Based on fifteen years of research at the Harvard Negotiation Project, Difficult Conversations walks you through a step-by-step proven approach to having your toughest conversations with less stress and more success. You will learn: -- how to start the conversation without defensiveness-- why what is not said is as important as what is-- ways of keeping and regaining your balance in the face of attacks and accusations-- how to decipher the underlying structure of every difficult conversationFilled with examples from everyday life, Difficult Conversations will help you on your job, at home, or out of the world. It is a book you will turn to again and again for advice, practical skills, and reassurance.

    The Hard Questions is a simple yet profound tool that will challenge and inspire couples to gain a deeper understanding of each other a build a lasting, intimate relationship.

    It gets to the heart of the matter of boundaries for survivors of pathological relationships.When you create boundaries you take a stand for yourself and your life, and communicate your worth to others in a real and practical way. This short book is filled with practical wisdom and useful tips. It will walk you through the process of creating boundaries from start to finish.Find your courage. Love yourself enough to live in an authentic way. Stop caring so much what everybody else thinks of you, and start caring about what you think of you.

    This insidious behavior permeates our culture--from the privacy of our own homes to the public glare of our schools, workplaces, and other institutions.But you don't have to live with it. In this groundbreaking companion to her bestselling "The Verbally Abusive Relationship," acclaimed public speaker, educator and author Patricia Evans brings you the tools you need to triumph over verbal abuse, no matter where or how you encounter it.She'll guide you step by step through a powerful healing process that provides:A thorough review of available therapiesStrategies for dealing with abusersPositive messages of support and encouragementInspiring affirmations for every week of the yearWith Patricia's help, you'll achieve the clarity you need to build a new life--far from senseless accusations, wounding words, and confusing comments that have taken an untold toll on your psyche. You'll find validation, and learn to believe in yourself--and a better future--once more.

    The national bestseller that shows how anyone can master the proven scientific techniques of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and forge instant relationships, instant chemistry, instant intimacy at will--now with a special chapter on sexual rapport! Trains the reader to control others' perceptions, dissolve communication barriers, create more intimate relationships, negotiate more effectively, and more.

    What it is and what it isn't. It is about you--and about everybody who has ever reached out to touch the heart of another.

    With a new preface by the author, this updated edition explores the ways we can keep passion alive and even reach the height of sexual and emotional fulfillment later in life. David Schnarch accompanies his inspirational message of attaining long-term happiness with proven techniques developed in worldwide workshops to help couples develop greater intimacy. Chapters provide the scaffolding for overcoming sexual and emotional roadblocks— from evaluating personal expectations to laying the groundwork for keeping the sparks alive years down the road, and everything in between. This book is sure to help couples overcome hurdles in their relationships and reach the fullest potential in their love lives.

    And like it or not, it’s one of the most important things you do on a daily basis. Successful conversationshelp you advance professionally and make, maintain, and deepen relationships. Moreover, research shows that talking, when done on a substantive level, is correlated with a feeling of happiness and general well-being.Being a great conversationalist requires practice and effort. The good news is it’s a skill set anyone can acquire and refine. In just six lectures, How Conversation Works: 6 Lessons for Better Communication will teach you key strategies that can dramatically improve your ability to converse with anyone, from strangers to supervisors. Delivered by award-winning English professor Anne Curzan of the University of Michigan, this highly practical course focuses on the fundamental principles you need to know to become more conversationally aware and savvy at home, in the workplace, and beyond.You’ll be amazed by how much you can learn by stepping back from conversations and examining how they operate. You’ll notice things you never picked up on before—like what kind of speaker you are, the strategies you typically rely on (often without realizing it), and the subtleties of the strategies others may use when speaking with you. You’ll find yourself putting these lessons into practice to create more effective dialogues from the very first lecture.Choose Your Words WiselyAn expression like “shooting the breeze” makes conversation sound easy and free-flowing, but even low-stakes conversations have an underlying systematic structure that propels them along. This course examines that framework while showing you how the effective selection of words can help you forge connections and accomplish your objectives.Professor Curzan walks you through techniques for negotiating a variety of difficult situations, from proffering successful apologies to engaging in “face-threatening acts”—those uncomfortable moments that have the potential to do damage if your words aren’t chosen carefully.You’ll learn graceful ways of pointing out a mistake; asking someone to do something he or she doesn’t want to do; preparing a person for “no”; asking for a big favor; and providing information the recipient doesn’t want to hear.Conversations can only deepen connections when you pull your weight. In How Conversation Works, you’ll learn this involves knowing how to skillfully open and close an exchange, take turns speaking or “negotiate the conversational floor,” and send people subtle signals.Perhaps most important is sharing the burden to make discussions feel more mutual and enjoyable. These lectures arm you with numerous conversation-facilitating devices such as asking your fair share of questions and follow-up questions, which requires active listening; providing informative (but not overly informative!) answers to other people’s questions; introducing new topics for discussion and picking up on the topics of others; and telling good stories and helping good stories along.Talk Your Way to SuccessWhether you want to build rapport with colleagues, promote your accomplishments in an interview, give a winning presentation, ingratiate yourself with your boss, or even create a connection on a first date, knowing what to say and how to say it allows for more productive, smoother interactions. How Conversation Works helps you get ahead by outlining simple techniques for accomplishing all of this and more.Short vignettes featuring professional actors demonstrate what to do—and what not to do—in a variety of everyday scenarios such as striking up a conversation at a party. In video formats, green-screen technology places the professor in a range of environments as she provides concrete advice for taking an uncomfortable conversation in a new direction, making polite requests, mastering the “humble brag,” limiting your “talk time,” and monitoring your use of distracting discourse markers such as “um” and “you know.”In addition to sharing these out-the-door tips and techniques, Professor Curzan dispels common myths about conversation and presents enlightening research on how the conversational styles of men and women share much in common, despite differences in socialization; how you may be perceived for using direct speech or sentence fillers; how language-style matching quickly creates a sense of compatibility; how parents serve as conversational role models; and how e-communication has surprisingly systematic conventions.A Guide for the Real WorldAs a professor of English and linguistics and member of the American Dialect Society, Professor Curzan offers a refreshing yet scholarly take on the subject of conversation. Using a developmental and skills-based approach that gets right to the heart of the matter, her course provides tangible, actionable methods that can be worked into your conversational repertoire immediately. At first, the newfound awareness you’ll acquire from How Conversation Works may cause you to become self-conscious when you speak, but the act of “conversational noticing” will soon become second nature. Before long, you’ll realize you have the tools to make yourself clearly understood, put others at ease, rescue a conversation that’s gone wrong—and keep conversations from going off course in the first place.

