Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential


Joel Osteen - 2004
    In this remarkable New York Times bestseller, Joel Osteen offers unique insights and encouragement that will help readers overcome every obstacle in their lives.

The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times


Pema Chödrön - 2001
    Here Pema provides the tools to deal with the problems and difficulties that life throws our way. This wisdom is always available to us, she teaches, but we usually block it with habitual patterns rooted in fear. Beyond that fear lies a state of openheartedness and tenderness. This book teaches us how to awaken our basic goodness and connect with others, to accept ourselves and others complete with faults and imperfections, and to stay in the present moment by seeing through the strategies of ego that cause us to resist life as it is.

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking


Oliver Burkeman - 2012
    What they have in common is a hunch about human psychology: that it's our constant effort to eliminate the negative that causes us to feel so anxious, insecure, and unhappy. And that there is an alternative "negative path" to happiness and success that involves embracing the things we spend our lives trying to avoid. It is a subversive, galvanizing message, which turns out to have a long and distinguished philosophical lineage ranging from ancient Roman Stoic philosophers to Buddhists. Oliver Burkeman talks to life coaches paid to make their clients' lives a living hell, and to maverick security experts such as Bruce Schneier, who contends that the changes we've made to airport and aircraft security since the 9/11 attacks have actually made us less safe. And then there are the "backwards" business gurus, who suggest not having any goals at all and not planning for a company's future. Burkeman's new book is a witty, fascinating, and counterintuitive read that turns decades of self-help advice on its head and forces us to rethink completely our attitudes toward failure, uncertainty, and death.

Heal Your Mind


Mona Lisa Schulz - 2016
    How do we keep our wits about us, our mood stable, and our memory intact when our brains and bodies are bombarded with information and influences from every side? This one-of-a-kind resource combines cutting-edge science with compassion and wisdom to offer answers we can really use.Heal Your Mind continues the three-pronged healing approach that Dr. Mona Lisa Schulz and Louise Hay pioneered together in All Is Well: Heal Your Body with Medicine, Affirmations, and Intuition. Here, it’s applied to aspects of the mind ranging from depression, anxiety, and addiction to memory, learning, and even mystical states. You’ll learn what’s going on in your brain and body when: You feel sad, angry, or panicked An addictive substance or behavior has hold of you You have trouble focusing, reading, or remembering A past trauma is clouding your mind in the present An emotional state is a clue to a physical ailment And more And in each chapter, you’ll get a “virtual healing experience” through case studies in the All Is Well Clinic, where Dr. Mona Lisa uses medical intuition to pinpoint issues in a wide range of prototypical client histories and she and Louise offer solutions and affirmations to help restore well-being.Today, the “pill-for-every-ill” approach is so prevalent that we may think our minds and bodies need an endless array of expensive, ever-changing pharmaceutical interventions. In truth, medicines are just one approach to healing the mind; nutritional supplements give us another important way to support mind-body health; and affirmations, as well as various forms of therapy, can restore us to balance by changing the way we think. Heal Your Mind puts all these tools at your disposal to help you choose your own path toward wholeness.

The Blue Day Book: A Lesson in Cheering Yourself Up


Bradley Trevor Greive - 2000
    No one who has lips will be able to read it without smiling; it s guaranteed. The fact is, we all have our bad days -- they are an intrinsic part of being human. As prescribed by The Blue Day Book in its delightful photo and text messages, the solution is to see each incident in perspective, recognize that our feelings of failure and loss are not unique, and acknowledge the absurdities of our existence, and glory in the potential we all have. In less than one hundred sentences, The Blue Day Book conveys this message with great compassion and humor. Its vehicle is charming black-and-white photographs of animals that are strangely human and completely free of judgment or pretension. The humble marriage of easy text and beautiful images takes us through the entire evolution of a blue day -- examines what it feels like, what causes it, and how to get over it.

