Book picks similar to
In Awe: Rediscover Your Childlike Wonder to Unleash Inspiration, Meaning, and Joy by John O'Leary
non-fiction
self-help
inspirational
personal-development
Like Streams to the Ocean: Notes on Ego, Love, and the Things That Make Us Who We Are
Jedidiah Jenkins - 2021
It is created without our consent, built on top of our circumstances, the off-handed comments we hear from others, and the moments that scared us most when we were young. But in the busyness of our daily life, we rarely get the chance to think clearly about the questions that matter most. Who am I? Where do I belong? How much of who I am and what I do boils down to avoiding the things that make me feel small? We tuck these questions into the corner of our minds, but they drive our behavior far more than we give them credit for, even after we become adults.Writing with the passion and clarity that made his debut, To Shake the Sleeping Self, a national bestseller, Jenkins makes space to explore the seven topics we must think about in order to live a deeply considered life: ego, family, work, love, nature, death, and the soul. He considers the experiences that shape us into who we are, whether they're as heart-pounding as a rafting trip through the whitewater of the Grand Canyon, or as ordinary as the moment when we look in the mirror each morning. Through it all, Jenkins leads readers on a wide-ranging conversation about finding fulfillment in the people and places around us, and discovering the courage to show our deepest selves to the world.The Seven Subjects is a profound reflection from one of our most original writers, a necessary read for anyone seeking a companion on the road to understanding.
I Am That Girl: How to Speak Your Truth, Discover Your Purpose, and #bethatgirl
Alexis Jones - 2013
You already are that girl who creates magic wherever she goes, who lives fearlessly, who inspires those around her to dream bigger, and who will leave the world better, just for having been in it. Stop listening to that voice inside your head that tells you you’re not good enough. Stop worrying that you don’t have the perfect body, perfect job, perfect relationship, or perfect anything for that matter. Stop letting other people draw boundaries and limits around your life. And start living the life that you truly want (now!), the one you didn’t think you had the courage to imagine, but the one that’s absolutely possible! Including stories from thirty incredible women, Alexis has compiled everything she’s learned into one complete guide to being That Girl, the best version of you.
The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: Guidance on the Path to Mindfulness from a Spiritual Leader
Haemin Sunim - 2012
In this best-selling mindfulness guide - it has sold more than three million copies in Korea, where it was a number-one best-seller for 41 weeks and received multiple best book of the year awards - Haemin Sunim (which means "spontaneous wisdom"), a renowned Buddhist meditation teacher born in Korea and educated in the United States, illuminates a path to inner peace and balance amid the overwhelming demands of everyday life.By offering guideposts to well-being and happiness in eight areas - including relationships, love, and spirituality - Haemin Sunim emphasizes the importance of forging a deeper connection with others and being compassionate and forgiving toward ourselves.
Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication
Oren Jay Sofer - 2018
Here's a proven method that makes it not only considerably easier, but also much more effective for people on both sides of the conversation. Oren Sofer's method for effective communication is a unique combination of mindfulness with the modality called nonviolent communication (NVC), a method popular since the 1960s that is based on the belief that all human beings have the capacity for compassion and resort to violence or behavior that harms others only when they don't recognize more effective strategies for meeting needs. NVC provides those peaceful strategies. Oren's unique method for fostering peaceful--and effective--communication has three "steps" or components: (1) presence: bringing mindful awareness to the interaction, (2) intention: clarifying and setting a goal for the interaction, and (3) attention: learning to really hear and understand in a way that enables you to navigate the difficulties, express yourself clearly, and listen like it really matters--which it most certainly does. The steps are accompanied by many practical exercises, and in the course of this three-part training, readers will learn how to apply these skills to personal and social relationships with romantic partners, friends, colleagues, and family.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Katherine May - 2020
These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas.Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.
Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being
Shawn Achor - 2018
By pursuing success in isolation - pushing others away as we push ourselves too hard - we are not just limiting our potential, we are becoming more stressed and disconnected than ever.In his highly anticipated follow-up to The Happiness Advantage, Achor reveals a better approach. Drawing on his work in 50 countries, he shows that success and happiness are not competitive sports. Rather, they depend almost entirely on how well we connect with, relate to, and learn from each other.Just as happiness is contagious, every dimension of human potential - performance, intelligence, creativity, leadership ability and health - is influenced by those around us. So when we help others become better, we reach new levels of potential, as well. Rather than fighting over scraps of the pie, we can expand the pie instead.Small Potential is the limited success we can attain alone. BIG Potential is what we can achieve together. Here, Achor offers five strategies - the SEEDS of Big Potential--for lifting the ceiling on what we can achieve while returning happiness and meaning to our lives.The dramatic shifts in how we approach work today demand an equally dramatic shift in our approach to success. Big Potential offers a new path to thriving in the modern world.