    You’ve felt shy as long as you can remember. Your conversations have more awkward moments than you’d like. Maybe you don’t need a ton of friends, but you’d like to have some people to hang out with on occasion. You want to make changes, but you don’t know where to start. Lots of people have been in your shoes, so you’re hardly a lost cause, and it’s never too late to turn things around. The Social Skills Guidebook gives you insights into your interpersonal struggles and behaviors, and offers hands-on advice for developing and improving your people skills. The Social Skills Guidebook goes into detail about solving the three core areas that hold people back socially: 1) Mental barriers including shyness, social anxiety, and low self-confidence 2) Less-developed conversation skills 3) A lack of friends and an unsatisfying social life If you look at the people who are socially comfortable in your school or workplace and want what they have, know that you can achieve social success like theirs without losing yourself in the process. You can remain true to your personality and pursue your favorite interests while conquering the attitudes that hold you back, improving your conversation skills, and learning how to make friends. With practice, time, and patience, you can create the kind of social life you want for yourself. The Social Skills Guidebook covers topics including: • Changing counterproductive thinking that stands in the way of your social confidence • Becoming comfortable with your social fears by facing them in a gradual, manageable way • Improving your self-esteem • Navigating the different parts of a conversation • Getting past awkward silences • Interacting in one-on-one and group conversations • Learning how to listen to others and respond appropriately • Identifying other people’s nonverbal cues and being aware of your own • Finding potential friends and making plans with them • Deepening your friendships • Keeping your progress going • Improving your social skills if you have Asperger’s syndrome The Social Skills Guidebook is written by Chris MacLeod, the author of the extensive, well-visited, free site on interpersonal skills SucceedSocially.com. This book contains all of the site's key advice in a tight, organized, polished package.

    Just about everyone dates at some point in their lives, yet few really understand what they're doing or how to get the best results. In Wired for Dating, psychologist and relationship expert Stan Tatkin—author of Wired for Love—offers powerful tips based in neuroscience and attachment theory to help you find a compatible mate and go on to create a fabulous relationship.Using real-life scenarios, you’ll learn key concepts about how people become attracted to potential partners, move toward or away from commitment, and the important role the brain and nervous system play in this process. Each chapter explores the scientific concepts of attachment theory, arousal regulation, and neuroscience. And with a little practice, you’ll learn to apply these exercises and practical techniques to your dating life.If you’re ready to get serious (or not!) about dating, meet your match, and have more fun, this book will be your guide.

    she suffers through the pain of losing him, and realizing the worth of lessons learnt from him as Pearls of Wisdom. The tragedy forces Sana to leave her home in Pakistan, and traverse the globe to California. As time passes, she remains tormented by her memories as she struggles to rediscover her identity in a foreign land. Keen on pursuing journalism, she attends Stanford, where she meets a law student, Ahmer. They are drawn together by their cultural heritage, as well as their shared experience of having lost and endured. He becomes the source of her happiness, as well as the catalyst in mending her strained relationship with her family. As the story unfolds, however, their lives become intertwined in unexpected ways, creating obstacles that might be impossible to overcome.Spanning nearly two decades, and set against a backdrop of landmark political events in both Pakistan and America in recent history, The Lost Pearl is an emotional tale about the strength of the human bond and the consequences of a truth left untold.

