Nine Weeks of Must-Read Books for Professional Care Providers: Week 2–Personal & Professional Formation

Nine Weeks of Must-Read Books for Professional Care Providers

Week 2—Personal & Professional Formation

In honor of the highest-selling month for books, and the cold weather during which it’s more tempting to curl up and read, I’m posting those books and videos I most recommend to caring professionals in practice and to which I refer in my trainings.

Individual growth is one of the best things we can do to advance professionally. Some may write off emotional intelligence as so much fuzzy woo woo new age malarkey, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth!

I often teach that the best skills and most sophisticated protocols are of little to no use if we are not personally grounded enough to use them. The following are books and videos I recommend to professionals seeking to go deeper for their personal satisfaction and career growth.

The Gifts of Imperfection, Brene Brown, PhD, LMSW. After a decade researching shame and vulnerability, this University of Houston School of Social Work researcher and professor wanted to know what made a person Whole-Hearted. The rest is history. Discover the traits that trip you up and consider ways to find freedom from them.

With down-to-earth honesty, humor, and brilliant insights all backed by research, this book is the top of my list. If you get no other in this 9-week series, trust me, this is the one!

Watch a 5-minute video in which she summarizes a few of the points behind the book on a Houston PBS show from 2010 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck6atQ6xppc

Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert. A lovely read! During a crisis, she makes the leap of a lifetime that takes her on a journey across countries and deeper into herself than ever before. Her language is poetic and helps you feel and experience the journey with her.

For whatever situation in which you feel stuck, you’ll find yourself asking, “What in the world am I waiting for?” and opening up to new possibilities. Even if you’ve seen the movie, definitely read the book!

Learn more on her website at http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/books/eat-pray-love/

Rising Strong: The Reckoning, the Rumble, the Revolution, Brene Brown. In her most recent gem, Brown reminds us that falling isn’t the concern; it’s our ability to wrestle with our story until we find the truths in it that will help us as we get back up and move forward. With even more direct and challenging language than perhaps any of her other works, you’ll learn a process for examining the events of your life and your emotions around them, being mindful of the stories you tell yourself. The result is simply more freedom from being our own worst enemy.

The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer. Imagine what others would think if they could hear the way you speak to yourself inside your own head. The goal isn’t to evict this crazy inner roommate, but to befriend it and realize that, since you are observing it, you must not actually BE it. With this separation and perspective, you can avoid getting caught up and drug around by the critical and defeatist things that voices says to you.

Coming from the mindfulness and meditation traditions, Singer’s gentle and calming voice will soothe you as you explore a deeper understanding of yourself and the things that hold you back from being in the moment.

Read an excerpt and learn more at http://untetheredsoul.com/untethered-soul

Start Where You Are, Pema Chodron. Drawing from the 59 maxims of Tibetan Buddhism, Chodron, a Buddhist nun, expounds upon the slogans to teach about compassion, for ourselves and others. She uses humor and insight in a way that is accessible to everyone, even those who have no clue Buddhist teachings.

Her calm and truly loving voice permeates her words and will draw you in and model it for you to give the same to yourself and others in bite-sized and digestible chunks.

The Power of Vulnerability TED Talk, Brene Brown. Still one of the most-watched TED talks in history, Brown’s first talk at TEDx Houston went viral almost overnight. (Her follow talk on the main TED stage the following year also deserves a watch.) Do yourself a favor and watch where it all began, at least on an international stage, and fall in love with the every-day straight talk that exudes wisdom based on research and real living.

Watch it now at https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability

How Great Leaders Inspire Action, Simon Sinek. Based on his book, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, this TED talk is worth staying on line 18 more minutes after watching Brown’s. Simon Sinek is a trained ethnographer who teaches graduate classes in strategic communication at Columbia University.

He shares that persons do not make decisions based on logic, as we might light to think, but instead from our emotional centers. He reminds us that Martin Luther King did not inspire hundreds of thousands of people with his “I Have a Plan” speech, and neither will we.

As we understand and explain why we do what we do, then we can explain what and how, but it is the why that gets others’ attention. This will help you clarify your own purpose and be more ready to share it with others. Don’t miss this talk and book packed with practical information that will transform how you market, network, and even think about your work.

Find the talk here https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

Once again, I hope something here has been helpful or inspiring. Be watching for next week’s post Hopefully something here has been helpful. Be looking for the next post on books I recommend related to Boundaries, Family Dynamics, and Team Health.

Until then, please share your own most-recommended reads with me, so I can share them with others.

Peace,

Carla

Rev. Carla Cheatham, MA, MDiv, PhD, TRT has served hospices as a chaplain and bereavement coordinator. She’s the Section Leader for the Spiritual Caregivers Section of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and an adjunct professor at the Seminary of the Southwest. Through her Carla Cheatham Consulting Group, Carla provides training and consulting for professional caregivers nationwide. She is the author of Hospice Whispers: Stories of Life and its companion volume, Sharing Our Stories: A Hospice Whispers Grief Support Workbook. Her next book, On Showing Up with Suffering: Others’ and Our Own, is set to publish in 2017.