Self-Help Archives - Page 3 of 9

A Professor’s Top 15 Book Recommendations

One of the hardest things I had to do when I moved was to get rid of some of my books. My house was starting to look like a Barnes & Noble. I kept the textbooks I use for my courses and a few others that I found especially useful or interesting. The following list is in no particular order. It contains some of my favorite books that I kept. I often recommend them to my students:

Emotional Intelligence: Why it can Matter More than IQ by Daniel Goleman – Goleman is one of the main thought-leaders in emotional intelligence. This book is easy to read and explains the importance of emotional intelligence.
The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shaw Achor – This book included some interesting information about how to be happy. I liked the author’s style. It is entertaining and interesting.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. This book is required reading in many courses. Although some students hesitate to pick up “self-help” books, this one is a classic for good reasons.
Emotional Intelligence in Action by Marcia Hughes, Bonita Patterson, James Terrell, and Reuven Bar-On. This book is a helpful tool to develop emotional intelligence in teams.
The Pig That Wants to be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher by Julian Baggini. This strange little book was required reading for a course I taught about foresight. My technology students love it. It is filled with short stories. It is not for everyone. However, it is a book that will make you think.
Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice by Howard Gardner. Gardner’s work in multiple intelligences is an important foundation for anyone studying personality assessments.
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done by Peter Drucker. Drucker’s book is often required in management and leadership courses.
The Bugaboo Review: A Lighthearted Guide to Exterminating Confusion about Words, Spelling and Grammar by Sue Sommer. This is a fun book to teach spelling and grammar.
Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English by James Cochrane. This is helpful book to teach grammar.
Eats, Shoots, & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. This is another fun book to explain the importance of punctuation.
It’s Not You It’s Your Personality: Skills to Survive and Thrive in the Modern Workplace by Diane Hamilton and Toni Rothpletz. This is a book written by my daughter and me. It explains all of the top personality assessments and helps readers understand how to get along with other people at work.
The Elements of Style by William Strunk. This is a classic book on how to write correctly. Most authors keep a copy of this.
On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zessner. I like how Zessner teaches writers to write in a simple way.
The Online Student’s User Manual: Everything You Need to Know to be a Successful Online Student by Diane Hamilton. This book will help new and continuing students to be successful in online classes.
Entreleadership: 20 Years of Practical Wisdom from the Trenches by Dave Ramsey. This book contains a compilation of things that managers or entrepreneurs should know but may have never learned.

Importance of Being Proactive vs. Reactive

Many good foresight or business courses teach students to be proactive vs. reactive to change. Anyone who has read The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People will tell you that the very first habit Covey lists is to be proactive. Covey explained that to be proactive “means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.”

When a person is in control of an expected or anticipated occurrence, they have taken proactive measures. When a person is reactive, they are responding to something that they had yet to have anticipated.

In leadership courses, they often give examples of a proactive vs. a reactive leader. The following chart gives an example of the different mindset of these two styles of leaders. Click on the picture for more information.

Carol Shultz’s article Proactive vs. Reactive Approaches to Your Business and Talent explained two cases that demonstrated how reactive companies lost employees for different reasons, and the associated costs.

There are a number of theoretical models for change that include the importance of being proactive. Some of these include:

Is Your Personality Making You Fat?

The Wall Street Journal’s article Is Your Personality Making You Put on Pounds listed some personality traits that may affect weight gain. Some of the links between personality and weight gain include weight gain in people who are:

Less Agreeable
Night Owls
Stress Junkies
Mindless Multitaskers
Givers
Perfectionists

The author of the article provides some fixes for people who exhibit these traits.

Impulsiveness has also been linked to weight gain. The Huffington Post reported, “A 2006 study by Maastricht University of 26 obese children found that the most overweight children were also the most impulsive. Another study, published in 2008 by the University of Alabama, found that obese women had significantly lower impulse control than normal weight women, while a 1976 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition similarly found that obese women were more likely to be “non-conforming and impulsive” than their non-obese peers.”

