Adult Children of Alcoholics


Janet Geringer Woititz - 1983
    In this updated edition of her bestseller she re-examines the movement and its inclusion of Adult Children from various dysfunctional family backgrounds who share the same characteristics. After decades of working with ACoAs she shares the recovery hints that she has found to work. Read Adult Children of Alcoholics to see where the journey began and for ideas on where to go from here.

Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection


Jia Jiang - 2015
    Despite early success in the corporate world, his first attempt to pursue his entrepreneurial dream ended in rejection. Jia was crushed and spiraled into a period of deep self-doubt. But he realized that his fear of rejection was a bigger obstacle than any single rejection would ever be, and he needed to find a way to cope with being told no without letting it destroy him. Thus was born his "100 days of rejection" experiment, during which he willfully sought rejection on a daily basis - from requesting a lesson in sales from a car salesman (no) to asking a flight attendant if he could make an announcement on the loudspeaker (yes) to his famous request to get Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the shape of Olympic rings (yes, with a viral video to prove it).Jia learned that even the most preposterous wish may be granted if you ask in the right way, and here he shares the secret of successful asking, how to pick targets, and how to tell when an initial no can be converted into something positive. But more important, he learned techniques for steeling himself against rejection and ways to develop his own confidence - a plan that can't be derailed by a single setback.Filled with great stories and valuable insight, Rejection Proof is a fun and thoughtful examination of how to overcome fear and dare to live more boldly.

The Female Brain


Louann Brizendine - 2006
    Though referenced like a work of research, Brizedine's writing style is fully accessible. Brizendine provides a fascinating look at the life cycle of the female brain from birth ("baby girls will connect emotionally in ways that baby boys don't") to birthing ("Motherhood changes you because it literally alters a woman's brain-structurally, functionally, and in many ways, irreversibly") to menopause (when "the female brain is nowhere near ready to retire") and beyond. At the same time, Brizedine is not above reviewing the basics: "We may think we're a lot more sophisticated than Fred or Wilma Flintstone, but our basic mental outlook and equipment are the same." While this book will be of interest to anyone who wonders why men and women are so different, it will be particularly useful for women and parents of girls.

MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search For A New Best Friend


Rachel Bertsche - 2011
    But shortly after getting married, she realizes that her new life is missing one thing: friends. Sure, she has plenty of BFFs—in New York and San Francisco and Boston and Washington, D.C. Still, in her adopted hometown, there’s no one to call at the last minute for girl talk over brunch or a reality-TV marathon over a bottle of wine. Taking matters into her own hands, Bertsche develops a plan: Meeting people everywhere from improv class to friend rental websites, she'll go on fifty-two friend-dates, one per week for a year, in hopes of meeting her new Best Friend Forever.

Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy


Jessica Fern - 2020
    Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, she expands our understanding of how emotional experiences can influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you move toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships. Polysecure is both a theoretical treatise and a practical guide.

The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know


Katty Kay - 2014
    Yet men still predominate in the corporate world. In The Confidence Code, Claire Shipman and Katty Kay argue that the key reason is confidence.Combining cutting-edge research in genetics, gender, behavior, and cognition—with examples from their own lives and those of other successful women in politics, media, and business—Kay and Shipman go beyond admonishing women to "lean in."Instead, they offer the inspiration and practical advice women need to close the gap and achieve the careers they want and deserve.

Loveability: Knowing How to Love and Be Loved


Robert Holden - 2013
    It is the purpose of your life.  It is the key to your happiness and to the evolution of the world.”     Loveability is a meditation on love. It addresses the most important thing you will  ever learn. All the happiness, health, and abundance you experience in life comes from your ability to love and be loved. This ability is innate, not acquired.     Robert Holden is the creator of a unique program on love called Loveability, which he teaches worldwide. He has helped thousands of people to transform their experience of love. “Love is the real work of your life,” says Robert. “As you release the blocks to love you flourish even more in your relationships, work, and life.”     In Loveability, Robert weaves a beautiful mix of timeless principles and helpful practices about the nature of true love. With great intimacy and warmth, he shares stories, conversations, meditations, and poetry that have inspired him in his personal inquiry on love. Key themes include:Your destiny is not just to find love; it is to be the most loving person you can be. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Self-love is how you are meant to feel about yourself. It is the key to loving others. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ When you think something is missing in a relationship, it is probably you. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Forgiveness helps you to see that love has never hurt you; it is only your misperceptions of love that hurt. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ The greatest influence you can have in any situation is to be the presence of love.

Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (And More Life to Live)


Eve Rodsky - 2019
    Tired of being the "shefault" parent responsible for all aspects of her busy household, Eve Rodsky counted up all the unpaid, invisible work she was doing for her family -- and then sent that list to her husband, asking for things to change. His response was... underwhelming. Rodsky realized that simply identifying the issue of unequal labor on the home front wasn't enough: She needed a solution to this universal problem. Her sanity, identity, career, and marriage depended on it. The result is Fair Play: a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to divvy up domestic responsibilities. Rodsky interviewed more than five hundred men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually entails and how to get it all done efficiently. With four easy-to-follow rules, 100 household tasks, and a figurative card game you play with your partner, Fair Play helps you prioritize what's important to your family and who should take the lead on every chore from laundry to homework to dinner. "Winning" this game means rebalancing your home life, reigniting your relationship with your significant other, and reclaiming your Unicorn Space -- as in, the time to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting. Are you ready to try Fair Play? Let's deal you in.

Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being


Martin E.P. Seligman - 2011
    Traditionally, the goal of psychology has been to relieve human suffering, but the goal of the Positive Psychology movement, which Dr. Seligman has led for fifteen years, is different—it’s about actually raising the bar for the human condition. Flourish builds on Dr. Seligman’s game-changing work on optimism, motivation, and character to show how to get the most out of life, unveiling an electrifying new theory of what makes a good life—for individuals, for communities, and for nations. In a fascinating evolution of thought and practice, Flourish refines what Positive Psychology is all about. While certainly a part of well-being, happiness alone doesn’t give life meaning. Seligman now asks, What is it that enables you to cultivate your talents, to build deep, lasting relationships with others, to feel pleasure, and to contribute meaningfully to the world? In a word, what is it that allows you to flourish? “Well-being” takes the stage front and center, and Happiness (or Positive Emotion) becomes one of the five pillars of Positive Psychology, along with Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment—or PERMA, the permanent building blocks for a life of profound fulfillment. Thought-provoking in its implications for education, economics, therapy, medicine, and public policy—the very fabric of society—Flourish tells inspiring stories of Positive Psychology in action, including how the entire U.S. Army is now trained in emotional resilience; how innovative schools can educate for fulfillment in life and not just for workplace success; and how corporations can improve performance at the same time as they raise employee well-being. With interactive exercises to help readers explore their own attitudes and aims, Flourish is a watershed in the understanding of happiness as well as a tool for getting the most out of life. On the cutting edge of a science that has changed millions of lives, Dr. Seligman now creates the ultimate extension and capstone of his bestselling classics, Authentic Happiness and Learned Optimism.

How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life


Heather Havrilesky - 2016
    Whether she’s responding to cheaters or loners, lovers or haters, the depressed or the down-and-out, Havrilesky writes with equal parts grace, humor, and compassion to remind you that even in your darkest moments you’re not alone.

How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships


Leil Lowndes - 1998
    What is their "Midas touch?"What it boils down to is a more skillful way of dealing with people.The author has spent her career teaching people how to communicate for success. In her book How to Talk to Anyone (Contemporary Books, October 2003) Lowndes offers 92 easy and effective sure-fire success techniques-- she takes the reader from first meeting all the way up to sophisticated techniques used by the big winners in life. In this information-packed book you'll find:9 ways to make a dynamite first impression 14 ways to master small talk, "big talk," and body language 14 ways to walk and talk like a VIP or celebrity 6 ways to sound like an insider in any crowd 7 ways to establish deep subliminal rapport with anyone 9 ways to feed someone's ego (and know when NOT to!) 11 ways to make your phone a powerful communications tool 15 ways to work a party like a politician works a room 7 ways to talk with tigers and not get eaten aliveIn her trademark entertaining and straight-shooting style, Leil gives the techniques catchy names so you'll remember them when you really need them, including: "Rubberneck the Room," "Be a Copyclass," "Come Hither Hands," "Bare Their Hot Button," "The Great Scorecard in the Sky," and "Play the Tombstone Game," for big success in your social life, romance, and business.How to Talk to Anyone, which is an update of her popular book, Talking the Winner's Way (see the 5-star reviews of the latter) is based on solid research about techniques that work!By the way, don't confuse How to Talk to Anyone with one of Leil's previous books, How to Talk to Anybody About Anything. This one is completely different!

The Relationship Rescue Workbook: A Seven Step Strategy For Reconnecting with Your Partner


Phillip C. McGraw - 2000
    Now, in The Relationship Rescue Workbook, Dr. Phil, Oprah's resident expert on human functioning, provides questions, exercises and self-tests that will enable couples in even the most troubled relationships to get their love lives back on track. And for those in solid relationships who would like to regain their spark, he reveals how to make that happen. He shows readers exactly how to pinpoint problems in their relationships, and how to make sure that the changes they enact will truly last. His straightforward, tell-it-like-it-is advice is made crystal clear in this easy-to-use workbook that is sure to prove immensely popular with his devoted national following.

Single On Purpose: Redefine Everything. Find Yourself First.


John Kim - 2021
    After a series of failed relationships and a painful divorce, John Kim realized he had never truly been on his own. He knew that to move forward, he had to build a relationship with himself, to embark on a journey from alone and lonely to alone and fulfilled.For John, it took donuts, barbells, and a motorcycle. For the thousands of clients he’s helped as the Angry Therapist, it was yoga, or salsa dancing, or finally speaking their truth. In Single. On Purpose., John takes his signature “self-help in a shot glass” approach and shows readers how to own their shit, break their patterns, and find a grounded sense of self.Single on Purpose is for people who have never been involved, people who have jumped from partner to partner, and those who have lost themselves in their current relationship—anyone who needs to learn that there’s more to life than who we choose to love.

She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman


Ian Kerner - 2004
    The New York Times praises Kerner’s “cool sense of humor and an obsessive desire to inform,” as he “encourages men through an act that many find mystifying.” An indispensable aid to a healthier, more fulfilling sex life for her and him, She Comes First offers techniques and philosophy that have already earned raves from the likes of bestselling author and Loveline co-host Dr. Drew Pinsky as well as Playgirl magazine, which cheers, “Hallelujah!”.

Laziness Does Not Exist


Devon Price - 2021
    Devon Price, a conversational, stirring call to “a better, more human way to live” (Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author) that examines the “laziness lie”—which falsely tells us we are not working or learning hard enough.Extra-curricular activities. Honors classes. 60-hour work weeks. Side hustles. Like many Americans, Dr. Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Price was diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and heart complications from overexertion, they were forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity. Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the “laziness lie,” including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough. Filled with practical and accessible advice for overcoming society’s pressure to do more, and featuring interviews with researchers, consultants, and experiences from real people drowning in too much work, Laziness Does Not Exist “is the book we all need right now” (Caroline Dooner, author of The F*ck It Diet).