Practically Perfect in Every Way


Jennifer Niesslein - 2007
    Fulfilling her goal of enlightened self-improvement begins with the relatively mundane (her house), moves on toward progressively larger themes (money, marriage, motherhood), and ends up with karmic insights into the burning issues of life (spirituality and meaning). As she allows an array of self-help experts-from Dr. Phil to the Fly Lady, pediatrician William Sears to holistic health guru Dr. Andrew Weil-to copilot her life, Niesslein sometimes finds herself in terra incognita. She runs through her house throwing items away. She communicates with her husband in three-minute speeches. She encourages her first-grader to dream up revenge fantasies. She searches for holy water. At one point, she is even possessed-briefly-by the spirit of a conservative talk-radio host. Although the road to self-help Nirvana is fraught with peril, she discovers that there is such a thing as the good life. It's just a question of how perfect you have to be to get it. With her irreverent sensibility and uncanny insight into the Zeitgeist, Jennifer Niesslein takes on our uniquely American preoccupation with the perfectibility of man and turns it squarely on its ear.

Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating


Christy Harrison - 2019
    It will turn what you think you know about health and wellness upside down, as Harrison explores the history of diet culture, how it's infiltrated the health and wellness world, how to recognize it in all its sneaky forms, and how letting go of efforts to lose weight or eat "perfectly" actually helps to improve people's health -- no matter their size. Drawing on scientific research, personal experience, and stories from patients and colleagues, Anti-Diet provides a radical alternative to diet culture, and helps readers reclaim their bodies, minds, and lives so they can focus on the things that truly matter.

Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer


Heather Lende - 2015
    Now she’s distilled what she’s learned about how to live a more exhilarating and meaningful life into three words: find the good. It’s that simple--and that hard. Quirky and profound, individual and universal, Find the Good offers up short chapters that help us unlearn the habit--and it is a habit--of seeing only the negatives. Lende reminds us that we can choose to see any event--starting a new job or being laid off from an old one, getting married or getting divorced--as an opportunity to find the good. As she says, “We are all writing our own obituary every day by how we live. The best news is that there’s still time for additions and revisions before it goes to press.” Ever since Algonquin published her first book, the New York Times bestseller If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, Heather Lende has been praised for her storytelling talent and her plainspoken wisdom. The Los Angeles Times called her “part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott,” and that comparison has never been more apt as she gives us a fresh, positive perspective from which to view our relationships, our obligations, our priorities, our community, and our world. An antidote to the cynicism and self-centeredness that we are bombarded with every day in the news, in our politics, and even at times in ourselves, Find the Good helps us rediscover what’s right with the world. “Heather Lende’s small town is populated with big hearts--she finds them  on the beach, walking her granddaughters, in the stories of ordinary peoples’ lives, and knits them into unforgettable tales. Find the Good is a treasure.” —Jo-Ann Mapson, author of Owen’s Daughter “Find the Good is excellent company in unsteady times . . . Heather Lende is the kind of person you want to sit across the kitchen table from on a rainy afternoon with a bottomless cup of tea. When things go wrong, when things go right, her quiet, commonsense wisdom, self-examining frankness, and good-natured humor offer a chance to reset, renew, rebalance.”  —Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted “With gentle humor and empathy [Lende] introduces a number of people who provide examples of how to live well . . . [Find the Good] is simple yet profound.”  —Booklist “In this cynical world, Find the Good is a tonic, a literary wellspring, which will continue to run, and nurture, even in times of drought. What a brave and beautiful thing Heather Lende has made with this book.” —John Straley, Shamus Award winner and former writer laureate of Alaska “Heather Lende is a terrific writer and terrific company: intimate, authentic, and as quirky as any of her subjects.” —Marilyn Johnson, author of The Dead Beat

Please Be Patient, I'm Grieving: How to Care For and Support the Grieving Heart (Good Grief Series Book 3)


