best books of 2022
I found time to read even with a baby and a new company. Here are my favorite books from 2022.
An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization
“Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey (and their collaborators) have found and studied such companies—Deliberately Developmental Organizations. A DDO is organized around the simple but radical conviction that organizations will best prosper when they are more deeply aligned with people’s strongest motive, which is to grow. This means going beyond consigning “people development” to high-potential programs, executive coaching, or once-a-year off-sites. It means fashioning an organizational culture in which support of people’s development is woven into the daily fabric of working life and the company’s regular operations, daily routines, and conversations.”
My take:
This is a top-five leadership/business book. I was haphazardly attempting to apply many of the lessons in the An Everyone Culture. Reading it gave me a great framework to serve individuals’ needs, foster engagement, and create a continual learning machine. 10/10.
Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti
“Counted among his admirers are Jonas Salk, Aldous Huxley, David Hockney, and Van Morrison, along with countless other philosophers, artist, writers and students of the spiritual path. Now the trustees of Krishnamurti’s work have gathered his very best and most illuminating writings and talks to present in one volume the truly essential ideas of this great spiritual thinker.Total Freedom includes selections from Krishnamurti’s early works, his ‘Commentaries on Living’, and his discourses on life, the self, meditation, sex and love. These writings reveal Krishnamuri’s core teachings in their full eloquence and power: the nature of personal freedom; the mysteries of life and death; and the ‘pathless land’, the personal search for truth and peace. Warning readers away from blind obedience to creeds or teachers – including himself – Krishnamurti celebrated the individual quest for truth, and thus became on of the most influential guides for independent-minded seekers of the twentieth century – and beyond.”
My take:
It’s hard to believe I went this long without reading any Krishnamurti. This book is far from a how-to guide, though there are many recommendations for how to live a more intentional, aligned life. There’s no dogma, religiosity, overt spirituality, or yoga babble to be found, just lots of wisdom.
SmartTribes: How Teams Become Brilliant Together
“All leaders want to outperform, outsell, and out inovate the competition. And most teams are fully capable of doing so. The problem: we consistently say and do things that spark unconscious fears and keep our people stuck in their Critter State. This primitive fight, flight, or freeze mode distills all decision making to one question: What will keep me safest? Lying low, sucking up, procrastinating, and doing a good enough job may keep employees breathing, but it doesn't make for vital organizations. Leaders have to get their people unstuck and fully engaged, replacing their old, limiting mental patterns with new patterns that foster optimal performance.”
My take:
The central question posed: are you putting your team in a “smart" state” or a “critter state”? I was introduced to this book when I was in a state of perpetual fight-or-flight. Reading this one helped me frame what I needed to do to get folks aligned and feeling good.
Shantaram
An escaped convict with a false passport, Lin flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of Bombay, where he can disappear. Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter the city’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere. As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart.”
My take:
I don’t read much fiction. This book was seriously the most entertaining book I’ve ever read, though I must confess, I consumed it via 40+ hours of audio (yes, it’s very long). Listening to this book made long nights with a crying baby much better.
Living Nonduality: Enlightenment Teachings of Self-Realization
“Self-realization, not self-improvement. Living Nonduality is a practical, no-nonsense exploration of what Oneness means in everyday life. A far-ranging collection of 238 concise chapters covering 444 pages illuminating what it means to live without division - what it means to transcend the conflict-ridden self. Through the lens of self-realization, Robert Wolfe (also the author of The Gospel of Thomas: The Enlightenment Teachings of Jesus) discusses modern and ancient nondual and advaita teachers, exploring the enlightenment teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta and other sources of inquiry into reality, such as the nondual reality pointed at by modern physics. Not only a passionate and exacting personal reflection on the nondual experience, Living Nonduality is a guidebook to the history and contemporary field of nondual enlightenment teachings and the harmony between science and spiritual insights.”
My take:
If I could only have a handful of books for the rest of my life, this would be one of them. This type of book would have gone over my head in the early days of my contemplative journey. Now, I can’t get enough. The short passages help the reader slip into the nondual view. (PDF free to download, but otherwise will need to find a secondhand seller.)
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
“In Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain...and what to do about it. Condensing complex neuroscience into easy-to-understand metaphors, Lembke illustrates how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check. The lived experiences of her patients are the gripping fabric of her narrative. Their riveting stories of suffering and redemption give us all hope for managing our consumption and transforming our lives. In essence, Dopamine Nation shows that the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery".”
My take:
This should be required reading for anyone in the behavioral health space, especially if you’re dealing with addictive disorders. The combination of information and entertainment is impressive.
Honorable mentions:
I think I read all of Rupert Spira’s books, all of which I highly recommend if you want to understand/deepen your understanding of nonduality.
The Art of Peace and Happiness
You are the Happiness You Seek
The Nature of Consciousness
Being Aware of Being Aware
Meditations on I Am
The Transparency of all Things
Being Myself
The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook: A Seasonal Guide to Eating and Living Well by Kate O’Donnell was a book my wife snagged at a library sale for me. She practiced ashtanga with Kate in Boston, a nice little connection. Ayurveda is considered yoga’s sister science (it’s similar to Chinese medicine) and while I wouldn’t consider myself an ayurvedic practitioner, there were some gems in addition to the recipes.
