The More of Less: Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own


Joshua Becker - 2016
    We feel the weight and burden of our clutter, and we tire of cleaning and managing and organizing.   While excess consumption leads to bigger houses, faster cars, fancier technology, and cluttered homes, it never brings happiness. Rather, it results in a desire for more. It redirects our God-given passions to things that can never fulfill. And it distracts us from the very life we wish we were living.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.    In The More of Less, Joshua Becker, helps you….   •          recognize the life-giving benefits of owning less •          realize how all the stuff you own is keeping you from pursuing your dreams •          craft a personal, practical approach to decluttering your home and life •          experience the joys of generosity •          learn why the best part of minimalism isn’t a clean house, it’s a full life   The beauty of minimalism isn’t in what it takes away. It’s in what it gives.

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain


John J. Ratey - 2008
    Ratey, MD.Did you know you can beat stress, lift your mood, fight memory loss, sharpen your intellect, and function better than ever simply by elevating your heart rate and breaking a sweat? The evidence is incontrovertible: Aerobic exercise physically remodels our brains for peak performance. In SPARK, John J. Ratey, M.D., embarks upon a fascinating and entertaining journey through the mind-body connection, presenting startling research to prove that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's. Filled with amazing case studies (such as the revolutionary fitness program in Naperville, Illinois, which has put this school district of 19,000 kids first in the world of science test scores), SPARK is the first book to explore comprehensively the connection between exercise and the brain. It will change forever the way you think about your morning run---or, for that matter, simply the way you think

Dare to Lead


Brené Brown - 2018
    Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead. Leadership is not about titles, status and power over people. Leaders are people who hold themselves accountable for recognising the potential in people and ideas, and developing that potential. This is a book for everyone who is ready to choose courage over comfort, make a difference and lead.When we dare to lead, we don't pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don't see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it and work to align authority and accountability. We don't avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into the vulnerability that’s necessary to do good work.But daring leadership in a culture that's defined by scarcity, fear and uncertainty requires building courage skills, which are uniquely human. The irony is that we're choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the same time we're scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines can't do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection and courage to start.Brené Brown spent the past two decades researching the emotions that give meaning to our lives. Over the past seven years, she found that leaders in organisations ranging from small entrepreneurial start-ups and family-owned businesses to non-profits, civic organisations and Fortune 50 companies, are asking the same questions:How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders? And, how do you embed the value of courage in your culture?Dare to Lead answers these questions and gives us actionable strategies and real examples from her new research-based, courage-building programme.Brené writes, ‘One of the most important findings of my career is that courage can be taught, developed and measured. Courage is a collection of four skill sets supported by twenty-eight behaviours. All it requires is a commitment to doing bold work, having tough conversations and showing up with our whole hearts. Easy? No. Choosing courage over comfort is not easy. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and work. It's why we're here.’

Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation


Daniel J. Siegel - 2009
    Mindsight allows you to make positive changes in your brain-and in your life.- Is there a memory that torments you, or an irrational fear you can' t shake?- Do you sometimes become unreasonably angry or upset and find it hard to calm down?- Do you ever wonder why you can't stop behaving the way you do, no matter how hard you try?- Are you and your child (or parent, partner, or boss) locked in a seemingly inevitable pattern of conflict?What if you could escape traps like these and live a fuller, richer, happier life? This isn't mere speculation but the result of twenty-five years of careful hands-on clinical work by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. A Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Siegel is one of the revolutionary global innovators in the integration of brain science into the practice of psychotherapy. Using case histories from his practice, he shows how, by following the proper steps, nearly everyone can learn how to focus their attention on the internal world of the mind in a way that will literally change the wiring and architecture of their brain.Through his synthesis of a broad range of scientific research with applications to everyday life, Dr. Siegel has developed novel approaches that have helped hundreds of patients heal themselves from painful events in the past and liberate themselves from obstacles blocking their happiness in the present. And now he has written the first book that will help all of us understand the potential we have to create our own lives. Showing us mindsight in action, Dr. Siegel describes- a sixteen-year-old boy with bipolar disorder who uses meditation and other techniques instead of drugs to calm the emotional storms that made him suicidal- a woman paralyzed by anxiety, who uses mindsight to discover, in an unconscious memory of a childhood accident, the source of her dread- a physician-the author himself-who pays attention to his intuition, which he experiences as a "vague, uneasy feeling in my belly, a gnawing restlessness in my heart and my gut," and tracks down a patient who could have gone deaf because of an inaccurately written prescription for an ear infection- a twelve-year-old girl with OCD who learns a meditation that is "like watching myself from outside myself" and, using a form of internal dialogue, is able to stop the compulsive behaviors that have been tormenting herThese and many other extraordinary stories illustrate how mindsight can help us master our emotions, heal our relationships, and reach our fullest potential.A book as inspiring as it is informative, as practical as it is profound, Mindsight offers exciting new proof that we aren't hardwired to behave in certain ways, but instead have the ability to harness the power of our minds to resculpt the neural pathways of our brains in ways that will be life-transforming.

