Making Great Relationships by Rick Hanson Book Review

We all deal with relationships and could, no doubt, benefit from some ideas to make them better. Hanson provides 50 such ideas in short chapters suitable for reading one a day. He writes about changes within our power to make, things we can do.

His book is divided into sections:

• support for yourself and developing a warm heart for others.

• groundwork for dealing with conflicts and challenging people

• effective communication

• expanding to communities and the world

I was pleasantly surprised to find a book on relationships starting out with the relationship with one's self. How can one have healthy relationships with others without one with one's self? Hanson goes on to provide really practical teaching on relationships. I really like the structure of the book. The chapters are short. Each one contains a “how” section offering practical ideas to implement that chapter's ideas.

Hanson covers many topics such as noticing the needs of others, being kind, ideas for opening your heart when you see someone you don't like, and handling criticism. I really appreciated his teaching on communication. He offers lots of practical ideas, sometimes even providing the words to say. He frequently gives examples from his own life to illustrate his ideas.

If you have read many self help books on relationships, there may not be any revolutionary new ideas to be found in this one. However, this book is a good collection of the best and most useful ideas and strategies for working on great relationships.

My rating: 4/5 stars.

Rick Hanson, PhD, is a psychologist, senior fellow of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times bestselling author. A summa cum laude graduate of UCLA and founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, he has been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and other major universities, and he has taught in meditation centers worldwide. He and his wife live in San Rafael, California, and have two adult children. You can find out more at https://www.rickhanson.net/.

Harmony (Penguin Random House), 304 pages.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review.

(My star ratings: 5-I love it, 4-I like it, 3-It's OK, 2-I don't like it, 1-I hate it.)