Rise Sister Rise: A Guide to Unleashing the Wise, Wild Woman Within


Rebecca Campbell - 2016
    It is essentially a call to arms for women to rise up, tell their truth, and lead. Most women have spent much of their working lives “making it” in a man’s world, leaning on patriarchal methods of survival in order to succeed, dulling down their intuition, and ignoring the fierce power of their feminine. They have ignored the cycles of the feminine in order to survive in a patriarchal linear system – but now the world has changed.   Rise Sister Rise is a transmission that calls the innate feminine wisdom to rise. It is about healing the insecurities, the fears, and the inherited patterns that stop women trusting the Shakti (power) and wisdom (intuition) that effortlessly flows through them. It's about recognizing all of the ways we have been keeping ourselves contained and restrained in effort to fit into a certain archetype of woman. It’s about co-creating a whole new archetype of woman – a woman who does not keep herself small in order to make others feel more comfortable. A woman who knows like she knows like she knows that she is not her body weight, her sexual partners, or her career. A woman who deeply respects the wise woman in her life and cultivates her own wisdom every single day.   Full of tools, calls to action, contemplative questions, rituals, and confrontational exercises, this book teaches women that it is safe to let Shakti rise, safe to trust their intuition, and safe to take leaps of faith – because in healing ourselves we are healing the world.

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha


Tara Brach - 2000
    It doesn’t take much--just hearing of someone else’s accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument, making a mistake at work--to make us feel that we are not okay. Beginning to understand how our lives have become ensnared in this trance of unworthiness is our first step toward reconnecting with who we really are and what it means to live fully. --from Radical AcceptanceRadical Acceptance“Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering,” says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments and conflicts in our relationships, in addictions and perfectionism, in loneliness and overwork--all the forces that keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled. Radical Acceptance offers a path to freedom, including the day-to-day practical guidance developed over Dr. Brach’s twenty years of work with therapy clients and Buddhist students.Writing with great warmth and clarity, Tara Brach brings her teachings alive through personal stories and case histories, fresh interpretations of Buddhist tales, and guided meditations. Step by step, she leads us to trust our innate goodness, showing how we can develop the balance of clear-sightedness and compassion that is the essence of Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance does not mean self-indulgence or passivity. Instead it empowers genuine change: healing fear and shame and helping to build loving, authentic relationships. When we stop being at war with ourselves, we are free to live fully every precious moment of our lives.From the Hardcover edition.

Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better


Brant Hansen - 2015
    The idea of our own “righteous anger” is a myth. It is the number one problem in our societies today and, as Dallas Willard says, Christians have not been taught out of it. But what if Christians were the most unoffendable people on the planet?In Unoffendable you will find concrete, practical ways to live life with less stress, including: Adjusting your expectations to fit human natureReplacing perpetual anger with refreshing humility and gratitudeEmbracing forgiveness and beginning to love others in unexpected waysIn a humorous and conversational style, Unoffendable seeks to lift religious burdens from our backs and allow us to experience the joy of gratitude, perhaps for the first time, every single day of our lives—flourishing the way God intended.

How to Be Idle


Tom Hodgkinson - 2004
    In How to Be Idle, Hodgkinson presents his learned yet whimsical argument for a new, universal standard of living: being happy doing nothing. He covers a whole spectrum of issues affecting the modern idler—sleep, work, pleasure, relationships—bemoaning the cultural skepticism of idleness while reflecting on the writing of such famous apologists for it as Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Johnson, and Nietzsche—all of whom have admitted to doing their very best work in bed.It’s a well-known fact that Europeans spend fewer hours at work a week than Americans. So it’s only befitting that one of them—the very clever, extremely engaging, and quite hilarious Tom Hodgkinson—should have the wittiest and most useful insights into the fun and nature of being idle. Following on the quirky, call-to-arms heels of the bestselling Eat, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss, How to Be Idle rallies us to an equally just and no less worthy cause: reclaiming our right to be idle.

