Book picks similar to
Leaving Home: The Art of Separating from Your Difficult Family by David P. Celani
psychology
non-fiction
self-help
personal-growth
The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward
Daniel H. Pink - 2022
Pink explains in The Power of Regret. They're a universal and healthy part of being human. And understanding how regret works can help us make smarter decisions, perform better at work and school, and bring greater meaning to our lives.Drawing on research in social psychology, neuroscience, and biology, Pink debunks the myth of the "no regrets" philosophy of life. And using the largest sampling of American attitudes about regret ever conducted as well as his own World Regret Survey--which has collected regrets from more than 15,000 people in 105 countries--he lays out the four core regrets that each of us has. These deep regrets offer compelling insights into how we live and how we can find a better path forward.As he did in his bestsellers Drive, When, and A Whole New Mind, Pink lays out a dynamic new way of thinking about regret and frames his ideas in ways that are clear, accessible, and pragmatic. Packed with true stories of people's regrets as well as practical takeaways for reimagining regret as a positive force, The Power of Regret shows how we can live richer, more engaged lives.
Change Your Brain, Change Your Body: Use Your Brain to Get and Keep the Body You Have Always Wanted
Daniel G. Amen - 2010
Based on the latest medical research, as well as on Dr. Amen’s two decades of clinical practice at the renowned Amen Clinics, where Dr. Amen and his associates pioneered the use of the most advanced brain imaging technology, Change Your Brain, Change Your Body shows you how to take the very best care of your brain.With fifteen practical, easy-to-implement solutions involving nutritious foods, natural supplements and vitamins, positive-thinking habits, and, when necessary, highly targeted medications, Dr. Amen shows you how to:* Reach and maintain your ideal weight* Soothe and smooth your skin at any age * Reduce the stress that can impair your immune system* Sharpen your memory* Increase willpower and eliminate the cravings that keep you from achieving your exercise and diet goals* Enhance sexual desire and performance* Lower your blood pressure without medication* Avoid depression and elevate the enjoyment you take in life’s pleasures.Whether you’re just coming to realize that it’s time to get your body into shape, or are already fit and want to take it to the next level, Change Your Brain, Change Your Body is all you need to start putting the power of the brain-body connection to work for you today.
Buddha in Blue Jeans: An Extremely Short Simple Zen Guide to Sitting Quietly and Being Buddha
Tai Sheridan - 2011
Sitting quietly can teach many ways to accept life, meet pain, age gracefully, and die without regret. The book encourages sitting quietly every day.Topics include: Sit Quietly; Care For Your Body; Accept Your Feelings; Give Thoughts Room; Pain is Natural; Be Who You Are; Live Each Moment Well; Love Indiscriminately; Listen to Others; Be Surprised; Wonder; Live gratefully; Do No Harm; Benefit life; A Wish for The World. The book is for people of any faith, religion, race, nationality, gender, relationship status, capacity, or meditation background.
The Ultimate Guide to Journaling
Hannah Braime - 2012
The Ultimate Guide to Journaling is a must read for anyone who is interested in journaling.Journaling is an important personal development tool that helps us deepen our connection with ourselves and expand our self-awareness.Whether you are new to the concept of journaling or a seasoned journaler, this book contains tips, techniques and over 100 journaling suggestions and prompts that will take your journaling practice to new levels.We'll also touch on other need-to-know aspects of journaling, including the benefits of journaling, the best time to journal, how often to journal, and useful journaling tools.
The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond
Patricia Evans - 1992
You'll get more of the answers you need to recognize abuse when it happens, respond to abusers safely and appropriately, and most important, lead a happier, healthier life.In two all-new chapters, Evans reveals the Outside Stresses driving the rise in verbal abuse--and shows you how you can mitigate the devastating effects on your relationships. She also outlines the Levels of Abuse that characterize this kind of behavior--from subtle, insidious put-downs that can erode your self-esteem to full-out tantrums of name-calling, screaming, and threatening that can escalate into physical abuse.Drawing from hundreds of real situations suffered by real people just like you, Evans offers strategies, sample scripts, and action plans designed to help you deal with the abuse--and the abuser.This timely new edition of The Verbally Abusive Relationship, Expanded Third Edition puts you on the road to recognizing and responding to verbal abuse, one crucial step at a time!
Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself
Nedra Glover Tawwab - 2021
We all know we should have them--in order to achieve work/life balance, cope with toxic people, and enjoy rewarding relationships with partners, friends, and family. But what do healthy boundaries really mean--and how can we successfully express our needs, say no, and be assertive without offending others?Licensed counselor, sought-after relationship expert, and one of the most influential therapists on Instagram Nedra Glover Tawwab demystifies this complex topic for today's world. In a relatable and inclusive tone, Set Boundaries, Find Peace presents simple-yet-powerful ways to establish healthy boundaries in all aspects of life. Rooted in the latest research and best practices used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), these techniques help us identify and express our needs clearly and without apology--and unravel a root problem behind codependency, power struggles, anxiety, depression, burnout, and more.
