Why Good Things Happen to Good People: The Exciting New Research that Proves the Link Between Doing Good and Living a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life | 
|  | | | Title: | Why Good Things Happen to Good People: The Exciting New Research that Proves the Link Between Doing Good and Living a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life | | Author: | Stephen Post
Jill Neimark
Reverend Otis Moss Jr. (Foreword) | | Publisher: | Broadway | | Type: | Book / Hardcover | | Publication Date: | 08 May, 2007 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0767920171 / 9780767920179 | | List Price: | $23.95 | | You Save: | $14.10 | | Amazon Price: | $9.85 (via Amazon marketplace seller) | | | |
The HTML code below can be pasted onto your web-site, your MySpace page, or blog - or any number of similar places - to create a link to this page: If, instead of a text link, you'd like to create a link to this page which will display the book cover, if it's available, then the code below will do exactly that:
Check for the same book at these other US book sites:
• [ Abebooks ] • [ Alibris ] • [ Barnes & Noble ] • [ Half.com ] • [ Powells ] … or check UK bookstores
| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
A longer life. A happier life. A healthier life. Above all, a life that matters—so that when you leave this world, you’ll have changed it for the better. If science said you could have all this just by altering one behavior, would you?
Dr. Stephen Post has been making headlines by funding studies at the nation’s top universities to prove once and for all the life-enhancing benefits of caring, kindness, and compassion. The exciting new research shows that when we give of ourselves, especially if we start young, everything from life-satisfaction to self-realization and physical health is significantly affected. Mortality is delayed. Depression is reduced. Well-being and good fortune are increased. In their life-changing new book, Why Good Things Happen to Good People, Dr. Post and journalist Jill Neimark weave the growing new science of love and giving with profoundly moving real-life stories to show exactly how giving unlocks the doors to health, happiness, and a longer life.
The astounding new research includes a fifty-year study showing that people who are giving during their high school years have better physical and mental health throughout their lives. Other studies show that older people who give live longer than those who don’t. Helping others has been shown to bring health benefits to those with chronic illness, including HIV, multiple sclerosis, and heart problems. And studies show that people of all ages who help others on a regular basis, even in small ways, feel happiest.
Why Good Things Happen to Good People offers ten ways to give of yourself, in four areas of life, all proven by science to improve your health and even add to your life expectancy. (And not one requires you to write a check.) The one-of-a-kind “Love and Longevity Scale” scores you on all ten ways, from volunteering to listening, loyalty to forgiveness, celebration to standing up for what you believe in. Using the lessons and guidelines in each chapter, you can create a personalized plan for a more generous life, finding the style of giving that suits you best.
The astonishing connection between generosity and health is so convincing that it will inspire readers to change their lives in ways big and small. Get started today. A longer, healthier, happier life awaits you.
| Other Items You May Enjoy:
Browse Books From These Related Subjects:
Customer Reviews:
• Great Content But The Worst Edited Book I've Ever Read 28 August, 2008
The author has a very straight forward way of organizing and explaining a plethora of studies indicating that doing good results in both emotional and physical benefits for the giver. I liked the self-assessment questionaires at the end of each chapter where I discovered where I stand relative to the ten dimensions and four domains. I was surprised with the results since some conflicted with my own self-image. Fortunately, Dr Post suggests specific exercises I could use to become a more giving person.
I have the hardcover edition published by Broadway Books in New York. Whoever edited this book must have been asleep! To start, the cover is upside down relative to the contents. There are literally dozens of word usage errors. It appears the editor did not even read the manuscript but relied only on a spell checker. I have never read a book where I was stopped so often in mid sentence by an incorrect word. For example, one sentence describes people who "meditated" and in the following sentence they are referred to as "mediators". In the overview at the beginning of the book Dr Post indicates there are ten dimensions of giving, but that chapter only previews the last nine dimensions. Fortunately there is a full chapter for each of the ten dimensions.
The research, ideas, and practical application are both thought provoking and motivating. I was annoyed that such great material was so often interrupted with editing and production oversights.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3F5VTQ3LRO4CH
• Giving, Health And Longevity 16 November, 2007
This book is an interesting new contribution to the field of positive psychology, which explores the idea that giving helps the giver as much as, or even more than the receiver. It can be clearly demonstrated that happy people give and, according to newly emerging research, it seems that happiness increases if you can learn to increase giving. One of the mechanisms by which this works is that giving increases the giver's self-esteem, and increased self-esteem results in less stress. The benefit of less stress is greater psychological and physical health resulting in longer and happier life. Givers score highly on all these benefits, suffering from, for example, less heart disease.
According to post giving, if examined closely, can be broken up into 10 different 'methods'. They are: (1) celebration, (2) generativity, (3) forgiveness, (4) courage, (5) humor, (6) respect, (7) compassion, (8) loyalty, (9) listening, and (10) creativity. These 10 methods of giving can be expressed in 4 different domains of life: (1) family, (2) friends, (3) community, and (4) humanity. Post devotes a chapter to each method of giving and each chapter contains inspiring stories as examples, a summary of facts identified by scientific research, detailed discussion of lessons that can be learned from the research, and many lists of helpful hints for incorporating giving into your life. Each of these ten chapters also end with a personality test which allows the reader to assess how strongly he or she expresses this method of giving in their current life. Together these tests make up the Love and Longevity Scale.
While this book contains plenty of reports of psychology studies it is written in a very interesting and readable way, and is very accessible to the general public. This book is so full of information, and has so many suggestions for personal development, that it is a little overwhelming on first read. I fully expect to be rereading at least parts of it in the near future.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1ZEOVGC3CDE0C
• Motivational Material 25 June, 2008
Good reading. I recommend this book for anyone interested in improving their living conditions and interactions with others.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3092JWKELT6XD
• The Real Secret To Life - Giving 17 November, 2007
I am generally not one to quarrel with titles of books....I read for substance. But, I believe this title undersells the profound wisdom of this very fine book.
This book is all about "giving." A much more apt title would have been something along the lines of Bill Clinton's recent book "Giving, How Each of Us Can Change the World."
We live in an instant gratification, "what is in it for me?" world. This book is a powerful antidote.
Potential readers looking for a "me" centered prescription for success and happiness will undoubtedly be disappointed in this book. Head instead for the "Secret."
Those who believe in the importance of giving will find this a most useful manual for incorporating a giving orientation into everything we do, each and every day.
This book should be recognized as one of the best self help books of 2007. Regretfully, it isn't likely to be such because of a cover and title that paints it as academic. But, I am off to do my part to get this book more widely known. We need to get the word out. (Imagine if everyone who bought the Clinton book also read this gem!)
To Steve Post and Jill Neimark, my sincere thanks for writing a wonderful book. You have given us a gift and by doing so role modeled the power of giving.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A25NZ4IJGCD1GV
• More Silliness 14 March, 2008
I sure don't see what the hype here was about.
I saw this book as falling into the same fallacious thinking as "The Secret" and all those books that want us to believe in some kind of magical thinking premise. It's the same sort of fallacy that has some evangelicals proclaiming that God wants you to be rich, and thus if you're rich it proves you're virtuous.
It's nonsense. If you want to argue that "Good deeds" cause you to get paid back in some way with good fortune of your own, then you're forced to also conclude that bad fortune results because you're a bad person. This is not only nonsense, but cruel nonsense.
Of course there are reasons for being moral and compassionate and doing good. But it's not because we expect things in return. It's because such a life is its own reward.
- Reviewed by customer ID: ASR3KOU65N9F4
|