Neurotic people also have issues with weight gain. The National Institute of Aging studied nearly 2000 people and found that people with high levels of neuroticism and low levels of conscientiousness displayed more frequent weight increases and decreases.

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology released a study that studied participants based on the Big Five personality traits of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. There were a total of 14,531 assessments across the 50 years of the study. Pyschcentral reported that the results showed, “greater weight gain among impulsive people; those who enjoy taking risks; and those who are antagonistic — especially those who are cynical, competitive and aggressive.” ABCLocal reported that this study showed, “that people who are meaner are more likely to gain weight with age. Those considered more conscientious were likely to be leaner.”

A lead researcher from the Institute of Aging, Angelina Sutin, was interviewed by Boomer Health and Life. Sutin stated, “We hope that by more clearly identifying the association between personality and obesity, more tailored treatments will be created. For example, lifestyle and exercise interventions that are done in a group setting may be more effective for extroverts than for introverts.”

WebMD claims that if you know your diet personality, it can help you lose weight. Weight loss plans should be based on whether you are a:

Support Seeker
Serial Snacker
Free Spirit
Sweet Tooth
Distracted Diner

To find ideal diet plans based on each of these types, click here.

Related Articles

Top 25 Links to Change Your Body, Career and More
New Research Uses Imagine to Show Serotonin’s Link to Anger
Boomers Worry More About Their Brain Than Their Body
Top 10 Personality Tests
Considering Plastic Surgery? Site Lets Patients Share Stories
Famous Computer Geniuses With Asperger’s
Famous People Capitalizing on Manic Depression
Mark Zuckerberg and Asperger’s
Right Brained vs. Left Brain: Who Will Rule the World
Acceptance of the Treatment of Depression

Top 20 TED Talks Not To Be Missed

TED.com contains some of the most inspirational, educational and entertaining videos on the Internet. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. The site shares video-recorded talks given by some of the most intelligent and interesting people in the world. There are plenty of top TED presentation lists on the Internet, that are created based on people’s interests. One of the most recent subject-specific lists I’ve seen is 20 Essential Ted Talks for Entrepreneurial Students. This is an excellent list for potential entrepreneurs.

However, TED has far more than just entrepreneur-related topics to offer. If you plan on getting lost on any site on the Internet, do it on TED. I try to view to as many TED talks as I can possibly fit into my schedule. Of the ones I have watched recently, I have created my own top 20 list of TED talks that I feel should not be missed:

Arthur Benjamin on Doing Mathemagic
Alain de Botton on A Kinder Gentler Philosophy of Success
Ted Pink on the Surprising Science of Motivation
Deb Roy on the Birth of a Word
Dennis Hong on Making a Car for Blind Drivers
Oliver Sacks on What Hallucination Reveals About Our Minds
David Bolinksy on Animating a Cell
Anthony Atala on Printing a Human Kidney
Stewart Brand on Does the World Need Nuclear Energy
Adam Astrow on After Your Final Status Update
Jeff Hawkins on How Brain Science Will Change Computing
John Hodgman on Aliens, Love and Where Are They?
Cameron Herald on Let’s Raise Kids to be Entrepreneurs
Edward Tenner on Unintended Consequences
Misha Glenny on Hire the Hackers!
Gregory Petsko on The Coming Neurological Epidemic
Malcolm Gladwell on Spaghetti Sauce
Joshua Walters on Being Just Crazy Enough
Barry Schwartz on the Paradox of Choice
Steve Jobs on How to Live Before You Die Speech at Stanford

Related Articles:

Dr. Diane Hamilton's Blog

A Revolution in Hiring and Working with Eva Andres of Juniper Networks

A Professor’s Top 15 Book Recommendations

Importance of Being Proactive vs. Reactive

Is Your Personality Making You Fat?

Top 25 Links to Change Your Body, Career and More

Top 20 TED Talks Not To Be Missed