Gary Roe - 2016
    It’s tough to go through, and painful to watch. Do you know someone who’s grieving and wish you could help? Are you the one grieving and wonder if what you’re going through is normal? Do you wish those around you understood you better? This book has answers. This practical and easy-to-read book provides the answers you need to make a difference - in your own life and in the lives of others. Bestselling author, hospice chaplain, and grief specialist Gary Roe gives you a look at the grieving heart – the thoughts, emotions, and struggles within. If you’re wanting to help someone who’s grieving, you’ll get a glimpse of what’s going on inside them and be better able to love and support them. If you’re in the midst of grief and loss, you’ll see yourself as you read, and be encouraged that you aren’t as weird or crazy as you thought. In Please Be Patient, I’m Grieving, you will learn… • How hurting, grieving people are feeling and thinking. • How to discover what they need and don’t need. • What to say and not to say. • How to be a help and not a hindrance in the grieving process. • How the grief and pain of others can affect you. • How helping others stimulates your own personal growth and healing. • How these skills can enhance all your relationships. Healing from loss is challenging. This book can help you develop a priceless ability– how to hear the heart of someone who’s hurting. The benefits for them, and for you, can be staggering. Scroll up and grab your copy of this book today. You can make more of a difference than you dreamed possible.

Yeah Dave's Guide to Livin' the Moment: Getting to Ecstasy Through Wine, Chocolate and Your iPod Playlist


David Romanelli - 2009
    What's not to love?David “Yeah Dave” Romanelli is kinda hip, kinda goofy, and occasionally really outrageous, an unlikely guru who is reinventing the quest for enlightenment. For Yeah Dave, the path to ecstasy doesn't require any previous experience with yoga, meditation, or wellness. He shows us how to find transcendence through everyday pleasures, like admiring the sunset or rocking out to your favorite band. “There is a place where the chocolate tastes sweeter, the music sounds better, the inspiration feels richer, and the visions look clearer,” writes Dave. “That place is the Moment.”Yeah Dave’s Guide to Livin’ the Moment offers an alternative to the crazy, over-stimulating, distracted world we live in today, a world in which we watch the news while eating, eye our email while conversing, and forget to notice the full moon while texting. On our mission for speed, movement, and stimulation, we risk missing our life. Yeah Dave’s book gives us our life back, one beautiful, delicious, and funny moment at a time.Yeah Dave’s Guide will make you laugh out loud while taking you someplace totally unexpected. Through hilarious vignettes about his dorky moves on the dance floor, his Crackberry addiction, and his tryst with Hot Horny Married Woman, he shares fresh and unforgettable wisdom. Without dogma or anything too “out there,” Dave makes you want to slow down the blur of modern life and find the full flavor, power, and passion that can only be found in the Moment.

Mnemonics Memory Palace Book One: Memory Palaces and Mnemonics. The Forgotten Craft of Memorization and Memory Improvement With Total Recall. (How To Build a Mnemonics Memory Palace 1)


Sjur Midttun - 2016
    In it you will learn: What is a memory palace? How to build your first couple of memory palace. Learn the one secret to why some information stick to your mind, and other types don't How to easily build up to 15 memory palaces, based on the first two. Building memory palaces based on walks/journeys. How to build virtual memory palaces. How to memorize any fact or information using memory palaces. Unlike other popular books on the subject, like "Moonwalking with Einstein", the book "How to Build a Mnemonic Memory Palace" focuses on practical, hands on advice. Information that will get you started making your own memory palaces from day one.  This short, but informative book is virtually packed with information. Tips that simply work. Memory palaces are an ancient, yet somehow forgotten method of memorizing all kinds of information. Before the printing press was invented, content was passed on verbally from person to person. And using the Greek tradition of memory palaces, scholars could store vast amounts of information.  These techniques have seen an increased interest lately, and many people who have been inspired by memory palaces from TV-series like "Sherlock" or books like "Hannibal", want to find a way to easily get started making memory palaces. "How to Build a Mnemonic Memory Palace" literally takes you by the hand and walks you through the process, step by step. And thanks to the many examples, these ancient methods become very clear. In many ways, this book starts where others, like "Moonwalking With Einstein" stop.  Download a sample, or get the set of two books today. Learn how you can use the powerful techniques of memory palaces in order to memorize vitually anything.  A full, practical guide to getting started memorizing all types of information using memory palaces Equally useful for students, as adults Find out the perfect method for memorizing speeches Never forget another keyword

Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir


Marsha M. Linehan - 2020
    "Because if you were, it would give all of us so much hope."Over the years, DBT had saved the lives of countless people fighting depression and suicidal thoughts, but Linehan had never revealed that her pioneering work was inspired by her own desperate struggles as a young woman. Only when she received this question did she finally decide to tell her story.In this remarkable and inspiring memoir, Linehan describes how, when she was eighteen years old, she began an abrupt downward spiral from popular teenager to suicidal young woman. After several miserable years in a psychiatric institute, Linehan made a vow that if she could get out of emotional hell, she would try to find a way to help others get out of hell too, and to build a life worth living. She went on to put herself through night school and college, living at a YWCA and often scraping together spare change to buy food. She went on to get her PhD in psychology, specializing in behavior therapy. In the 1980s, she achieved a breakthrough when she developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a therapeutic approach that combines acceptance of the self and ways to change. Linehan included mindfulness as a key component in therapy treatment, along with original and specific life-skill techniques. She says, You can't think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking.Throughout her extraordinary scientific career, Marsha Linehan remained a woman of deep spirituality. Her powerful and moving story is one of faith and perseverance. Linehan shows, in Building a Life Worth Living, how the principles of DBT really work--and how, using her life skills and techniques, people can build lives worth living.

Struck by Living: From Depression to Hope


Julie Hersh - 2010
    "Despite medical advances," Julie says, "too many people die by suicide because they are afraid to seek help." Julie's goal is to provide a living example that mental illness is a manageable disease. Her Struck by Living blog is featured on the Psychology Today website. Julie is also a guest blogger on the Menninger Clinic "Say No to Stigma" website.After earning her BBA at the University of Notre Dame, Hersh worked in high-tech product development and marketing/sales in Silicon Valley. She "retired" from a lucrative sales management position after the birth of her first child. A long-time member of the Cooper Center, Hersh ran her first marathon at age 48. Julie is Board President of the Dallas Children's Theater and active supporter of the Suicide and Crisis Center, CONTACT and other non-profit organizations. She lives with her husband and two children in Dallas, Texas.

Angel Therapy Meditations


Doreen Virtue - 2008
    Doreen Virtue leads you through a powerfully healing Angel Therapy session. You’ll work with archangels to release old blocks and toxins; cut cords of fear; heal past-life issues; and gain confidence, courage, and clarity about your life’s purpose and relationships.

I Never Knew I Had a Choice: Explorations in Personal Growth [With Infotrac]


Gerald Corey - 1983
    This book is designed to help students expand their self-awareness as they explore the significant choices available to them in the various dimensions of life. As students work through the self-inventories, exercises, and activities and read the first-person accounts of the choices real people have made in response to challenging life events, they will begin to explore themselves, their lives, and their beliefs and attitudes in a way that is personally empowering.

Codependents' Guide to the Twelve Steps: New Stories


Melody Beattie - 1990
    Now she’s back to help you discover how recovery programs work and to help you find the right one for you. Interpreting the famous Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps specifically for codependent issues for the very first time, this groundbreaking book combines Melody’s expertise with the experience of other people to: • Explain each step and how you can apply it to your particular issues • Offer specific exercises and activities to use both in group settings and on your own • Provide a directory of the wide range of Twelve Step programs—including Al-Anon, Codependents Anonymous, Codependents of Sex Addicts, Adult Children of Alcoholics, and more The uniquely warm and compassionate voice of Melody Beattie will inspire you to turn your life around—one step at a time.