The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity: Your Guide to Finding Meaning in Signs Big and Small


Trish MacGregor - 2010
    And once we recognize synchronicities as meaningful, they open us to new information, new possibilities. We suddenly find that we're in the right place at the right time, meet the right people at the right moment, and our lives are changed for the better."--From the IntroductionThere are signs everywhere, pointing the way to a better life, if you know how to read them. Signs are the stuff that synchronicity is made of - harness the power of synchronicity, and you can transform your life. In this groundbreaking book, bestselling authors Trish and Rob MacGregor reveal the seven secrets that allow you to recognize synchronicity when it happens - and make the most of it. You'll learn to interpret the meaning of the signs you encounter every day, and use such tools as the tarot, I-Ching, and astrology to understand your past, inform your present, and guide your future. Synchronicity - your key to making magic in your own life!In The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, you'll see why there really is no such thing as coincidence - and how your life can be the better for it. Synchronicity is the universal language of transformation - and its secrets reveal how you can live a life rich in fulfillment and meaning and wonder. With this enlightening guide, you'll learn to read the signs all around you and transform your world - one amazing synchronicity at a time!

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten


Robert Fulghum - 1988
    The little seed in the Styrofoam cup offers a reminder about our own mortality and the delicate nature of life . . . a spider who catches (and loses) a full-grown woman in its web one fine morning teaches us about surviving catastrophe . . . the love story of Jean-Francois Pilatre and his hot-air balloon reminds us to be brave and unafraid to “fly” . . . life lessons hidden in the laundry pile . . . magical qualities found in a box of crayons . . . hide-and-seek vs. sardines—and how these games relate to the nature of God. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is brimming with the very stuff of life and the significance found in the smallest details.

Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: The 3 Simple Ideas That Will Instantaneously Transform Your Life


Ariel Kane - 1999
    Just as they do in their world-renowned workshops, Ariel and Shya Kane teach a refreshingly natural approach to living that is easy to do yet dramatically transformative. The three simple ideas that form the foundation of their approach are: What you resist persists and grows stronger. You can only be exactly as you are in the moment. Anything you allow to be exactly as it is completes itself.Once you grasp these three straightforward but enlightened concepts, you can stop "working" on yourself and start living the life you've always wanted--free from your old perceptions, and open to world of possibilities for discovering the ins and outs of who you are.""Working on Yourself Doesn't Work" has much to offer to anyone who wants a more meaningful and spiritual life." --"New York Spirit" magazine"This may be the most profound and life-transforming book you'll ever read. If you want a life filled with excellence, well-being, and happiness, read this book now!"--Marie Forleo, author of "Make Every Man Want You"

Your Faith is Your Fortune


Neville Goddard - 1941
    Leave the world alone and change your conceptions of yourself," Goddard invites us to resist the temptation toward judgment and to look at ourselves for the change we want to see in the world an in others. "God's promise is unconditional; God's law is conditional, and comes in its own good time. If you do not experience it in this life," he said, "You pass through a door, that's all that death is, and you are restored to life instantly in a world like this, and you go on there with the same problems you had here with no loss of identity."

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice


Shunryu Suzuki - 1970
    Seldom has such a small handful of words provided a teaching as rich as has this famous opening line. In a single stroke, the simple sentence cuts through the pervasive tendency students have of getting so close to Zen as to completely miss what it’s all about. An instant teaching on the first page. And that’s just the beginning.In the forty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind has become one of the great modern Zen classics, much beloved, much reread, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. Suzuki Roshi presents the basics—from the details of posture and breathing in zazen to the perception of nonduality—in a way that is not only remarkably clear, but that also resonates with the joy of insight from the first to the last page. It’s a book to come back to time and time again as an inspiration to practice, and it is now available to a new generation of seekers in this fortieth anniversary edition, with a new afterword by Shunryu Suzuki’s biographer, David Chadwick.

The Enlightened Gardener


Sydney Banks - 1991
    So, too, do the characters in this wonderful story by Sydney Banks. In this simple but profound tale, four colleagues meet a remarkable gardener whose unique philosophy will forever change their lives. That philosophy is equally powerful for the reader. The wisdom within these pages comes in the form of a straightforward message that is accessible to all who open their hearts to it.