Light is the New Black: A Guide to Answering Your Soul's Callings and Working Your Light
Rebecca Campbell - 2015
These women are modern day lightworkers, who agreed at soul level to be here at this time in history, to bring us into the Age of Light (lead by spirit and the divine feminine). At the Peace Conference in Canada in 2009, when the Dalai Lama said ‘The world will be saved by the western woman’, it was a call to action for women throughout the West. Light Is The New Black is a response to that call. It guides these women to come back home to who they are at soul level, and embrace their uniqueness so they can light up the world in a way that only they can. Gone are the days of following someone else’s well-trodden path. In order to succeed in this new age, everything must be an authentic expression of who we truly are. A down-to-earth, relatable mix of one girl’s journey, channeled messages from The Universe, practical tools, and metaphysical marketing for this new social age, this book will reconnect you to the core of your being, so that you can use it to change the world.
Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits
Wayne W. Dyer - 2009
Wayne W. Dyer reveals how to change the self-defeating thinking patterns that have prevented you from living at the highest levels of success, happiness, and health. Even though you may know what to think, actually changing those thinking habits that have been with you since childhood might be somewhat challenging."If I changed, it would create family dramas . . . I’m too old or too young . . . I’m far too busy and tired . . . I can’t afford the things I truly want . . . It would be very difficult for me to do things differently . . . and I’ve always been this way . . ." may all seem to be true, but they’re in fact just excuses. So the business of modifying habituated thinking patterns really comes down to tossing out the same tired old excuses and examining your beliefs in a new and truthful light.In this groundbreaking work, Wayne presents a compendium of conscious and subconscious crutches employed by virtually everyone, along with ways to cast them aside once and for all. You’ll learn to apply specific questions to any excuse, and then proceed through the steps of a new paradigm. The old, habituated ways of thinking will melt away as you experience the absurdity of hanging on to them.You’ll ultimately realize that there are no excuses worth defending, ever, even if they’ve always been part of your life—and the joy of releasing them will resonate throughout your very being. When you eliminate the need to explain your shortcomings or failures, you’ll awaken to the life of your dreams.
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
Dalai Lama XIV - 2016
And it inspired two close friends to get together in Dharamsala for a talk about something very important to them. The friends were His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The subject was joy. Both winners of the Nobel Prize, both great spiritual masters and moral leaders of our time, they are also known for being among the most infectiously happy people on the planet.From the beginning the book was envisioned as a three-layer birthday cake: their own stories and teachings about joy, the most recent findings in the science of deep happiness, and the daily practices that anchor their own emotional and spiritual lives. Both the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu have been tested by great personal and national adversity, and here they share their personal stories of struggle and renewal. Now that they are both in their eighties, they especially want to spread the core message that to have joy yourself, you must bring joy to others.Most of all, during that landmark week in Dharamsala, they demonstrated by their own exuberance, compassion, and humor how joy can be transformed from a fleeting emotion into an enduring way of life.
Grace, Not Perfection: Embracing Simplicity, Celebrating Joy
Emily Ley - 2016
As a busy wife, new mother, business owner, and designer, Emily Ley came to a point when she suddenly realized she couldn’t do it all. She needed to simplify her life, organize her days, and prioritize the priorities. She decided to hold herself to a standard of grace rather than perfection. This mantra led to the creation of her bestselling Simplified Planner®, a favorite among busy women everywhere—from mamas to executives and everywhere in between.Grace, Not Perfection takes this message from a daily planner to an inspirational book that encourages women to simplify and prioritize. Designed with Emily Ley’s signature aesthetic, this book gives women tangible ways to simplify their lives to give space to what matters most. With a focus on faith, Emily reminds readers that God abundantly pours out grace on us—and that surely we can extend grace to ourselves.Have you been told you can have it all, only to end up exhausted and occasionally out of sorts with the people you love? Are you ready for a new way of seeing your time? Learn to live a little more simply. Hold yourself and those you love to a more life-giving standard in Grace Not Perfection,and allow that grace to seep into your days, your family, and your heart.Ideas include:List Making 101—tips to create effective to-do lists and get through them one step at a timeSimplify your life by simplifying the three major areas: your space, your time, and your mindStrategies to center your day around an intentionally slower rhythm of life
Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life
Susan David - 2016