How to Stay Sane


Philippa Perry - 2012
    In How to Stay Sane, she has taken these principles and applied them to self-help. Using ideas from neuroscience and sound psychological theory, she shows us how to better understand ourselves. Her idea is that if we know how our minds form and develop, we are less at the mercy of unknown unconscious processes. In this way, we can learn to be the master of our feelings and not their slave.This is a smart, pithy, readable book that everyone with even a passing interest in their psychological health will find useful.

QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability in Work and in Life


John G. Miller - 2004
    No organization—or individual—can successfully compete in the marketplace, achieve goals and objectives, provide outstanding service, engage in exceptional teamwork, or develop people without personal accountability.   John G. Miller believes that the troubles that plague organizations cannot be solved by pointing fingers and blaming others. Rather, the real solutions are found when each of us recognizes the power of personal accountability. In QBQ! The Question Behind the Question®, Miller explains how negative, ill-focused questions like “Why do we have to go through all this change?” and “Who dropped the ball?” represent a lack of personal accountability. Conversely, when we ask better questions—QBQs—such as “What can I do to contribute?” or “How can I help solve the problem?” our lives and our organizations are transformed.THE QBQ! PROMISEThis remarkable and timely book provides a practical method for putting personal accountability into daily actions, with astonishing results: problems are solved, internal barriers come down, service improves, teams thrive, and people adapt to change more quickly. QBQ! is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to learn, grow, and change. Using this tool, each of us can add tremendous worth to our organizations and to our lives by eliminating blame, victim-thinking, and procrastination.                                                                                                 QBQ! was written more than a decade ago and has helped countless readers practice personal accountability at work and at home. This version features a new foreword, revisions and new material throughout, and a section of  FAQs that the author has received over the years.

Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career


Scott H. Young - 2019
    Ultralearning offers nine principles to master hard skills quickly. This is the essential guide to future-proof your career and maximize your competitive advantage through self-education. In these tumultuous times of economic and technological change, staying ahead depends on continual self-education—a lifelong mastery of fresh ideas, subjects, and skills. If you want to accomplish more and stand apart from everyone else, you need to become an ultralearner. The challenge of learning new skills is that you think you already know how best to learn, as you did as a student, so you rerun old routines and old ways of solving problems. To counter that, Ultralearning offers powerful strategies to break you out of those mental ruts and introduces new training methods to help you push through to higher levels of retention. Scott H. Young incorporates the latest research about the most effective learning methods and the stories of other ultralearners like himself—among them Benjamin Franklin, chess grandmaster Judit Polgár, and Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman, as well as a host of others, such as little-known modern polymath Nigel Richards, who won the French World Scrabble Championship—without knowing French. Young documents the methods he and others have used to acquire knowledge and shows that, far from being an obscure skill limited to aggressive autodidacts, ultralearning is a powerful tool anyone can use to improve their career, studies, and life. Ultralearning explores this fascinating subculture, shares a proven framework for a successful ultralearning project, and offers insights into how you can organize and exe - cute a plan to learn anything deeply and quickly, without teachers or budget-busting tuition costs.Whether the goal is to be fluent in a language (or ten languages), earn the equivalent of a college degree in a fraction of the time, or master multiple tools to build a product or business from the ground up, the principles in Ultralearning will guide you to success.

Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change


Timothy D. Wilson - 2009
     The world-renowned psychologist Timothy Wilson shows us how to redirect the stories we tell about ourselves and the world around us, with subtle prompts, in ways that lead to lasting change. Fascinating, groundbreaking, and practical, Redirect demonstrates the remarkable power small changes can have on the ways we see ourselves and our environment, and how we can use this in our everyday lives. "There are few academics who write with as much grace and wisdom as Timothy Wilson. Redirect is a masterpiece." -- Malcolm Gladwell

As a Man Thinketh


James Allen - 1902
    His words have helped millions for more than a century--and they continue to point the true way to a better life for a troubled humanity."Out of a clean heart comes a clean life and a clean body," James Allen writes. "Out of a defiled mind proceeds a defiled life and a corrupt body."Too many mortals strive to improve only their wordly position--and too few seek spiritual betterment. Such is the problem James Allen faced in his own time. The ideas he found in his inner-most heart after great searching guided him as they will guide you.

Power vs. Force


David R. Hawkins - 1985
    Hawkins details how anyone may resolve the most crucial of all human dilemmas: how to instantly determine the truth or falsehood of any statement or supposed fact. Dr. Hawkins, who worked as a "healing psychiatrist" during his long and distinguished career, uses theoretical concepts from particle physics, nonlinear dynamics, and chaos theory to support his study of human behavior. This is a fascinating work that will intrigue readers from all walks of life!

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It


Kelly McGonigal - 2011
    Committed to sharing what the scientific community already knew about self-control, McGonigal created a course called "The Science of Willpower" for Stanford University's Continuing Studies Program. The course was an instant hit and spawned the hugely successful Psychology Today blog with the same name.Informed by the latest research and combining cutting-edge insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine, McGonigal's book explains exactly what willpower is, how it works, and why it matters. Readers will learn:Willpower is a mind-body response, not a virtue. It is a biological function that can be improved through mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, and sleep. People who have better control of their attention, emotions, and actions are healthier, happier, have more satisfying relationships, and make more money. Willpower is not an unlimited resource. Too much self-control can actually be bad for your health. Temptation and stress hijack the brain's systems of self-control, and that the brain can be trained for greater willpower.In the groundbreaking tradition of Getting Things Done, The Willpower Instinct combines life-changing prescriptive advice and complementary exercises to help readers with goals ranging from a healthier life to more patient parenting, from greater productivity at work to finally finishing the basement.

The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything...Fast


Josh Kaufman - 2013
    What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches:Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better.Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first.Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice.Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve.Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.

