The Contagious Power of Thinking: How Your Thoughts Can Influence the World

by David R. Hamilton

Wouldn't it be great if instead of catching a nasty cold, we could catch our friend's good mood, or our colleague's healthy habits? You don't need to be on the Internet to be connected. We are all part of interconnected networks, whether we're aware of it or not. Everything you think, say and do can be felt by people on the other side of the world.

The Contagious Power of Thinking provides astonishing scientific evidence to show how habits, attitudes, emotions and even kindness spread rapidly outwards from person to person through personal contact. Learn the fascinating facts behind:

how infants feel their mother's emotions how more than 25% of your happiness is due to the happiness of your friends how your brain reads the emotions of others and reproduces the feeling in you and how your best friend's sister's hairdresser can make you fat!

In this book, David Hamilton explores the amazing implications of this phenomenon and suggests that a small group of committed people really can change the world.

Genres: Psychology

273 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2011

About the author

David has a first class honors degree in chemistry, specializing in biological and medicinal chemistry. He has the slightly geeky honour of having achieved 100% in his 3rd year university degree exam in ‘Statistical Mechanics’, which is a branch of quantum physics applied to chemistry.

After completing his PhD, he worked for 4 years in the pharmaceutical industry, first developing drugs for cardiovascular disease and cancer, then a year managing leadership and change projects. During this time he also served as an athletics coach and manager of Sale Harriers Manchester, one of the UK’s largest athletics clubs, leading the Junior Men’s team to three successive UK finals. Upon leaving the pharmaceutical industry, he co-founded the international relief charity Spirit Aid Foundation and served as a director for 2 years.

While writing his first book (2004-2005), he taught chemistry (main) plus ecology and mathematics (secondary) at West College Scotland (formerly, James Watt College of Further and Higher Education) and tutored chemistry at the University of Glasgow.

He’s now a bestselling author of 8 books (No’s 9 and 10 are due out in 2017) published by Hay House UK, and offer talks and workshops that use science to inspire – fusing neuroscience, the mind-body connection, kindness, and philosophical and eastern spiritual teachings. He also writes a regular blog on his website as well as occasional blogs for the Huffington Post (US edition) and Psychologies Life Labs, and is a columnist for Soul and Spirit Magazine. In 2016, David won the Kindred Spirit, ‘Best MBS Writer Award’.

He has been featured in numerous publications, including ELLE, RED Magazine, Psychologies, YOU Magazine, Good Housekeeping (both UK & US), and several newspapers.

You might wonder how he got into writing on the subjects he does. In his own words, “Well, during my time in the pharmaceutical industry, I was fascinated by the placebo effect – how people improve through believing they are receiving a drug – so I began to study mind-body interactions in my spare time. I decided to leave the pharmaceutical industry after 4 years because I wanted to educate about the mind-body connection, help people to believe in themselves more, and spread a little more kindness in the world in my own way.”

Reviews

[Robert Day · Rating 4 out of 5]

I personally believe that the more we do for our body, the more it inhibits the ability of our body to do it for itself. For example - if we take a headache pill every time we get a headache then it reduces the body's natural ability to deal with headaches using its own chemical substances, not to mention it masking the underlying reason why the body has a headache in the first place.

I could write a book that makes this belief sound credible. All I would have to do is a quick literature search to find the evidence that supports my belief, and manfully ignore everything that goes against them. It's pretty much how every book of this ilk was written.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, or exclusively reading gossips columns for the last few decades you'll have heard of the nature/nurture debate. Well this book plumps for nurture. Consensus these days has it that 'the dichotomy of nature versus nurture has outlived its usefulness' (Wikipedia), which renders this book a little behind the curve.

But no matter - I believe that smiling will make the world a better place and that being nice to your neighbour will make her more likely to be nice to her housekeeper, which in turn will ensure that his kids will get something better than beans on toast for their dinner (although it is hard to imagine anything better than beans on toast) and etc. etc.

At the end of the day it does no harm to put books like this out; it's a nice, quick, easy read, and it will be more likely to help us all than gossip columns and ... oh, I don't know - just smile dude!

:)

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned on page 24 of 208. Might have some interesting stuff but appallingly written. Just long lists of studies. Dull

[Lisa Maynard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave up half-way through, not because I don't think it's an important book, because I agree that we absolutely influence our surroundings and they influence us. I don't need convincing and I don't think the evidence of tons of studies will add anything to this subject for me. The book began to get extremely repetitive in each chapter.

[Debbielawrence144 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I attended a talk by David Hamilton about this subject and bought the book. It was a good read and very interesting how we all affect each other and the six degrees of separation means we can be influenced by people we have never met but know people we know. And of course it works in the other direction.

[Ruthie Fordham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read years ago, an easy read. It was the first so called “self help” book I read, actually found the book life changing. It made me reflect on how I am as a person, and I implemented change. Went on to meet David, attended a workshop he ran. Delightful, gifted multiple copies to friends

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love all of David"s books that provide scientific evidence to a really interesting topic

[Fiona Lundy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Those 5 people you spend most of your time with ... really do count ... but so does the 5 people they hang out with and those 5 people! Epic lessons in this book!