January always feels like a natural moment to reset and look ahead, offering a fresh start and new opportunities. As we turn the page to a new year, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the past and set intentions for the future. This month’s list highlights stories and guides that inspire reflection, courage, and creativity. These titles delve into themes of new habits, fresh perspectives, and meaningful change. Whether you’re looking to cultivate a positive mindset, develop new skills, or simply find inspiration in everyday life, each of these works provides valuable insights to help you navigate the journey ahead. Embrace this season of renewal and let these stories guide you toward a fulfilling and transformative year.
Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves by Alison Wood Brooks
All of us can struggle with difficult conversations, but we’re often not very good at the easy ones either. Though we do it all the time, Harvard professor Alison Wood Brooks argues that conversation is one of the most complex, demanding, and delicate of all human tasks, rife with possibilities for misinterpretation and misunderstanding. And yet conversations can also be a source of great joy, each one offering an opportunity to express who we are and learn who others are—to feel connected, loved, and alive.
In Talk, Brooks shows why conversing a little more effectively can make a big difference in the quality of our close personal relationships as well as our professional success. Drawing on the new science of conversation, Brooks distills lessons that show how we can better understand, learn from, and delight each other. The key is her TALK Maxims:
Topics: Choose topics and manage them well
Asking: Ask more questions
Levity: Use humor to keep conversations fizzy
Kindness: Prioritize their partner’s conversational needs
Through experiments ranging across the conversational spectrum—from speed daters who ask too few questions (or too many), to future business leaders averse to topic forethought, to traffic stops that reveal the essence of kind language—Brooks takes us inside the world of conversation, giving us the confidence and the advice to approach any interaction with more creativity and compassion.
Addressing our face-to-face conversations as well as those we have by phone, email, text, and social media, Talk is a thoughtful guide for anyone seeking to better establish and sustain their relationships. From managing our emotions and sparking creativity to navigating conflict and being more inclusive, the right conversation skills just might be the key to leading a more purposeful life.
Hoda Kotb didn’t expect to join the Today show at age forty-four. Or to become a mother at fifty-two. Or to leave Today and embark on a new adventure at sixty! Change doesn’t always arrive when we expect it, and its effects are anything but predictable. But Hoda believes that the benefits of change can be extraordinary…if we’re willing to listen to and learn from them.
In the tradition of books like Savannah Guthrie’s Mostly What God Does and Maria Shriver’s I’ve Been Thinking comes Hoda Kotb’s Jump and Find Joy—an intimate book that reveals for the first time what Hoda discovered as she started embracing change in every aspect of her life. In her quest to better understand change and how to work with (not against) it, Hoda relies on her reporting instincts to investigate HOW change works, WHO is approaching it with grace, and WHAT she can apply to her own life and share with others. Jump and Find Joy combines the wisdom of change experts, insights from the latest work on resilience, and deeply personal stories from celebrities and inspirational people in our own communities. From small shifts in daily routines to major leaps of faith, Hoda shows why change isn’t to be feared but celebrated…and how each of us can thrive in the midst of changes we’ll inevitably face ourselves.
Gentle: Rest More, Stress Less, and Live the Life You Actually Want by Courtney Carver
From an expert on simplicity and minimalism, a collection of 30 practices to overcome chronic overwhelm, cultivate self-compassion, and find permission to do less–perfect for readers of Rest is Resistance and Wintering.
Being Gentle is about being grounded in self-compassion and a fierce commitment to less—becoming the Gentle You isn’t about taking the easy road. Organized into three parts—Rest, Less, and Rise—Courtney Carver’s Gentle provides simple challenges and practices that will help readers radically and gently shift their pace, headspace, and heart.
Becoming the Gentle You is a practice of real self-care that, over time, will soothe your nervous system and strengthen your relationships.
Gentle is the “don’t do it all” self-help book that promotes less stress and more joy by standing in your light and honoring the person you are.
