Influential Books from the communities of sufficiency, sustainable economics, spirituality, leadership, creativity & more.
Sufficiency
Living in Sufficiency: A Daily Journey
by Gina LaRoche - This book is written so that the reader can connect with a word, phrase or sentiment each and every day of the year that will give the gift of sufficiency even if it is just for a moment
Tools of Sufficiency Card Deck
by Gina LaRoche - These cards were created especially for you to help you reclaim your birthright of sufficiency. They are meant to keep you present in sufficiency as you live your life.
The Soul of Money
by Lynn Twist – This unique and fundamentally liberating book shows us that examining our attitudes toward money–earning it, spending it, and giving it away–can offer surprising insight into our lives, our values, and the essence of prosperity. Transform your view on money, purchase it here.
Trance of Scarcity: Hey! Stop holding your breath and start living your life
by Victoria Castle – Victoria Castle offers a prescription for realizing abundance and empowerment.
A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough
by Wayne Muller – In a world seduced by its own unlimited potential, rather than feeling omnipotent we feel powerless and overwhelmed by impossible responsibilities. He urges readers to step back from their inner pressures and from the externalities of culture, community, and work to reclaim an unshakable trust in their own deep inner sufficiency.
Are More Than Enough: Every Woman’s Guide to Purpose, Passion and Power
by Judi Moreo – She unraveled the mystery behind the illusion that only a chosen few are allowed success, and has become a respected authority on high-level performance, personal development and self-esteem.
Toxic Success: How to Stop Striving and Start Thriving
by Paul Pearsall – Filled with specific techniques and interactive tools such as “The Pestered Person Test” and “The Attention Inventory,” this book offers an innovative detoxification program to help people change their mindset, focus their attention, and appreciate the simple but profound things in life.
Enough: Discovering Joy through Simplicity and Generosity
by Adam Hamilton – Enough is an invitation to rediscover the Bible’s wisdom when it comes to prudent financial practices. In these pages are found the keys to experiencing contentment, overcoming fear, and discovering joy through simplicity and generosity.
Enough!: A Buddhist Approach to Finding Release from Addictive Patterns
by Chonyi Taylor – Taylor’s accessible and savvy hands-on guide is profound in applying spiritual principles of awareness cultivation for reconditioning the heart and mind through a skillful combination of practical psycho-spiritual exercises and insightful introspection.
Enough: Contentment in an Age of Excess
by Will Samson and Shane Claiborne – In Enough, Will and Lisa Samson address the idea of finding contentment in this age of excess. With a casual, accessible writing style, the Samson’s discuss consumerism, contentment as a Christian discipline, and the notion of stewarding our resources. In four sections, they outline the ideas that drive a consumerist mindset; the effects those ideas have on ourselves, our communities, and the earth; conclusions about the situation; and practical solutions for negotiating everyday life once we understand that our abundant God is, in fact, enough.
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age
by Bill MicKibben This book raises some fundamental questions about who we are, what we are, and how we may be affected by the biotechnologies which we already possess and those which are just over the horizon. The author takes us on an expedition into the world of genetic research, nanotechnology and robotics.
Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More
by John Naish – Enough explores how our Neolithic brain-wiring spurs us to build a world of overabundance that keeps us hooked on ‘more’. John explains how, through adopting the art of enoughness, we can break from this wrecking cycle.
The World Is As You Dream It: Teachings from the Amazon and Andes
by: John Perkins - Perkins is an eco-activist who aims to save not only the rain forest but also the ancient native cultures that make their homes within it. His book offers a thrilling view of those cultures as experienced by American travelers, especially Perkins.
True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart
by: Thich Nhat Hanh - Beginning with a short Buddhist explanation on the components of love-loving kindness, compassion, joy and freedom- Nhat Hanh then offers a series of practices, including mantras, deep listening and a variety of meditations.
Progressive Economics
The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as If the Future Matters
by Diane Coyle – How can we achieve the financial growth we need today without sacrificing a decent future for our children, our societies, and our planet? How can we realize what Coyle calls “the Economics of Enough”? Running the economy for tomorrow as well as today will require a wide range of policy changes.