The path to fulfillment, whether at work or at home, is almost never a straight line. Ask anyone who has achieved their biggest goals or who thrives in their relationships, and you’ll hear stories of many unexpected detours along the way. What separates those who rise to these challenges and those who get derailed? The answer is agility—emotional agility.Emotional agility is a four-step approach that allows us to navigate life’s twists and turns with self-acceptance, clear-sightedness, and an open mind. In her more than twenty years of research, Susan David has found that no matter how intelligent, resilient, or creative people are, when they ignore how situations or interactions make them feel, they miss opportunities to gain insight, getting hooked by thoughts, emotions, and habits that prevent them from reaching their full potential. Emotionally agile people experience the same stresses and setbacks as anyone else, but they know how to adapt, aligning their actions with their values and making small changes that lead to a life of growth.Drawing on her extensive professional research, her international consulting work, and her own experiences growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa and losing her father at a young age, David shows how anyone can become more emotionally agile and thrive in an uncertain world. Written with authority, wit, and empathy, Emotional Agility will help you live your most successful life, whoever you are and whatever you face. Take the FREE Emotional Agility Insights Quiz here: https://bitly.com/ea-quiz
Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life
Byron Katie - 2002
Then one morning, she woke up in a state of absolute joy, filled with the realization of how her own suffering had ended. The freedom of that realization has never left her, and now in Loving What Is you can discover the same freedom through The Work. The Work is simply four questions that, when applied to a specific problem, enable you to see what is troubling you in an entirely different light. As Katie says, “It’s not the problem that causes our suffering; it’s our thinking about the problem.” Contrary to popular belief, trying to let go of a painful thought never works; instead, once we have done The Work, the thought lets go of us. At that point, we can truly love what is, just as it is.Loving What Is will show you step-by-step, through clear and vivid examples, exactly how to use this revolutionary process for yourself. You’ll see people do The Work with Katie on a broad range of human problems, from a wife ready to leave her husband because he wants more sex, to a Manhattan worker paralyzed by fear of terrorism, to a woman suffering over a death in her family. Many people have discovered The Work’s power to solve problems; in addition, they say that through The Work they experience a sense of lasting peace and find the clarity and energy to act, even in situations that had previously seemed impossible. If you continue to do The Work, you may discover, as many people have, that the questioning flows into every aspect of your life, effortlessly undoing the stressful thoughts that keep you from experiencing peace. Loving What Is offers everything you need to learn and live this remarkable process, and to find happiness as what Katie calls “a lover of reality.”
Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You
Bill Burnett - 2016
Now in book form for the first time, their simple method will teach you how to use basic design tools to create a life that will work for you.Using real-life stories and proven techniques like reframing, prototyping and mind-mapping, you will learn how to build your way forwards, step-by-positive-step, to a life that’s better by a design of your own making.Because a well-designed life means a life well-lived.
Why Won’t You Apologize?: Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts
Harriet Lerner - 2017
Harriet Lerner has been studying apologies—and why some people won’t give them—for more than two decades. Now she offers compelling stories and solid theory that bring home how much the simple apology matters and what is required for healing when the hurt we’ve inflicted (or received) is far from simple. Readers will learn how to craft a deeply meaningful “I’m sorry” and avoid apologies that only deepen the original injury.Why Won’t You Apologize? also addresses the compelling needs of the injured party—the one who has been hurt by someone who won’t apologize, tell the truth, or feel remorse. Lerner explains what drives both the non-apologizer and the over-apologizer, as well as why the people who do the worst things are the least able to own up. She helps the injured person resist pressure to forgive too easily and challenges the popular notion that forgiveness is the only path to peace of mind. With her trademark humor and wit, Lerner offers a joyful and sanity-saving guide to setting things right.
Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age
Bruce Feiler - 2020
Bruce Feiler has long been writing about the stories that give our lives meaning. Recently he began to notice a new pattern: our old stories, with their predictable plot points along linear paths, no longer hold true. The idea that we’ll have one job, one relationship, one source of happiness is hopelessly outdated. Yet many people feel overwhelmed by this change. We’re concerned that our lives are not what we expected; that we’re living life out of order. Galvanized by a personal crisis and family emergency, Feiler set out on what became an epic journey to harvest American stories and see what he could learn from them. He crisscrossed the country, collecting hundreds of life stories from a breathtaking range of Americans in all 50 states. He then sifted through and coded these stories, building a massive database of patterns and takeaways that can help all of us live better. LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS introduces the fresh, pressing vision of the nonlinear life, in which personal disruptions and lifequakes are becoming more plentiful, nontraditional life shapes are becoming the norm, and each of us has the opportunity to write our own story. Drawing on an extraordinary trove of insights, Feiler offers a powerful, new transition toolkit with original strategies for coping with the difficult, painful, or unsettling times of life. From a master storyteller with a timely message, LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS can move readers of any age to think deeply about times of change in their lives and how to transform them into periods of creativity and growth.