The Brain at Rest: How the Art and Science of Doing Nothing Can Improve Your Life by Joseph Jebelli, PhD
We are constantly told to make the most of our time, to work harder, to stop procrastinating. But what if all that advice was wrong, and letting the brain rest and the mind wander could improve our lives? In The Brain at Rest, Dr. Joseph Jebelli shows readers the way to happier, healthier, and more balanced lives in a deeply researched and entertaining guide to combat overwork and burnout.
Through a blend of science, personal stories, and practical, actionable tips, Dr. Jebelli proves that the brain’s “default network” turns itself on when we turn off the constant need to always do and achieve. By activating our default network through long walks, baths, and spending time in nature, we can all be more content, less stressed, and actually more productive.
Perfect for anyone feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, or hungry to achieve their goals in a healthy, sustainable way, The Brain at Rest is the definitive, science-backed guide to achieving contentment, creativity, and success by letting your brain decompress.
How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days by Kari Leibowitz, PhD
Do you dread the end of Daylight Saving Time and grouch about the long, chilly season of gray skies and ice? Do you find yourself in a slump every January and February? What if there were a way to rethink this time of year? Psychologist and winter expert Kari Leibowitz’s galvanizing HOW TO WINTER uses mindset science to help readers embrace winter as a season to be enjoyed, not endured—and in turn, learn powerful lessons that can impact our mental wellbeing throughout the year.
Kari Leibowitz moved above the Arctic Circle – where the sun doesn’t rise for two months each winter –expecting to research the season’s negative effects on mental health, only to find that inhabitants actually looked forward to it with delight and enthusiasm. Leibowitz has since travelled to places on earth with some of the coldest, darkest, longest and most intense winters, and discovered the power of “wintertime mindset”— viewing the season as full of opportunity and wonder. Impactful strategies for cultivating this wintertime mindset can teach us not just about braving the gray, cold months of the year, but also the darker and more difficult seasons of life.
- In Tromsø, Norway, people live in rhythm with nature, adapting to the months-long Polar Night by honoring seasonal fluctuations in energy, slowing down, and resting more.
- On the Isle of Lewis, off the coast of Scotland, communal gatherings around roaring fires embrace darkness and provide connection during long nights.
- In Yamagata, Japan, families sink into steaming onsen baths, banishing the chill of winter with healthful soaks that improve sleep and reduce risk of heart attack.
Inspired by cutting-edge psychological and behavioral science research as well as cultures worldwide that find warmth and joy in winter’s extremes, HOW TO WINTER provides readers with concrete tools for making winter wonderful wherever they live and harnessing the power of small mindset changes with big impact to help readers embrace every season of life.
Whether you’re just starting out or ready to make a major move, Who Better Than You? is a wildly entertaining roadmap to being successful in an unpredictable world, featuring behind-the-scenes Hollywood lessons, empowering guidance, and indispensable encouragement.
From Stomp the Yard to Ride Along to Girls Trip and many more, Will Packer’s films have collectively grossed more than $1 billion at the box office, with ten opening at number one! To outsiders, the unabashed confidence that has driven him since his college days—when he was trying to sell a micro-budget indie film—may look like arrogance. To Packer, that’s just what it took to make it on his own terms.
With Who Better Than You?, Packer has created the success toolkit he wished he’d had back then, filled with illuminating and laugh-out-loud stories as well as practical advice, such as:
- Be arrogant! The highest-achieving people have “healthy arrogance”: Superior confidence not only in themselves and their abilities but also in their predestined success. You, too, can unlock this level of confidence.
- Convince people that your goals are essential and vital. It is crucial to assure others that your success benefits both you and them.
- It’s the work you put in when nobody’s watching that makes everyone pay attention later. No single person on the planet is more deserving of achieving their wildest dreams than you. But it will never happen until you act accordingly in every aspect of your life.
It’s time for you to start producing your own blockbuster life—by first believing there is no one more worthy of it than you.
