In one of his best books, Elsa punset launches an ordeal towards happiness from a title that already reveals much of the enigma on the way to that degree of maximum satisfaction: happiness your way. There is no happiness possible without the acceptance of what you are beyond what you have or what you do not have.
And really that is the neuralgic idea that surrounds all of Elsa's work. Essay-format books, more than blatantly self-help. Ideas more than irrefutable predicates.
A philosopher by vocation and training, as well as passionate and trained in music as a piano player, Elsa transmits that feeling of control, of patience with the self that these days seeks quick answers for everything.
His books are small gems of everyday thought, philosophy of the mundane, probably the most transcendent of philosophies in the strictly personal.
3 recommended books by Elsa Punset
Compass for emotional boaters
The image is simply brilliant, like a light aphorism that invites us to read in search of that inner compass that walks with the North a bit depressed in all of us. We usually believe, it is more we need to believe, that our intelligence, our reasoning shows us the truth of the world.
What really happens is that we disguise emotions. Given this evidence, starting to read this book can be a great discovery. Elsa's first book is, in my opinion, the best. We can sketch our perspective of the world, compile it and finally explain it in a good book, which will always necessarily be the first.
Summary: In the instinctive depths of our being we do not think, sorry. We are made of emotions. Over the centuries we had striven to tame them, to lock them in orderly and repressive systems of life. Faced with his dictates, the only option was to resign or rebel.
Currently we live in a world that overwhelms us with temptations and multiple decisions and we have to decide alone, without clear references, who we are and why it is worth living and fighting for. This new freedom demands the acquisition of a compass, that is, of the skills and tools that allow us to navigate with emotional intelligence through the unpredictable channels of our lives.
This book covers the different stages of emotional and social maturation of the human being, not only as an individual, but also in relation to the people who make up our environment: parents, children, partners, colleagues, friends...
Entering the XNUMXst century, emotions, thanks to the doors opened by neuroscience, can be cataloged, understood and even managed: they are the key to our nerve center, be it brain, soul, conscience or free will. Knowing oneself allows us to discover the sources of our happiness, our anger and our pain in order to live harmoniously and fully with ourselves and with others.
A backpack for the universe
With this title more typical of his father Eduardo Punset, Elsa delves into that inexhaustible field of emotions and its most important reflection, communication with others, interaction with the environment, the adjustment between what we feel and what we express.
Summary: How long should a hug last? What's the use of crying? What can we do to change our luck? Does falling in love have a purpose? And why is heartbreak so inevitable? How do we learn to be afraid? From what age do we start lying? Why do we feel envy? How many friends do we need to be happy? Can we avoid getting stressed unnecessarily? Why does a man care more than a woman if his car is scratched? And, beyond the thousand miracle diets, are there emotional tricks to lose weight?
Elsa Punset answers these and many other questions, transcendental and everyday, in this book, conceived as a "small guide of varied routes" that travel through the geography of human emotions with the purpose of making it easier for us to understand what surrounds us, recognize it. importance of our relationships with others, discover that there is much more that unites us than what separates us, find effective ways to communicate, manage the relationship between body and mind, enhance the flow of joy that we contain, organize ourselves to achieve set and achieve our goals and help the human brain counteract its innate tendency "to fearful and distrustful survival."
Because, as Elsa Punset points out with transparent and simple words, to transform our lives and our relationships "we do not need as much as we think: a light backpack fits what helps us understand and manage the reality that surrounds us." An indispensable guide for understand others and navigate successfully in the universe of emotions.
Happy (happiness your way)
We finish the ranking with his latest book. A proposal that delves into all of the above, only oriented to the final consequence of knowing how to handle ourselves, of interpreting the environment, of being able to empathize ... the happiness of being alive.
Summary: It is clear. It doesn't take that much to be happy. And doing a historical sweep only confirms this reality. Were any other civilizations that passed through this planet less happy?
Happiness is a subjective impression that can be perfectly adjusted to what there is. And precisely, what there is now is a lot of frustration, of inaccessible truncated dreams, of clay idols, of empty moral and social references, of illusions of marketing towards material happiness.
Yes, we are possibly unhappier than any other civilization that passed through this world. This is where this new book Delves: Happy: Happiness Your Way, by Elsa Punset. It's not that I'm very passionate about self-help books, but I don't think this one is either. It is rather a journey to the past, to that wisdom more attached to the land and the circumstances of each people, a perspective very far removed from this world of connection, immediacy and deformed references.
Knowing how our most remote ancestors could be happy can be surprising and illuminating about the confusion in which we move. The greatest exponents of each historical moment offer us testimonies towards that search for happiness, always difficult but not always as perverted as now.
If you allow yourself the luxury of taking this walk, you will soak up large doses of truth about the most abstract happiness, that of existing and living with equals and with nature, that of breathing and that of seeking your luck among providence, which is get when you can be a little freer than you probably are right now.