50 Psychology Classics: Who We Are, How We Think, What We Do: Insight and Inspiration from 50 Key Books


Tom Butler-Bowdon - 2006
    Spanning fifty books and hundreds of ideas, 50 Psychology Classics examines some of the most intriguing questions regarding cognitive development and behavioral motivations, summarizing the myriad theories that psychologists have put forth to make sense of the human experience. Butler-Bowdon covers everything from humanism to psychoanalysis to the fundamental principles where theorists disagree, like nature versus nurture and the existence of free will. In this single book, you will find Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Kinsey, and the most significant contributors to modern psychological thought. From the author of the bestselling 50 Self-Help Classics, 50 Success Classics, and 50 Spiritual Classics, 50 Psychology Classics will enrich your understanding of the human condition.Includes:1. Alfred Adler "Understanding Human Nature" (1927)2. Gavin Becker "The Gift of Fear" (1997)3. Eric Berne "Games People Play" (1964)4. Edward de Bono "Lateral Thinking" (1970)5. Robert Bolton "People Skills" (1979)6. Nathaniel Branden "The Psychology of Self-Esteem" (1969)7. Isabel Briggs Myers "Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type" (1980)8. Louann Brizendine "The Female Brain" (2006)9. David D Burns "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" (1980)10. Robert Cialdini "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" (1984)11. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi "Creativity" (1997)12. Albert Ellis & Robert Harper (1961) "A Guide To Rational Living" (1961)13. Milton Erickson "My Voice Will Go With You" (1982) by Sidney Rosen14. Eric Erikson "Young Man Luther" (1958)15. Hans Eysenck "Dimensions of Personality" (1947)16. Susan Forward "Emotional Blackmail" (1997)17. Viktor Frankl "The Will to Meaning" (1969)18. Anna Freud "The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense" (1936)19. Sigmund Freud "The Interpretation of Dreams" (1901)20. Howard Gardner "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences" (1983)21. Daniel Gilbert "Stumbling on Happiness" (2006)22. Malcolm Gladwell "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" (2005)23. Daniel Goleman "Emotional Intelligence at Work" (1998)24. John M Gottman "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work" (1999)25. Harry Harlow "The Nature of Love" (1958)26. Thomas A Harris "I'm OK - You're OK" (1967)27. Eric Hoffer "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" (1951)28. Karen Horney "Our Inner Conflicts" (1945)29. William James "Principles of Psychology" (1890)30. Carl Jung "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious" (1953)31. Alfred Kinsey "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953)32. Melanie Klein "Envy and Gratitude" (1975)33. RD Laing "The Divided Self" (1959)34. Abraham Maslow "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature" (1970)35. Stanley Milgram "Obedience To Authority" (1974)36. Anne Moir & David Jessel "Brainsex: The Real Difference Between Men and Women" (1989)37. IP Pavlov "Conditioned Reflexes" (1927)38. Fritz Perls "Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality" (1951)39. Jean Piaget "The Language and Thought of the Child" (1966)40. Steven Pinker "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" (2002)41. VS Ramachandran "Phantoms in the Brain" (1998)42. Carl Rogers "On Becoming a Person" (1961)43. Oliver Sacks "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" (1970)44. Barry Schwartz "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less" (2004)45. Martin Seligman "Authentic Happiness" (2002)46. Gail Sheehy "Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life" (1974)47. BF Skinner "Beyond Freedom & Dignity" (1953)48. Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton & Sheila Heen "Difficult Conversations" (2000)49. William Styron "Darkness Visible" (1990)50. Robert E Thayer "The Origin of Everyday Moods" (1996)

Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!


Tony Robbins - 1992
    Wake up and take control of your life! From the bestselling author of Inner Strength, Unlimited Power, and MONEY Master the Game, Anthony Robbins, the nation's leader in the science of peak performance, shows you his most effective strategies and techniques for mastering your emotions, your body, your relationships, your finances, and your life.The acknowledged expert in the psychology of change, Anthony Robbins provides a step-by-step program teaching the fundamental lessons of self-mastery that will enable you to discover your true purpose, take control of your life, and harness the forces that shape your destiny.

The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life)


Chris Hardwick - 2011
    As a lifelong member of "The Nerd Herd," as he calls it, Chris Hardwick has learned all there is to know about Nerds. Developing a system, blog, and podcasts, Hardwick shares hard-earned wisdom about turning seeming weakness into world-dominating strengths in the hilarious self-help book, "The Nerdist Way."From keeping their heart rate below hummingbird levels to managing the avalanche of sadness that is their in-boxes; from becoming evil geniuses to attracting wealth by turning down work, Hardwick reveals the secrets that can help readers achieve their goals by tapping into their true nerdtastic selves.Here Nerds will learn how to: Become their own time cop Tell panic attacks to go suck it Use incremental fitness to ward off predatorsA Nerd's brain is a laser-it's time they learn to point and fire!