is sewing, you can call her for dinner 10 times before she even looks up. Whatever children do, they do it wholeheartedly. Applying this lesson to my life – seeking out what’s known as “flow” – never fails to improve the quality of my experience. Coaching is already an activity that requires full presence, but when I consciously try to “be more like Sam and Alice”, I seem to take it to another level and am truly absorbed by my client. When I’m writing, turning off the phone and closing email makes it so much more enjoyable. Even if I’m just cooking supper, doing so with music on and a clear intention to nourish and care for my family add both value and fun to the task. In essence, this tip comes down to: be here now.
- Ask for what you need and want
If supper is served late, kids have no qualms about manifesting their displeasure. If they need to pee during a train ride, the whole carriage will likely know about it. Children ask for (ok, demand) what they need and are vocal about what they want. I think we’d all benefit from being a little more like this. So often, our resentment, anger and sadness are linked to unspoken needs and desires. Of course, the remedy is not to stamp your foot and throw a hissy fit, but if we all expressed ourselves more, and more clearly, we’d definitely boost our chances of reaching our goals and gaining satisfaction. In the workplace, this might mean making sure the boss knows you aim to achieve director status by the age of 40, or that your long-term goal is to move to the US office. At home, maybe you ask for help with chores, or create a family rota rather than sighing loudly as you fold laundry alone. With friends, it might simply mean daring to say “Actually, tonight I really fancy Thai food” rather than the usual “I really don’t mind where we eat – what’s your preference?”
- Own your feelings and show them
When children are sad, they cry. When they are joyful, they laugh. When they are young, at least, there are no feelings that are off-limits or shameful, and demonstrating their inner state comes naturally. As adults, to add insult to the injury of unpleasant emotions like sadness, anger or disappointment, we also experience meta-emotions. We have feelings about the feelings we are having, for example feeling ashamed of being lonely, or irritated that we feel envious, and we force ourselves to hide what we’re going through. We could all benefit from allowing ourselves to feel what we feel, without judgement and – when appropriate – to express it too. One way to facilitate this in the workplace might be for managers to be more vocal about their own emotions – perhaps frustration at a budget cut, or overwhelm at an extra project the team has been assigned. When they do this, they give their team permission to feel and share some of what they are experiencing too.
- Marvel and wonder
On the walk to school, my children are able to find way more than seven wonders of the natural world that will cause them to stop and exclaim, “Mummy, LOOK!” These marvellous findings might range from the grid patterns made by airplanes as they crisscross the sky to particularly large snails and solitary magpies (“Hello Mr Magpie and how’s your lady wife today?” they chorus). Despite my best adult instincts, I have now learnt to embrace these moments and seize the opportunity to look hard at what’s going on around me. To notice the carpet of conkers, kick up the russet leaves, smell the jasmine bush overflowing from one front garden on our route, laugh at the mini dog wearing a Father Christmas coat. The walk takes a little longer, surely, but it is a richer sensory experience, and the day starts on a note of enchantment and delight.
- Enjoy the journey
Further mining the rich seam of learning that is the school run (or the slow school walk in our case)… My children’s appreciation of our conversation and the things we notice on the way to school serves as a constant reminder to me that the journey is part of the adventure. This is fairly easy to keep in mind when your destination is a beach in Hawaii, but more challenging during a business trip. However, when on my way to coaching clients in Toulouse, Geneva or Lyon, I always try to make the most of the travel time, which could otherwise seem like dead time. Flights are a chance to read. Train trips with my computer give me time to write. Even a simple trip on the Paris metro can provide opportunities to check out posters for new films and exhibitions, notice changes in fashions, and (more often that you might imagine) observe random acts of courtesy and kindness performed for strangers.
- Put yourself centre stage
Have you ever noticed how often children say “I” and “me”? They are constantly talking about themselves – what they think, like, want, need… When they are recounting something that happened at school, they are very definitely the main character. If they are deciding between the pink sparkly t-shirt and the multi-coloured unicorn, the only taste they take into account is their own. Children live their lives centre stage, eschewing the kind of comparison with others that plagues us as adults and causes us to “should” on ourselves. All too often, we pay more attention to what others are wearing, doing, buying, achieving, than what we like, want and need. We can learn much from children’s ability to be the focus of their own attention.
- Let it go
As adults, we hold on to so much emotion and carry around so much baggage, thinking today about what happened yesterday, last month, last year, or a decade ago. Children, on the other hand, make like Elsa and just let it go. When the school day is over, it is over. When a Mr Hyde-level tantrum has been calmed, they switch back to their Dr Jekyll face in seconds. This ability to let things go is invaluable to our professional lives. Too often, we ruminate on a conversation with the boss, or mull over an upcoming presentation when we should be focusing on a hobby, a friend or our family. The more we can learn to leave the day behind when we walk out of the office (or clear the computer from the dining table/home office), the more we can contain our worktime and be present for our personal time.