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Andrew Solomon - 2000
His contribution to our understanding not only of mental illness but also of the human condition is truly stunning.The Noonday Demon examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policymakers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications, the efficacy of alternative treatments, and the impact the malady has had on various demographic populations around the world and throughout history. He also explores the thorny patch of moral and ethical questions posed by emerging biological explanations for mental illness.The depth of human experience Solomon chronicles, the range of his intelligence, and his boundless curiosity and compassion will change the reader's view of the world.
Stuffocation
James Wallman - 2013
On the way, he goes down the halls of the Elysée Palace with Nicolas Sarkozy, up in a helicopter above Barbra Streisand's house on the California coast, and into the world of the original Mad Men.Through fascinating characters and brilliantly told stories, Wallman introduces the innovators whose lifestyles provide clues to how we will all be living tomorrow, and he makes some of the world's most counterintuitive, radical, and worldchanging ideas feel inspiring – and possible for us all.
Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life
Joshua Fields Millburn - 2011
It’s also the best thing we’ve ever written about Minimalism and will likely serve as the cornerstone to our work for years to come. It took us a year to write this book—a year of creating the best material possible and finding ways to relate it back to our lives so you would have practical ways to relate the subject matter to your life.Chapter Themes:Do you jump out of bed every morning excited about the day in front of you? Do you live a life defined by deep meaning, endless passion, excellent health, empowering relationships, and constant growth?You can.Ultimately, the eight chapters and ninety-eight sections inside this book are meant to help you take small actions each day that will radically improve your life over a short period of time.This book’s foreword and first chapter go into vast detail on our personal backgrounds, our troubled pasts, our depression, and how we made changes that transformed our lives over two years. These chapters discuss why didn’t feel fulfilled by our careers and why we turned to our society’s idea of a meaningful life: we bought stuff, we spent too much money, and we lived paycheck to paycheck trying to purchase happiness in every trip to the shopping mall or luxurious vacation we could find. Instead of finding our passion, instead of searching for our mission, we pacified ourselves with ephemeral indulgences, inducing a crack-cocaine high that didn’t last far past the checkout line.The subsequent chapters move on the the five dimensions that comprise a meaningful life:1. Health2. Relationships3. Passions4. Growth5. ContributionThese are the things we changed in our lives that had the most impact. These changes resulted in more meaningful lives for the two of us. These five chapters discuss each of these concepts in depth, much more than our website. Throughout these chapters we consider why these areas are the most important dimensions of our lives and how minimalism allowed us to focus on these areas. We give you personal examples of how we changed everything in our lives over two year span. We left our big corporate jobs, changed our diets, started exercising regularly, got healthy, strengthened our core relationships, made great new relationships, started pursuing our passions, contributed to more people than we ever had, and found ways to be happy and content with our lives.The final chapter of this book, "The Confluence of Meaning," binds together the five dimensions and asks the reader important questions about their life. These questions are not rhetorical, they are meant to make you think. The entire book is designed to help you actively engage in each chapter by reading the content more than once, taking notes, highlighting meaningful passages, making lists, and, most importantly, taking action.
Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness
Ingrid Fetell Lee - 2018
Increasingly, experts urge us to find balance and calm by looking inward--through mindfulness or meditation--and muting the outside world. But what if the natural vibrancy of our surroundings is actually our most renewable and easily accessible source of joy? In Joyful, designer Ingrid Fetell Lee explores how the seemingly mundane spaces and objects we interact with every day have surprising and powerful effects on our mood. Drawing on insights from neuroscience and psychology, she explains why one setting makes us feel anxious or competitive while another fosters acceptance and delight--and, most importantly, she reveals how we can harness the power of our surroundings to live fuller, healthier, and truly joyful lives.
What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Bruce D. Perry - 2021
It is, in other words, the key to reshaping our very lives.”―Oprah WinfreyThis book is going to change the way you see your life.Have you ever wondered "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person?" When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the blame on ourselves; holding ourselves and those around us to an impossible standard. It's time we started asking a different question.Through deeply personal conversations, Oprah Winfrey and renowned brain and trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry offer a groundbreaking and profound shift from asking “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” Our earliest experiences shape our lives far down the road, and What Happened to You? provides powerful scientific and emotional insights into the behavioral patterns so many of us struggle to understand.Here, Winfrey shares stories from her own past, understanding through experience the vulnerability that comes from facing trauma and adversity at a young age. Joining forces with Dr. Perry, one of the world’s leading experts on childhood and brain development, Winfrey and Dr. Perry marry the power of storytelling with science to better understand and overcome the effects of our pasts.In conversation throughout the book, the two focus on understanding people, behavior, and ourselves. It’s a subtle but profound shift in our approach to trauma, and it’s one that allows us to understand our pasts in order to clear a path to our future―opening the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way.