    Now, once again, Daniel Goleman has written a groundbreaking synthesis of the latest findings in biology and brain science, revealing that we are “wired to connect” and the surprisingly deep impact of our relationships on every aspect of our lives.Far more than we are consciously aware, our daily encounters with parents, spouses, bosses, and even strangers shape our brains and affect cells throughout our bodies—down to the level of our genes—for good or ill. In Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman explores an emerging new science with startling implications for our interpersonal world. Its most fundamental discovery: we are designed for sociability, constantly engaged in a “neural ballet” that connects us brain to brain with those around us.Our reactions to others, and theirs to us, have a far-reaching biological impact, sending out cascades of hormones that regulate everything from our hearts to our immune systems, making good relationships act like vitamins—and bad relationships like poisons. We can “catch” other people’s emotions the way we catch a cold, and the consequences of isolation or relentless social stress can be life-shortening. Goleman explains the surprising accuracy of first impressions, the basis of charisma and emotional power, the complexity of sexual attraction, and how we detect lies. He describes the “dark side” of social intelligence, from narcissism to Machiavellianism and psychopathy. He also reveals our astonishing capacity for “mindsight,” as well as the tragedy of those, like autistic children, whose mindsight is impaired.Is there a way to raise our children to be happy? What is the basis of a nourishing marriage? How can business leaders and teachers inspire the best in those they lead and teach? How can groups divided by prejudice and hatred come to live together in peace? The answers to these questions may not be as elusive as we once thought. And Goleman delivers his most heartening news with powerful conviction: we humans have a built-in bias toward empathy, cooperation, and altruism–provided we develop the social intelligence to nurture these capacities in ourselves and others.From the Trade Paperback edition.

     In this controversial book, world-renowned confidence expert, Dr. Aziz Gazipura, takes an incisive look at the concept of nice. Through his typical style, Dr. Aziz uses engaging stories, humor, and disarming vulnerability to cut through the nice conditioning and liberate the most bold, expressive, authentic version of you. You'll discover how to: => Easily say "no" when you want to and need to. => Confidently and effectively ask for what you want. => Speak up more freely in all your relationships. => Eliminate feelings of guilt, anxiety, and worry about what others will think.

    We struggle to understand people who aren't like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States was suffering from an "empathy deficit." Since then, things seem to have only gotten worse.It doesn't have to be this way. In this groundbreaking book, Jamil Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait--something we're born with or not--but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort. He also tells the stories of people who embody this new perspective, fighting for kindness in the most difficult of circumstances. We meet a former neo-Nazi who is now helping to extract people from hate groups, ex-prisoners discussing novels with the judge who sentenced them, Washington police officers changing their culture to decrease violence among their ranks, and NICU nurses fine-tuning their empathy so that they don't succumb to burnout.Written with clarity and passion, The War for Kindness is an inspiring call to action. The future may depend on whether we accept the challenge.Praise for The War for Kindness"A wide-ranging practical guide to making the world better."--NPR"Relating anecdotes and test cases from his fellow researchers, news events and the imaginary world of literature and entertainment, Zaki makes a vital case for 'fighting for kindness.' . . . If he's right--and after reading The War for Kindness, you'll probably think so--Zaki's work is right on time." --San Francisco Chronicle"In this landmark book, Jamil Zaki gives us a revolutionary perspective on empathy: Empathy can be developed, and, when it is, people, relationships, organizations, and cultures are changed."--Carol Dweck, author of Mindset

    Two daughters born behind the dark walls thrust into the arms of the wrong mothers – one mother the Master’s wife, the other a slave of poverty, Dora. Phoebe and Claretta, the workhouse babies, switched at birth and thrust into an uncertain future. As the years unfurl, destiny sends the young ladies in different directions, but their hearts are bound. One runs, the other seeks. One haunted by fears, the other reaching for a faith and a future. Both longing for love. Their stories are woven into a lifelong saga that will keep you reading to the heart-rending end. Will Phoebe discover her roots and finally find peace? Will Claretta’s past prevent her opening her heart to the arms of the man she has grown to love? Two ladies forged in an unlikely sisterhood. The men who seek to love them. The long journey from workhouse to a world filled with deepest tragedy and soaring joy. This is the story of Dora’s workhouse child - a historical Victorian romantic saga. If you like Dilly Court and Rosie Goodwin, you will love reading, Dora's Workhouse Child.