Do you wince whenever you hear someone described as “living his best life” or “winning at life”, conscious that you don’t feel that is the case for you? Do you feel, deep down, that while life is fine, it could be so much more fulfilling and joyful? Working with a supportive, dynamic and insightful coach can help you make the big and small changes you need to ensure you enjoy a life and career built with purpose and on purpose. Contact me to find out how we can work together.
by Joanne Archibald | Sep 5, 2022 | Coaching, Up
This summer, one of my dearest friends (let’s call her Jennifer) fulfilled her dream of moving from Paris to Annecy, where she can ski to her heart’s content for almost half the year. Ex-pats get used to having friends come and go – it is part of the job description. I have many overseas friends with whom I am just as close now as when they were in Paris. With others, contact is patchier but pleasing, and with some, we have mutually accepted that our friendship was specific to a certain time. Jennifer is in another category altogether, though. She’s one of those friends who makes you feel like you’re truly travelling through life together. She calls so I can sympathise the first time her optometrist suggests bifocals. I ring her to share something hilarious my four-year-old said at supper. She’s spent Christmases with my family. My kids call her Auntie. Yes, she’s that friend. So, while I still have other great friends here and I know we’ll still speak frequently, her departure is a real loss.
Shortly after Jennifer left, I went on holiday with my family, so it’s actually only now that I’m really feeling her absence. We’ll be moving into the autumn soon and, as I anticipate the leaves falling from the trees, I can’t help but feel the last decade has been somewhat autumnal in tone in general. It has been a time when several ex-pat friends have returned to their native lands, native pals have married and moved to other bits of France, and still others have had babies and retreated into a little family bubble for the cocooning years. That this exodus coincided with me leaving a salaried job to set up my own business, moving to the suburbs, and having two children myself only exacerbated my “end of an era” feeling. Hence why I have been heard to compare my situation with that of a tree in autumn, losing its trusty, long-loved blanket of foliage to reveal slightly sad and wintry boughs.
It sounds slightly morose, I know, but in truth I rather love the autumn, and I also love the metaphor it offers for perpetual change and the hope of renewal. Because the reason trees lose their leaves is so that they can concentrate their stores of energy to survive the cold months and burst forth in springtime, greener and stronger than ever. Nature cannot create newness before first stripping back what was. And so it is with our human experience. When we go through major change, between the life we used to lead and the building of a new life, there must be a void. Just as between autumn and spring, there must be winter. When one chapter of life ends, there must be a time of emptiness before we can write a new chapter, allowing new connections, hobbies, traditions, friends, projects and job opportunities to emerge.
Autumnal rituals
And they will emerge. Nature abhors a vacuum, as they say. I – indeed, we all – know that deep down, but it’s slightly cold comfort when it’s the bleak midwinter and there’s not a snowdrop in sight. So what does help? Well, transition rituals are definitely a good idea. Taking the time to say goodbye is healthy. Despite the fact that Jennifer and I will still talk several times a week, I gave her a leaving gift and we had a “last” fun Parisian night out to mark the change. I think it also helps to realise that external and internal change don’t necessarily happen at the same time. In his 1980 book Transitions, William Bridges explains how the mental and emotional transitions we feel when we experience major external change – whether good or bad – can happen weeks, months or years after the fact. The knowledge that feelings of loss and bewilderment (for a job we left, a house we sold, a friend who moved away, a lifestyle that ended) can hit much later, when we think we’ve moved on, will not lessen the sadness but will make us better prepared to welcome our feelings and take care of ourselves.
In the workplace, acknowledging that even happy transitions can be challenging is crucial. That might mean providing better support for staff who are promoted or who change jobs. It is important to mark the transition (celebrate a promotion, properly announce a shift in job remit) and ensure there is a clear moment when they change role. So often, internal position changes come with an inevitable period during which the employee manages both old and new role at the same time. The more companies can create a clear demarcation, the easier it is for people to say goodbye, close a chapter, and embrace a new one.
What to do in winter?
I also think that simply accepting the void before the rebirth – making peace with that limbo land between the end of an era and the beginning of a new one – can save us pain an energy. This is counter-intuitive for me, as I’m someone who wants to roll up her sleeves and “fix” things, but it’s a waste of energy. Some feelings just have to be felt and waited out – like when your husband convinces you to try Space Mountain despite the fact that you hate rollercoasters and you realise after a few seconds that a) it’s just as horrific as you had imagined, and b) you cannot get off and this must be what people mean when they say, “the only way out is through”. Sometimes, you just have to ride the rollercoaster, all the while staying curious about your experience, emotions and processes.
If you are a manager, supporting your team during a rocky period at work, for example during a restructure, can feel disempowering. You may not have any power over seismic changes taking place in the company, but you can help your staff by acknowledging that times are tough and encouraging open discussion of both what’s going on and how they are feeling during team meetings. You might begin by admitting that you are not enjoying the rollercoaster much yourself. You may not be able to fix the problem but you can make sure your team feels seen and heard to help them feel less alone during a professional winter of discontent, perhaps.
