Summer’s here and the time is right for burying noses in good books. At least that’s what I’ll be attempting to do every chance I get so long as the small fantasy I’m harbouring – of two small children lolling around on freshly mown grass building Lego creations in a mutually supportive way – plays out on our holidays. Whether you’re tripping the light fantastic in Barbados or travelling the tube round Barnet you can be sure your mind will be transported to another place entirely in the company of a good book. In this blog I’m introducing some non-fiction reads I’ve been mentioning to clients a lot recently.

Make a Change, Ooze confidence

Confidence: The Art of Getting Whatever You Want by Rob Yeung
Rob is a psychologist who’s taken relevant bits of scientific research and bundled them together with exercises and his own perspective on what fuels confidence. It’s a motivating, easy to read book with practical offerings on how to incr ease confidence generally and in specific situations such as public speaking, in terviews and social encounters with strangers.

BIT from the book: “By all means aspire to be great in the long term, but allow yourself to be good or even okay in the short-term. You may want to be a superb public speaker, able to wow audiences of thousands with your manner and wit. Great, but that won’t come overnight. In the meantime avoid condemning yourself over the little imperfections…support your efforts and congratulate yourself for what you manage to do rather than put yourself down for what you haven’t quite managed. Because at some point you will suddenly look back and realise how far you’ve come.”

The No Diet Diet by Professor Ben (C) Fletcher, Professor Karen Pine & Dr Danny Penman
Ben, Karen & Danny have crafted a book I enjoyed long after slimming down from my overweight first year at university (where loneliness can go hand in hand with lemon meringue pie) and getting into running. It’s essentially a series of habit-breaking tasks proven to increase behavioural flexibility. Karen & Ben’s research over the last 20 years shows that being more flexible (less habit driven) is associated with being slimmer and less depressed. Clients say they’ve enjoyed the interest, creativity and good old plain fun it’s put into their lives alongside the weightloss.

A BIT FROM THE BOOK: “Most traditional tools for change, for example training or therapies, work by trying to get people to alter the way they think. But this is extremely difficult. Many people simply cannot change the way they view the world. Another major drawback is their reliance, to varying degrees, on willpower. Many people simply cannot maintain their willpower for long enough to maintain permanant positive change.Professor Fletcher realised that getting people to change what they actually do could be used as a lever to change their thinking. Changing a little by Doing Something Different gives people a small jolt and sets them thinking along a different track.”

Feel Great (and accelerate) at Work

More to Life Than Shoes by Nadia Finer & Emily Nash
More to Life Than Shoes is a book you can pick up for five minutes or fifty minutes and come away believing you have it in you to turn your life around. Nadia and Emily combine self deprecating wit and warmth with case study after case study of women who’ve achieved some incredible things. They deconstruct how each woman they profile has achieved what she has and draw out insights for the reader to take away and use in her own life right now.  

A BIT FROM THE BOOK: “It’s a challenge women in other professions face too, especially in business, where showing strength can get your branded a bitch. Kirsty (Wark) herself has been criticised for aggression in interviews. In 2007 the BBC were forced to apologise after she interviewed Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, describing her tone as ‘rude and dismissive’. Kirsty says she tries to find a balance between listening to criticism and ignoring it. ‘I would describe myself as persistent rather than aggressive. I think it’s a knee-jerk reaction to women interviewing. Of course, I take on board criticism, you have to, but you can’t take every comment to heart. I just continue to interview the way I think I should.”

Coaching Women to Lead by Averil Leimon, F Moscovici and H Goodier
I heard Averil speak some years ago and was delighted when she published this authoritative case for differential support for women to progress their career into leadership. It’s straight-talking and practical in both tone and content which I think is excellent – no `clevering up’ of coaching. Roughly equal numbers of male and female graduates enter the workforce yet the leakage of talent by the time women hit their 30s is alarming; if the book can do anything it is to make the need for intervention abundantly clear.

BIT FROM THE BOOK: “Coaching is vital for women at stages of their lives where they need to make very big decisions. The decision will always be hard but at least the assurance that they have considered all options will enable women to engage constructively in their lives. The next step may then be to coach them to present new solutions to the organisation which are based on good business sense rather than doing women a favour. Job sharing came about through women developing a solution that suited them but also gave the organisation tremendous value for money.”

I can’t touch on women and work without mention of my own book, Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work which has some powerful reviews on Amazon including this from Stepanie:

I made the decision not to return to work after my second child then a friend put me on to Jessica’s work and now I find myself reassessing my options. Although too late to return to my old job, ‘Mothers Work’ has given me a great deal of inspiration and confidence to start again. I wish I had had access to this kind of support and advice during my maternity leave. If I were still employed in my HR role, I would be factoring the purchase of Mothers Work into my budget to hand out to all women going off to have babies. For smaller employers who cannot afford maternity coaching programmes, this book is a no brainer investment to help retain female talent.”

Let Their Lives Inspire Yours

Just a Little Run Around the World by Rosie Swale-Pope
Keen runner Rosie was married to Clive, who died of cancer. ‘What can I do in memory of Clive and to save other people from needlessly dying of it?’ pondered Rosie. I know, I’ll run around the world spreading a positive vibe and raising awareness. A friend recommended Rosie’s book after meeting her washing her hair in the sink of a ladies loo at a travel show in London. Her humility alone makes this worth picking up before you take off this summer.

BIT FROM THE BOOK: “I run at night under the light of the Aurora Borealis. The whole ice-cape of the river and the banks beyond reflects the exquisite colours or orange, green, scarlet and aquamarine, as the Aurora swirls and dances across the night sky. The wolves howl from the banks of the Yukon, as if the Aurora had disturbed or awoken ancient feelings. I think of the wolves of Siberia, and how lucky I am to have known all this on my run. I’ve been given a second chance after the frostbite. I’ll make the most of it and keep on doing the very best I can. I will never get over why people are always so good to me.”

Learning from Wonderful Lives by Nick Baylis
Nick is one of the UK’s foremost wellbeing psychologists and has written a gratifyingly mood-boosting insight into what people do that have lives that go well. He weaves the stories and ideas of well known names together with academic research and covers the whole spectrum of life – from finding enjoyable work and learning to thrive in the face of adversity, through to developing satisfying relationships and the best ways to nourish and nurture our minds and bodies. This tops my list of books for people who want to make the absolute best of themselves or less optimistically, those who wouldn’t wish their life on another.

BIT FROM THE BOOK: “And let’s rest assured that there is absolutely no stigma in changing targets, fields or careers. It has been the hallmark of very many accomplished people. As an undergraduate at MIT, the future Nobel Prize winner, Richard Feynman, changed from mathematics to electrical engineering and only then to physics. In much the same way that Margaret Thatcher studied chemistry at Oxford and then went into law and then politics. And Bill gates had the wisdom to leave Harvard after the first year so as to set up his Microsoft business with a lifelong friend. Change should bring progress, that’s all that’s important.”

What are you taking away from this post?

1) Books can be a powerful catalyst for change
2) Some suggestions for summer reading to improve your life

For more inspiration to spark change in your life from writers who know their stuff, see the Resources page. For titles to fuel your career change and transition challenges see the Stepping Up Your Career page. If you’ve done the reading and are keen to bring the ideas to life I’d be delighted to work with you.

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