The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future Of Our Economy, Energy, And Environment
by Chris Martenson – The Crash Course presents our predicament and illuminates the path ahead, so you can face the coming disruptions and thrive–without fearing the future or retreating into denial. In this book you will find solid facts and grounded reasoning presented in a calm, positive, non-partisan manner.
Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
by Bill McKibben – For the first time in human history, he observes, “more” is no longer synonymous with “better”—indeed, for many of us, they have become almost opposites. McKibben puts forward a new way to think about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all.
Growth Fetish
by Clive Hamilton – Growth Fetish is the first serious attempt at a politics of change for rich countries dominated by sicknesses of affluence, where the real yearning is not for more money but for authentic identity, and where the future lies in creating a society that promotes the things that really do improve our well-being.
Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty.
by Roger Thurow – This very readable book argues that the agricultural science and technology of the green revolution, which ended famine in much of the world last century, was on the whole a good thing, and that we need more of it.
Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self Interest
by John Bogle – Offers unparalleled insights on money, the values we should emulate in our business and professional callings, and what we should consider as the true treasures in our lives.
Social Change
One City: A Declaration of Interdependence
by Ethan Nichtern – There may be no greater setting for exploring the great truth of interdependence that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expounded. With pop-culture savvy, humor, and literary liveliness, One City melds Dr. King’s message with modern Buddhist wisdom to explain how we might best live together — no matter who we are, and no matter where.
Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self Interest
by Peter Block – Reaching for the stars, he constructs a productive business/industry model under which increasingly empowered employee/workers establish a new category of partnership and accountability that will render traditional management hierarchies almost obsolete. In simple terms (not notably indulged in here), sales and service personnel will so promote the interests of customers, distributors and production workforce that overpaid executives will forgo wealth and power, re-address priorities and bend moral attitudes to this end as stewards of the common good.
Enough: Stewardship Program Guide
by Adam Hamilton – Lead the congregation through a study program, sermon series and thoughtful consideration together of financial values, contentment and giving. Video clips of interviews and graphics Adam used in his own series are included.
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
by: Chip, Dan Heath – The Heath brothers address motivating employees, family members, and ourselves in their analysis of why we too often fear change. Change is not inherently frightening, but our ability to alter our habits can be complicated by the disjunction between our rational and irrational minds. The Heaths speak energetically and encouragingly on how to modify our behaviors and businesses. This clever discussion is an entertaining and educational must-read for executives and for ordinary citizens looking to get out of a rut.
Creativity
Prosperity Pie : How to Relax About Money and Everything Else
by Sark – SARK guides readers through self-awareness excercises and philosophical musings aimed at keeping money in proper perspective. Some of her handmade worksheets exploring financial history and anxieties are reminiscent of Suze Orman’s guides, but most of the book is taken up with broader questions of personal identity and fulfillment.
Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Most creative people, the author suggests, have dialectic personalities: smart yet naive, both extroverted and introverted, etc. Synthesizing study results, he reports that none of the interviewees were popular during adolescence; while they were not necessarily more brilliant than their college peers, they displayed more “concentrated attention.” Later, they kept a consistent focus on future work. The author reminds us that while individuals can make their own opportunities, a supportive society offering resources and rewards can foster creativity.
Leadership
Ready to Lead: A Story for Leaders and Their Mentors
by Alan Price – Ready to Lead? tells the tale of Mark Gibson, a young executive who is searching for inspiration and leadership skills as he experiences the inevitable growing pains in his career. Ready to Lead? spins a compelling insider’s tale that shows what it takes to develop from the role of a successful manager to become an authentic leader.
Managing the Dream: Reflections on Leadership and Change
By: Warren Bennis – Warren Bennis has become synonymous with leadership, exploring all its dimensions as both practitioner and scholar for over four decades. Managing the Dream is an intimate portrait of leadership, comprising over a dozen essays that represent the author’s most incisive and creative thinking. It features many of Bennis’s most recent works, including “The End of Leadership,” and a new preface reflecting on the challenge of leadership in the new millennium.
