Mental Power

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives celebrates the benefits that messiness has in our lives: why it’s important, why we resist it, and why we should embrace it instead. Using research from neuroscience, psychology, social science, as well as captivating examples of real people doing extraordinary things, Tim Harford explains that the human qualities we value – creativity, responsiveness, resilience – are integral to the disorder, confusion, and disarray that produce them.

“If only I could get some closure…” If you’ve found yourself saying these words, you’re not alone. When you’ve lost a relationship, a job, or a loved one, closure can seem as elusive as it is necessary. Psychotherapist and relationship coach Gary McClain says it’s one of the most common—and important—issues his clients bring up. In this empathetic and insightful guide, Dr. McClain explains why the promise of closure is so appealing—and why it’s not always all it’s cracked up to be.

Robin Dunbar is the world-renowned psychologist and author who famously discovered Dunbar's number: how our capacity for friendship is limited to around 150 people. In Friends, he looks at friendship in the round, at the way different types of friendship and family relationships intersect, or at the complex of psychological and behavioural mechanisms that underpin friendships and make them possible - and just how complicated the business of making and keeping friends actually is.

Cultivate hope with strengths-based practices grounded in positive psychology. Learned Hopefulness offers powerful exercises grounded in evidence-based positive psychology to help you identify your strengths; ditch the self-limiting beliefs that diminish your capacity for positivity; and increase feelings of motivation, resiliency, and wellness.

You might think that perfect harmony is the defining characteristic of healthy relationships, but the truth is that human interactions are messy, complicated, and confusing. And according to renowned psychologist Ed Tronick and pediatrician Claudia Gold, that is not only okay, it is actually crucial to our social and emotional development. In The Power of Discord they show how working through the inevitable dissonance of human connection is the path to better relationships with romantic partners, family, friends, and colleagues.

The Well-Gardened Mind provides a new perspective on the power of gardening to change people’s lives. Here, Sue Stuart-Smith investigates the many ways in which mind and garden can interact and explores how the process of tending a plot can be a way of sustaining an innermost self. Stuart-Smith’s own love of gardening developed as she studied to become a psychoanalytic psychotherapist.

Can yoga and meditation unleash our inherent supernormal mental powers, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition? Is it really possible to perceive another person's thoughts and intentions? Influence objects with our minds? Envision future events? And is it possible that some of the superpowers described in ancient legends, science fiction, and comic books are actually real, and patiently waiting for us behind the scenes? Are we now poised for an evolutionary trigger to pull the switch and release our full potentials?

Recently retired WWE superstar AJ Mendez Brooks is a powerhouse - strong, quirky, and totally confident. But that wasn’t always the case. With humor and tremendous heart, she opens up for the first time about her harrowing struggle to understand her demons and the diagnosis that helped her gain control over her life.

Cowritten by a patient who experienced transformative relief from trauma through EMDR therapy, and a world-renowned psychologist who explains exactly how and why EMDR works, Every Memory Deserves Respect provides clear information while offering inspiration and hope. Through compelling science and personal stories, we learn how trauma is stored in the brain and body, continuing to cause pain and suffering, and how EMDR frees us by repatterning our thinking and emotional reactions.

In Bringing Out the Best in People: How to Apply the Astonishing Power of Positive Reinforcement, renowned thought leader and internationally recognized workplace expert Aubrey Daniels takes a look at today's rapidly changing work environment, providing a timely update to his seminal book on performance management.

In her midforties, Gwendolyn Bounds attended a dinner party where someone asked a little girl: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It struck Bounds: In middle age, no one asks you that anymore. So she put the question to herself. The answer set her on an unexpected five-year path of transformation from an unathletic office executive glued to her screens to an age-group medalist and world championship competitor in obstacle course racing—a demanding military-style sport requiring speed, endurance, mobility, and strength.

Discover how expanding and improving your mental agility—your ability to flex your thoughts, feelings, and actions—can transform your life, bolster your resilience, and foster your zest for living. Endless self-help approaches claim to have the answer. It's important to be mindful, we are told, and to stay in the moment. Sometimes, we are advised to keep going no matter what, to be 'gritty'. Others tell us that adopting a 'growth mindset' is key.

The quest for enlightenment has occupied mankind for millennia. And from the depictions we’ve seen—monks sitting on meditation cushions, nuns kneeling in prayer, shamans communing with the universe—it seems that this elusive state is reserved for a chosen few. But now, neuroscientist David Perlmutter and medical anthropologist and shaman Alberto Villoldo have come together to explore the commonalities between their specialties with the aim of making enlightenment possible for anyone.

Once a century, one person is chosen for greatness. Elisa is the chosen one. But she is also the younger of two princesses. The one who has never done anything remarkable, and can't see how she ever will. Now, on her 16th birthday, she has become the secret wife of a handsome and worldly king - a king whose country is in turmoil. A king who needs her to be the chosen one. And he's not the only one who seeks her. Savage enemies, seething with dark magic,are hunting her.

Are videogames bad for us? It's the question on everyone's mind, given teenagers' captive attention to videogames and the media's tendency to scapegoat them. It's also - if you ask clinical psychologist Alexander Kriss - the wrong question. In his therapy office, Kriss looks at videogames as a window into the mind. Is his patient Liz really "addicted" to Candy Crush - or is she evading a deeper problem? And when Jack immerses himself in Mass Effect, is he eroding his social skills - or honing them via relationship - building gameplay?

Turn your anxiety into strength with Harvard-based psychotherapist Dr. Luana Marques’ 3-step method to living boldly—her clinically-proven approach inspires her clients from CEOs to at-risk teens and echoes lessons learned growing up in challenging circumstances in Brazil.

"We are what we repeatedly do," Aristotle once said. "Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." On the most basic level, a habit is a simple neurological loop: there is a cue (my mouth feels gross), a routine (hello, Crest), and a reward (ahhh, minty fresh). Understanding this loop is the key to exercising regularly or becoming more productive at work or finally tapping in to reserves of creativity. As this book shows, tweaking even one habit, as long as it's the right one, can have staggering effects.

A Wall Street Journal writer’s conversation-changing look at how reading aloud makes adults and children smarter, happier, healthier, more successful, and more closely attached, even as technology pulls in the other direction.

Do you wish there was a way to raise well-behaved children without punishment? Are you afraid the only alternative is being overly indulgent? With Positive Discipline, an encouragement model based on both kindness and firmness, you don't have to choose between these two extremes. Using these 49 Positive Discipline tools honed and perfected after years of real-world research and feedback, you'll be able to work with your children instead of against them.

The Korean sixth sense for winning friends and influencing people, nunchi (pronounced noon-chee) can help you connect with others so you can succeed in everything from business to love. The Power of Nunchi will show you how. Have you ever wondered why your less-skilled coworker gets promoted before you, or why that one woman from your yoga class is always surrounded by adoring friends? They probably have great nunchi. The art of reading a room and understanding what others are thinking and feeling, nunchi is a form of emotional intelligence.