Reads to Enlighten

Discover how to rethink your relationship with stress and overcome burnout, depression, and anxiety with this accessible health-meets-self-help guide. Drawing on years of experience as a renowned Harvard doctor and nationally recognised stress expert, Dr. Aditi Nerurkar has developed a science-backed approach to help us change our relationship with everyday stress. This book teaches a mindset shift about stress through five simple yet powerful resets – pillars of wisdom that bring together physiological and psychological coping skills and enable you to cope when things get hard. For Dr. Nerurkar, the first step toward a healthier mind and body is overcoming a common misperception about stress: that it’s ‘bad’. Stress is actually good for us, she argues, because it is a driving biological force and an adaptive response to life’s many demands. We run into problems, however, when our stress is maladaptive and out of tune with the frequency of our lives, manifesting in burnout, fatigue, meltdowns, and depression. To keep stress at healthy levels, Dr. Nerurkar offers her five science-backed resets to help us in our challenging moments: Get Clear on What Matters Most Find Quiet in a Noisy World Sync Your Brain and Your Body Come Up for Air Bring Your Best Self Forward Like any good doctor, she prescribes real solutions. Some of her bite-size techniques include adopting the rule of two (research shows that making more than two large decisions at a time is overwhelming), rejecting the myth of multitasking (it just doesn’t work!) and experimenting with her Bookend Method (find a ritual to start and end each workday to create boundaries between your professional life and everything else). With these small, smart adjustments, we can change our relationship with stress, nurture our mental health, and live better every day.

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‘[A] creative and original book on resilience through crises’ DAVID MILIBAND ‘[A] fascinating book is full of insights … I highly recommend it’ KATE RAWORTH, AUTHOR OF DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS From a leading international crisis management expert, a breakthrough book about performance under pressure that will change the way you think about stress When we experience too much stress, we often feel like shutting down and escaping the source: we ‘downshift’. With too little stress, we become apathetic and disengaged. But what happens in the middle zone – when we experience what psychologists call ‘positive stress’ – and how can we use it to overcome extraordinary barriers and perform at our peak? From his role as a globally recognised change-maker at the likes of the United Nations, the International Red Cross and the World Bank, Ben Ramalingam has a unique vantage point from which to identify the key principles that can enable anyone to use stress as an opportunity for change. We learn how a switch in mentality helps musicians dazzle huge crowds against all odds; how astronauts focus on originality to overcome life-threatening incidents; and how discovering a sense of purpose allows emergency health workers and aid experts to deal with unprecedented crises. Through a sweep of fascinating interviews, in-depth research and inspiring human stories, Upshift provides us with an everyday toolkit that can help to improve our work, relationships and mindset, and places us on the road to success. Taking readers on an epic journey from early humans’ survival of the Ice Age to how modern social movements emerge and propagate in the digital world, Upshift is a reminder that creative solutions to complex problems will always exist – as long as we’re ready to innovate.

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Legendary leadership and elite performance expert Robin Sharma introduced The 5am Club concept over twenty years ago, based on a revolutionary morning routine that has helped his clients maximize their productivity, activate their best health and bulletproof their serenity in this age of overwhelming complexity. Now, in this life-changing book, handcrafted by the author over a rigorous four-year period, you will discover the early-rising habit that has helped so many accomplish epic results while upgrading their happiness, helpfulness and feelings of aliveness. Through an enchanting—and often amusing—story about two struggling strangers who meet an eccentric tycoon who becomes their secret mentor, The 5am Club will walk you through: How great geniuses, business titans and the world’s wisest people start their mornings to produce astonishing achievementsA little-known formula you can use instantly to wake up early feeling inspired, focused and flooded with a fiery drive to get the most out of each dayA step-by-step method to protect the quietest hours of daybreak so you have time for exercise, self-renewal and personal growthA neuroscience-based practice proven to help make it easy to rise while most people are sleeping, giving you precious time for yourself to think, express your creativity and begin the day peacefully instead of being rushed‘Insider-only’ tactics to defend your gifts, talents and dreams against digital distraction and trivial diversions so you enjoy fortune, influence and a magnificent impact on the world Part manifesto for mastery, part playbook for genius-grade productivity and part companion for a life lived beautifully, The 5am Club is a work that will transform your life. Forever.

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Diving doctor on the Thai Cave Rescue (now a Netflix series) and former joint Australian of the Year explores the stories of other people who regularly risk their lives and what we can learn from their expertise. Are free-solo climbers, underwater cave explorers and big-wave surfers crazy ... or cautious? How do soldiers and fighter pilots manage risk? What can we learn from how BASE jumpers and drag racers prepare that we can take into our own lives?‘Harry’ Harris—Thai Cave Rescuer, joint Australian of the Year—has an unusual idea of fun: he crawls though pitch-black, confined caves, deep underground and usually underwater. To most, that’s a nightmare. To him, it’s recreation. He’s prepared for all conceivable risks, he’s completely focused. And the discipline and danger involved leave him better prepared for everyday life. In this ultimate armchair adventure, Harry takes us into the lives of other ‘risk-takers’, to find out why they do what they do. We meet people adventuring from the highest skies to the deepest oceans—BASE jumpers, drag racers, snipers and surfers—including climber Alex Honnold (from the movie Free Solo), sailor Jessica Watson, film director and deep-sea diver James Cameron. Each gripping story is a masterclass in risk from the experts: when to go, when to say no, how to prepare and above all, how pushing ourselves a little further helps us become more courageous and resilient in all of our challenges. Heart-pounding and eye-opening, you’ll never look at risk the same way again.

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THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ‘A monumental, gripping book … Outstanding’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘Noise may be the most important book I've read in more than a decade. A genuinely new idea so exceedingly important you will immediately put it into practice. A masterpiece’ Angela Duckworth, author of Grit ‘An absolutely brilliant investigation of a massive societal problem that has been hiding in plain sight’ Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics From the world-leaders in strategic thinking and the multi-million copy bestselling authors of Thinking Fast and Slow and Nudge, the next big book to change the way you think. We like to think we make decisions based on good reasoning – and that our doctors, judges, politicians, economic forecasters and employers do too. In this groundbreaking book, three world-leading behavioural scientists come together to assess the last great fault in our collective decision-making: noise. We all make bad judgements more than we think. Noise shows us what we can do to make better ones.

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The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller Learn how to recognise and resist the daily attempts to control and manipulate your mind. There is a war on for your mind. You may not notice, but you are surrounded by manipulators: advertisers, politicians, big tech, even the humble waiter who asks, ‘Still or sparkling?’ Free Your Mind is your field manual to surviving the information battlefield. In this indispensable book, Laura Dodsworth and Patrick Fagan draw on interviews with mind-control experts ranging from monks to magicians, infiltrate cults and forums to uncover their most deceptive techniques and expose the hidden tactics used to influence you, from social media to subliminal messages. Learn how to recognise the nudges, dispel efforts to brainwash you and always question those who say the choice is yours. If you don’t control your mind, someone else will.

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