Gross Anatomy: Dispatches from the Front (and Back)


Mara Altman - 2018
    Mara Altman's volatile and apprehensive relationship with her body has led her to wonder about a lot of stuff over the years. Like, who decided that women shouldn't have body hair? And how sweaty is too sweaty? Also, why is breast cleavage sexy but camel toe revolting? Isn't it all just cleavage? These questions and others like them have led to the comforting and sometimes smelly revelations that constitute Gross Anatomy, an essay collection about what it's like to operate the bags of meat we call our bodies.Divided into two sections, "The Top Half" and "The Bottom Half," with cartoons scattered throughout, Altman's book takes the reader on a wild and relatable journey from head to toe—as she attempts to strike up a peace accord with our grody bits.With a combination of personal anecdotes and fascinating research, Gross Anatomy holds up a magnifying glass to our beliefs, practices, biases, and body parts and shows us the naked truth: that there is greatness in our grossness.

Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life


J.D. Meier - 2010
    Meier introduces Agile Results(R)-a simple system for meaningful results! It's a systematic way to achieve both short- and long-term results in all aspects of your life-from work to fun. It offers just enough planning to get you going, but makes it easy to change your course as needed. It also provides fresh starts for your day, week, month, and year. Even if you already use another time management system, Agile Results can supplement it to increase your impact and sense of fulfillment. In today's world, change happens quickly; learn how to be flexible and responsive to new opportunities. Don't just check off tons of stuff from your to-do list; do the things that make a difference. Stop trudging your way through life; bolster your energy with habits that will carry you forward each day. Quit sacrificing your personal life for your work life (or vice versa); give each facet of your life its due and find balance. In other words, learn the skills to go the distance in an ever-changing world. The beauty of Agile Results is that you don't have to adopt the entire system to see the benefits; just start with the following three basic tenets. First, adopt The Rule of 3 and you avoid being overwhelmed and become mindful of your results. Second, adopt the Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, Friday Refection pattern and you set the wheels in motion for weekly results while giving yourself a fresh start each day and each week. Third, set up boundaries for your Hot Spots and begin to experience work-life balance. When you're ready for more, flip through the chapters to learn how to use stories to design your day, week, month, and year; how to find your motivation; how to improve your productivity; and many more. Agile Results is a time-tested system that J.D. Meier has honed through his years at Microsoft: learning from some of the best minds, leading virtual teams, and mentoring people around the world. It is a system he can bet on time and again. This guide is the playbook for getting results that he wishes somebody had given to him so many years ago. Now, he's sharing it with you.

Cracked, Not Broken: Surviving and Thriving After a Suicide Attempt


Kevin Hines - 2013
    Yet, for author Kevin Hines the bridge is not merely a marker of a place or a time. Instead, the bridge marks the beginning of his remarkable story. At 19 years old, Kevin attempted to take his own life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge - a distance which took four seconds to fall. Recently diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, Kevin had begun to hear voices telling him he had to die, and days before his attempt, he began to believe them. The fall would break his body, but not his spirit. His story chronicles the extraordinary will of the author to live mentally well in the face of his mental illness: bipolar disorder with psychotic features. With each mental breakdown, however, the author's desire to live mentally well-- and to be a mental health advocate-- pulls him from the depths of his condition. Kevin's story is a remarkable testament to the strength of the human spirit and a reminder to us to love the life we have. His story also reminds us that living mentally well takes time, endurance, hard work, and support. With these disciplines in place, those living with even very difficult diagnoses can achieve better lives for themselves and those who help to support and care for them.

The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating


Kiera Van Gelder - 2010
    This haunting, intimate memoir chronicles both the devastating period that led to Kiera's eventual diagnosis and her inspirational recovery through therapy, Buddhist spirituality, and a few online dates gone wrong. Kiera's story sheds light on the private struggle to transform suffering into compassion for herself and others, and is essential reading for all seeking to understand what it truly means to recover and reclaim the desire to live.