Managing People is Like Herding Cats: Warren Bennis on Leadership
By: Warren Bennis – Bennis offers insights into developing leaders, the competencies of great leaders, ten traits of dynamic leaders, and how leaders constantly reinvent themselves.
Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration
By: Warren Bennis – Bennis declares the age of the empowered individual ended: what matters now is “collaborative advantage” and the assembling of powerful teams. Drawing from six case studies Bennis and coauthor Patricia Biederman distill the characteristics of successful collaboration, showing how talent can be pooled and managed for greater results than any individual is capable of producing.
Principle-Centered Leadership
By: Stephen Covey – How do we as individuals and organizations survive and thrive amid tremendous change? How do we unleash the creativity, talent, and energy within ourselves and others in the midst of pressure? Covey demonstrates that the answer to these and other dilemmas is Principle-Centered Leadership, a long-term, inside-out approach to developing people and organizations.
Management Challenges for the 21st Century
Leadership Is an Art
By: Max Depree – a must-read not only within the business community but also in professions ranging from academia to medical practices, to the political arena. This revised edition brings Max De Pree’s timeless words and practical philosophy to a new generation of readers.De Pree looks at leadership as a kind of stewardship, stressing the importance of building relationships, initiating ideas, and creating a lasting value system within an organization.
Leadership Without Easy Answers
By: Ronald Heifetz – We are indeed facing an unprecedented crisis of leadership, Ronald Heifetz avows, but it stems as much from our demands and expectations as from any leader’s inability to meet them. His book gets at both of these problems, offering a practical approach to leadership for those who lead as well as those who look to them for answers.
Real Change Leaders: How You Can Create Growth and High Performance at Your Company
By: Jon R. Katzenbach, Frederick Beckett – This updated paperback edition offers a real blueprint for how to deal with the dramatic change in today’s marketplace. An added feature, “Real Change Leader’s Handbook for Action, ” contains an assessment guide, ideas, checklists, and charts to help implement change.
Force For Change: How Leadership Differs from Management
By: John Kotter – Leadership, Kotter clearly demonstrates, is for the most part not a god-like figure transforming subordinates into superhumans, but is in fact a process that creates change — a process which often involves hundreds or even thousands of “little acts of leadership” orchestrated by people who have the profound insight to realize this. Building on his landmark study of 15 successful general managers, Kotter presents detailed accounts of how senior and middle managers in major corporations, in close concert with colleagues and subordinates, were able to create a leadership process that put into action hundreds of commonsense ideas and procedures that, in combination with competent management, produced extraordinary results.
Leading Change
By: John Kotter – Kotter examines the efforts of more than 100 companies to remake themselves into better competitors. He identifies the most common mistakes leaders and managers make in attempting to create change and offers an eight-step process to overcome the obstacles and carry out the firm’s agenda: establishing a greater sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering others to act, creating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing even more change, and institutionalizing new approaches in the future.
The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations
By: Peter Senge – Senge asks: “How do we go beyond the first steps of corporate change? How do we sustain momentum?” They know that companies and organizations cannot thrive today without learning to adapt their attitudes and practices.
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
By: Margaret Wheatley – Leadership and the New Science launched a revolution by demonstrating that ideas drawn from quantum physics, chaos theory, and molecular biology could improve organizational performance. Margaret Wheatley called for free-flowing information, individual empowerment, relationship networks, and organizational change that evolves organically — ideas that have become commonplace.
Including the Body
Spacious Body: Explorations in Somatic Ontology
by: Jeffrey Maitland - This book is gorgeous, a dream for someone who loves both the body and deep thinking. Maitland is masterful as showing us the wisdom of the body self as a unified field of experience, not a machine for our use and misuse.
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better
by: Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee - It’s official: body and mind are not separate. In fact, in this book, it becomes clear just how integrated a neurobiology we are. Great somatic science for the layperson and anyone wanting to understand the foundation of how to make lasting change.
