Vanessa King's Reading List

"Adrian is a primary school teacher and active member of Action for Happiness. He has taken the 10 Keys to Happier Living and other ideas from positive psychology and applied them with great success in his classroom. This book shares that experience as a guide for other teachers. Adrian was an early adopter of Action for Happiness ideas. He felt that these could make a big difference in the school he worked in and has put them into practice in his own classrooms. For example, Anti-Bullying Week is something that a lot of schools participate in. But it highlights the negative behaviours rather than constructive ones. Instead Adrian introduced It’s Cool to Be Kind Week choosing to promote positive good, social evidence-based behaviours. The kids learned why kindness was important for everyone’s happiness and explored doing kind tasks over the week. For example they produced a newspaper of happy headlines and stories to hand out at the local train station which made commuters smile. The kids were tasked with doing kind things for people in their community, and several people wrote to the school with notes of thanks. It showed kids that they can have an influence and make a difference. This approach achieved everything Anti-Bullying Week could have and much, much more. “They chose to promote positive good, social evidence-based behaviours instead of negative ones” Adrian’s well-structured book shows teachers how to teach a range of concepts and skills and integrate them into the classroom and school culture. It’s one of the first books of its kind that makes it easy for teachers to understand why this matters and what they can do in a practical sense in their classrooms."

"This is a really useful book for parents. Most parents want to help their children to be happy and grow into the best person they can be, but don’t get much clear guidance. This is one of the first books that shares ideas on how to embed “positive psychology” into parenting. In wanting to help their children make the best of themselves many parents, no matter how well-meaning, often end up being critical to their child and focusing on what they are doing wrong, rather than developing their child’s strengths and noticing what the child is doing right. This isn’t unique to parents, it’s an effect of the natural human tendency called the “negativity bias”. In parenting it can have a damaging effect if we aren’t aware of it and know how to navigate around it. “As a result of our evolution our brains are attuned to notice what is wrong. We also tend to overlook what is right” Our brain evolved when we were hunter-gatherers as I mentioned earlier, and so is hard-wired to notice signs of danger. Out there on the savannah hunting for food, we had to be finely tuned to potential risk in our environment, as these could be life-threatening. Even though life today is much, much safer for the most part, as a result of our evolution, our brains are still attuned to notice what is wrong. We experience bad emotions like fear more strongly and we hang on to unpleasant emotions for longer. We also tend to overlook what is right. Psychologists recognise that when it comes to our experience of emotions, ‘bad is stronger than good’. But it turns out that when we train our brains to notice what is right, as well as what is wrong, it has psychosocial and developmental benefits that impact how much we learn, the options we see, our relationships, resilience and wellbeing. This book helps parents look at this potent tendency and gives tools to notice and nurture our child’s strengths. It’s not about ignoring weaker areas but about a more constructive, informed approach. So this clear, structured and practical book helps well-intentioned parents do their best better. And as we can also apply this negativity bias to ourselves and other aspects of our lives, this book can have benefits for parents themselves too!"

"I include this because it is an emotional story of love, resilience and meaning. It’s important that when we talk about happiness we don’t make the mistake of expecting life to always be perfect. All of us will experience difficulties, losses and challenges and the uncomfortable emotions that come with those are part of life. The science of wellbeing and building our happiness skills necessarily helps to build our ability to deal with tough times and bounce back too. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter This is also a favourite book of my eldest nephew, Alex. We went to see the play together and I bought him an illustrated version one Christmas which he took to a Show-and-Tell lesson when he was at primary school. The teacher liked it so she read it to the whole class during story time, and it was lovely to see his pride when he told me this! Introducing my nephews to new ideas, experiences and new worlds is something I personally find highly meaningful. I don’t want to give the impression that we should focus on happiness to the exclusion of other experiences. However, the psychology of wellbeing can help us recognise and get through the tough times. “Reading can teach you how to think around a situation, it can teach courage and humour” War Horse is a pretty hard-hitting story which puts its readers in touch with a breadth and depth of emotions. Life has ups and downs and it is normal and appropriate to feel anger, sadness and fear in response. That is important for children to realise. Research shows it’s helpful to have words for a wide range of emotions. The richer a child’s lexicon of emotions, the easier it is for them to understand specifically what they are experiencing, communicate it effectively and it seems to help them manage their emotion better too. Reading about other people (and animals) experiencing difficulties also helps us feel and develop empathy and compassion, which are so vitally important in terms of societal and our own wellbeing. If we go through difficulties, there is reassurance in knowing others have experienced similar times too, that it’s not just us, which can lead to feeling isolated and alone."

"I loved this and the other Pippi books as a child. They were a favourite from my trips to the local library every Saturday morning. Pippi is simply joyful. She is curious and courageous, creative and kind. She doesn’t worry about the small things like matching stockings or tidy hair. She doesn’t blindly follow convention but is very much her own person. She makes mistakes but finds her way through them. Looking back she was perhaps an early female role model for me! She taught me early on that I don’t need to follow conventional paths. That’s the power of fiction . One of the ways we learn new ideas and build confidence in what we can do is through vicarious experience, and fiction is a great source of this. Reading can teach you how to think around a situation, see different approaches and it can give us courage to try them ourselves. Great lessons. In fact there’s a whole new academic field emerging from positive psychology, called ‘positive humanities’ which looks at the role of humanities in developing wellbeing."

"The first Key to Happier Living in the framework I developed for Action for Happiness is Giving – doing kind things for other people. It’s also the focus of the first chapter in 50 Ways to Feel Happy . Caring about and feeling connected to other people is an important ingredient in happiness. I think kindness has evolved as a social glue, an important ingredient in creating a happier society. We know that in communities where there is a greater sense of trust and support there is also greater wellbeing. As well as contributing to another person’s happiness, being kind activates the reward centre in our own brains – it actually helps us to feel happy ourselves. We also know that happier people tend to help others more, so it’s a kind of virtuous circle if you like. This makes sense as we are a social species. There are many different ways that we can help others and be kind. There are big things like charity runs but the small things can be hugely significant too. Something as simple as giving our attention or smiling at another person, or noticing when someone needs a helping hand. We are acutely sensitive to one another as human being especially to feelings of being cut off or excluded, so something as simple as these actions can have powerful impact. Knowing that helping can boost the giver’s wellbeing can also make it easier to ask for help. And we all need help from time to time! Being kind and helping others is also a great way of feeling that we are contributing to something beyond ourselves. Bernadette’s book is great for children who want to explore even more ideas around this."