Zen and the Art of Happiness
Chris Prentiss - 2006
In "Zen and the Art of Happiness", you will learn how to think and feel so that what you think and feel creates happiness and vibrancy in your life rather than gloominess or depression.
The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self
Alex Lickerman - 2012
Though that which doesn't kill us can make us stronger, as Nietzsche tells us, few authors today offer any insight into just how to springboard from adversity to strength. It doesn't just happen automatically; it takes practice. New scientific research suggests that resilience isn't something with which only a fortunate few of us have been born, but rather something we can all take specific action to develop. To build strength out of adversity, we need a catalyst. What we need, according to Dr. Alex Lickerman, is wisdom—wisdom that adversity has the potential to teach us.Lickerman's underlying premise is that our ability to control what happens to us in life may be limited, but our ability to surmount the suffering life brings us is not. The Undefeated Mind distills the wisdom we need to create true resilience into nine core principles, including:—A new definition of victory and its relevance to happiness—The concept of the changing of poison into medicine—A way to view prayer as a vow we make to ourselves. —A method of setting expectations that enhances our ability to endure disappointment and minimizes the likelihood of quitting—An approach to taking personal responsibility and moral action that enhances resilience—A process for managing pain—both physical and emotional—that enables us to push through obstacles that might otherwise prevent us from attaining our goals—A method of leveraging our relationships with others that helps us manifest our strongest selves Through stories of patients who have used these principles to overcome suffering caused by unemployment, unwanted weight gain, addiction, rejection, chronic pain, retirement, illness, loss, and even death, Dr. Lickerman shows how we too can make these principles function within our own lives, enabling us to develop for ourselves the resilience we need to achieve indestructible happiness. At its core, The Undefeated Mind urges us to stop hoping for easy lives and focus instead on cultivating the inner strength we need to enjoy the difficult lives we all have.
Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves
C. Terry Warner - 2001
Our relationships with friends, spouses, colleagues, and family members can be wonderfully rewarding. They can also bring heartache, frustration, anxiety, and anger. We all know the difference between times when we feel open, generous and at ease with people versus times when we are guarded, defensive, and on edge. Why do we get trapped in negative emotions when it's clear that life is so much fuller and richer when we are free of them?Bonds That Make Us Free is a ground-breaking book that suggests the remedy for our troubling emotions by addressing their root causes. You'll learn how, in ways we scarcely suspect, we are responsible for feelings like anger, envy, and insecurity that we have blamed on others. (How many times have you said, "You're making me mad?") Even though we fear to admit this, it is good news. If we produce these emotions, it falls within our power to stop them. But we have to understand our part in them far better than we do, and that is what this remarkable book teaches. Because the key is seeing truthfully, the book itself is therapeutic. As you read and identify with the many true stories of people who have seen a transformation in their lives, you will find yourself reflecting with fresh honesty upon your relationships. This will bond you to others in love and respect and lift you out of the negative thoughts and feelings that have held you captive. You will feel your heart changing even as you read. "It would not be accurate to describe this book as supplying the truths upon which we must build our lives," writes author C. Terry Warner. "Instead it shows how we can put ourselves in that receptive, honest, and discerning condition that will enable us, any of us, to find these truths on our own." Finding these truths is the key to healing our relationships and coming to ourselves, and Bonds That Make Us Free starts us on that great journey.
The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store
Cait Flanders - 2018
Even after she worked her way out of nearly $30,000 of consumer debt, her old habits took hold again. When she realized that nothing she was doing or buying was making her happy—only keeping her from meeting her goals—she decided to set herself a challenge: she would not shop for an entire year.The Year of Less documents Cait’s life for twelve months during which she bought only consumables: groceries, toiletries, gas for her car. Along the way, she challenged herself to consume less of many other things besides shopping. She decluttered her apartment and got rid of 70 percent of her belongings; learned how to fix things rather than throw them away; researched the zero waste movement; and completed a television ban. At every stage, she learned that the less she consumed, the more fulfilled she felt.The challenge became a lifeline when, in the course of the year, Cait found herself in situations that turned her life upside down. In the face of hardship, she realized why she had always turned to shopping, alcohol, and food—and what it had cost her. Unable to reach for any of her usual vices, she changed habits she’d spent years perfecting and discovered what truly mattered to her.Blending Cait’s compelling story with inspiring insight and practical guidance, The Year of Less will leave you questioning what you’re holding on to in your own life—and, quite possibly, lead you to find your own path of less.