February was a good month for listening, as I was spending half of each day outside, working on trails at Prospect Mountain. Even though Feb. is a short month, I managed ten books.
Mind – Daniel Siegel **.5
Consciousness and the Brain – Stanislas Dehaene ***
Make Your Bed – William H. McRaven **
Avoidant – Jeb Kinnison ****
The Confidence Gap – Russ Harris ****
Words on the Move – John McWhorter ***
Primal Leadership – Daniel Goleman ***
Get Smart – Brian Tracy **
Unconditional Self Acceptance – Cheri Huber ***
Ikigai – Héctor García ***
(if you are not yet an Audible member, you can get one of these books for free, by signing up for a 30 day trial – use this link, and you’ll help support my work as well – Audible Trial Membership)
My strongest recommend for the month is ‘The Confidence Gap’, with ‘Avoidant’ coming in a close second. If you want a good foundational understanding of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), give ‘The Confidence Gap’ a listen. Of all the therapeutic methods out there today, this is the one that I align with the most. It’s honest, grounded, and practical.
If you want a better understanding of why some of your relationships may have gone haywire, or an understanding of why the current ‘person of interest’ in your life, may be causing you some pain and frustration, give ‘Avoidant’ a listen. While this book does not provide a full description of Attachment Theory, it does shed a great deal of light on the avoidant attachment style. I caution though, that this information should not be used to demonize people with an avoidant attachment style, but simply to understand their behavior in light of Attachment Theory.
There were three books that fell into the ‘don’t waste your time or your money’ category – ‘Mind’, ‘Make Your Bed’, and ‘Get Smart’. These books are either over-simplified to the point of being useless, over-complicated to the point of being unintelligible, or simply so obvious, that I wonder why the author spent the time writing it… perhaps they were bored. Regardless of which category each of these books falls into, don’t waste your time… you’ve got better things to do.