Celebrating the spring
When you’re waiting for the spring – whether you’re prospecting for a new business and hoping for your first client, keeping an eye out for social opportunities after moving to a new town, or biding your time until a new normal emerges after the arrival of a baby – I have found the key is to find ease. Metaphors about not being a salmon swimming against the current, and Buddhism-inspired notions of non-attachment to specific outcomes immediately spring to mind.
When one chapter of your life ends, it is easy to start viewing it through rose-tinted glasses but, while memories are precious, it’s important not to forget that the new chapter about to be written will bring its own joy. I’m still talking to Jennifer (and many of my other far-flung friends) regularly, and I’m already planning a trip to see her the weekend of Annecy’s annual apple and honey festival (It’s straight out of Gilmore Girls, right? Talk about a silver lining to her move!). But I’m also staying open to the new connections I have begun making – through suburban life, the children’s school, my growing business. Because the old adage is right – change really is the only constant. And the more you can behave like that tree – allowing its leaves to fall, safe in the knowledge that it has enough inner resources to wait out the winter and sure that the spring will bring new life – the more gracefully, easefully, and happily you will face the ever-changing seasons of your life.
Are you struggling with a tough transition? Do you want to make life changes but fear the unknown? You needn’t go through it alone. Working with an understanding, supportive and experienced coach can help you embrace change as you take one step at a time towards a life and career built with purpose and on purpose. Contact me to find out how we can work together.
by Joanne Archibald | Jul 10, 2022 | Coaching, Up
5 books in the personal development genre to feed your mind and soul this summer
Four Thousand Weeks
Oliver Burkeman is my find of the year. I gobbled up his latest offering, Four Thousand Weeks – Time Management for Mortals, then proceeded to read through his entire oeuvre. The title refers to the fact that the average human lives for 4,000 weeks and that no matter what we do to lengthen it, pack more in, and be more efficient, in the end we get the time we get.
This book is the antidote to time management, productivity and organisation advice, seeking rather to realign our relationship with time. Interestingly, Burkeman spent years writing “This Column will Change Your Life” for The Guardian, testing all the concepts he is now rather debunking. He has a chatty and often humorous style that makes it an easy read while imparting great wisdom that – I found – changed my relationship to my to-do list instantly.
Daring Greatly
Social worker and shame researcher Brené Brown is the personal development expert to read or watch at the moment. She is everywhere, with TED Talks, a one-off show on Netflix, and a recent new book release. While I haven’t read her latest yet, this year I did read her classic Daring Greatly, which explores how the courage to be vulnerable can transform our lives. The title is inspired by a speech made by Theodore Roosevelt in which he said:
“It is not the critic who counts ; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles… The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”
While the quotation alone is worth reading in full, the book is full of the warmth and wisdom for which Brené is known and loved.
The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less
Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice was first published in 2004, but I only heard of it this year. It’s a brilliant exploration of the ways in which having too many options, possibilities and choices can create anxiety, stress, disappointment and – in some cases – depression.
While it takes the example of shopping as its jumping off point, Schwartz extends his argument to examine the entire gamut of decisions we make every day – from internet provider to romantic partner and career. But luckily, he doesn’t stop there, the book ends with a whole chapter on how to counter the negative effects of having too much choice in life with some practical advice that can be applied straight away. Full of examples that bring his arguments to life plus a healthy dose of humour, this is a thought-provoking page-turner that will definitely get you thinking next time you’re in the supermarket.
Happy Moments
Following up on The Little Book of Hygge (also a fun read), Meik Wiking – founder of Copenhagen’s Happiness Research Institute – published Happy Moments: How to Create Experiences You’ll Remember for a Lifetime in 2019. The book delves into research about both what makes us happy and how memory works to offer insights into how to fill our lives with happy moments and also how to commit those moments to our long-term memories. Wiking has an informal, chatty style that makes the book a pleasure to read and belies the thoroughly research-based information he is sharing. I enjoyed the theoretical parts of the book, but got even more out of the very practical tips Wiking offers for making specific moments more memorable and have been able to implement some of his suggestions – to great effect!
The Choice
My last recommendation is a real heavy-hitter. The Choice is Hungarian Jewish psychologist Dr Edith Eger’s account of her experience of the Holocaust, from the time leading up to her deportation to Auschwitz right through to her return to Germany years later to give a talk at Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s former retreat in Bavaria. The book is part autobiography, part self-analysis, part advice and insight, and it is incredibly powerful. While it obviously contains distressing passages, Eger’s vibrant and unbreakable spirit elevates the writing beyond history or memoir. Its ultimate message is one of hope and healing, with kindness and wisdom in every sentence. Drawing on her work as a psychologist, Eger uses her experience and expertise to offer the reader insights that are applicable to us all about how to endure, develop resilience and choose hope, even at the darkest of times.
