Blog

Self-Development Summer Reading

The best of our self-development summer reading to slip into your hand luggage and flick through on the beach. With everything from transformational public speaking coaching to shifting your energy towards happiness love and beyond, we have something for everyone this summer.

Grace Under Pressure by Lisa Wentz

“This is an incredibly valuable resource for prospective speakers […] which readers can use to step up not only as public speakers but also in the rest of their lives.” – Caroline Goyder, Author of Gravitas: Communicate with Confidence, Influence and Authority.

According to most studies, public speaking is the number one fear among professionals. Most suffer from stage fright, lack of basic vocal training and/or lack of delivery technique. Such individuals seek tips and tricks in books, articles, and blogs, and assume that there’s a fast and easy way for appearing eloquent and polished in front of an audience. However, these sources often fail to address the underlying issue of stage fright, and the same habitual responses to nervousness continue to plague the speaker.

Grace Under Pressure solves this issue by unveiling three areas of training that great speakers use to develop their skills. In the first section, author Lisa Wentz shares techniques that she has developed to help anyone overcome inner obstacles so they can focus on developing their outward presence. The second section outlines how to best develop the physical aspects of speech, including posture, breathing, resonance, and articulation. And the third section centres on delivery: how to use pauses, word stress, and storytelling, among other techniques, to improve your performance from novice to master. This final section offers acting techniques and directorial advice that can be applied to speeches, pitches, presentations and meeting strategies. Pop it in your bag and let summer reading create a more confident you.

Nine Squares by Ole Bentzen 

“One of the biggest things I have learned through my journey with the Nine Squares is how simple running a business can be. It has made me realize how much time I have taken up consuming unimportant complexities that gain the business no benefit. Through the Nine Suwares principle, I now have a clear overview to further develop my company in areas that matter.” – Casper Barghholz, CEO, Design4Web

Ole Bentzen’s guidebook for leaders who wish to invest in their people and customers by creating calmness, a sense of direction, communicating clearly and getting the right results.

Nine Squares is a guidebook for leaders who wish to invest in their people as well as their customers. In order to succeed as a leader, creating calmness, having a sense of direction, communicating clearly, and getting the right results is the key to your energy. The combination of these four strengths makes the core message of this guidebook. This model may be able to assist managers and businesses in getting back on track, remain on track, or get ahead as a unique and innovative business with well-defined targets, vision, and brand.

I Was A Teenage Space Reporter by David Chudwin

“At the start of 16 July, just after midnight, I boarded the Apollo 11 Capsule to go through a several-hundred-item ‘switch list’ to assure the ship was ready for crew ingress. I was very excited to be a part of this historic mission leading to our first landing on the Moon. David’s book gives one great perspective of the excitement and experience of someone outside the Apollo Program!” – Fred Haise, Astronaut, Apollo 11 Backup and Apollo 13 Lunar Module Pilot

As the only college student with NASA credentials, read David Chudwin’s fascinating account that looks back to the Apollo 11 launch and ahead to our future in space.

“That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind,” were the words spoken by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong as he stepped off the footpad of the Lunar Module Eagle. This was the first and most famous manned mission to land on the Moon. As a 19-year-old college journalist, author David Chudwin covered the launch from Florida in July 1969. Chudwin was the only journalist with official NASA press credentials representing the college press and had extraordinary access to the astronauts, rocket scientists, launch pads, rockets, and control centres.

2019 will be the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 — a time to look back to celebrate that mission and forward to our future in space. Divided into three parts, this book provides the author’s account of covering the first landing on the Moon in 1969; lessons learned from the Apollo program and their relevance to future space activities; and our future in space including new rockets, space stations, and trips back to the Moon and to Mars.

The Soft Stuff by Matt Dean 

“Matt Dean has achieved a rare thing – a compelling fusion of personal memoir and wider wisdom about leadership, empathy and what it takes to be our best selves at work… this is a vital resource for women and men looking to navigate the challenges of leading with integrity in increasingly complex times” – Kathryn Perera, Barrista and NHS Innovator

Matt Dean uses his recent experiences of cancer to shine a light on the challenge we all face in motivating ourselves to unleash our potential through kinder, fairer and more productive workplaces.

Most of us work, yet few of us recognise our power in those workplaces or that we can influence things there. How can those of us striving in workplaces, `unleash the power of you’? How do we start creating kinder, fairer, more productive workplaces? More fundamentally, where does the spark, the resolve actually to do something come from? How do we start to live our purpose?

In this book, Matt Dean uses his recent experience of cancer to shine a light on the challenges we all face in motivating ourselves to unleash the power of us. This is a book about creating kinder, fairer, more productive workplaces. Which sets out the thoughts, principles, and tools to create a more inclusive workplace.

The Zone of Connection by Sue Coyne and Penny Mallinson

“…a masterful practice that guides us to access our true power, unlimited creativity and relationships that bring us joy. This book will give you the practical steps that you can take to make the evolutionary leap and gain access to the next stage of living consciously.” – Hal Elrod, international bestselling author of The Miracle Morning

The Zone of Connection offers a simple but powerful practice to transform your life just 5 minutes a day, going beyond mindfulness, showing you how to shift from being on autopilot to one of full connection and experiencing flow in all areas of your life. With simple but powerful techniques, stemming from research into neuro and quantum science, you can experience internal transformation and become your own master.

This book demonstrates how to shift out of this default operating system to one of full connection and by doing so living to our full potential. It is this zone that the great masters and ancient wisdom traditions point to – a beautiful, powerful state that is now available to everyone. The authors provide a new simple approach that is easy to apply, and through this practice, anyone can be fully present, feeling happiness and love and be at their very best every day. Set yourself up for success with summer reading that will shift your energy and improve your life.

Explore our online shop for Summer reading inspiration