Posted on 2 Comments

Positive Affirmations: Change Your Mindset. Change Your Life.

Negativity is a health risk. It impacts your thinking and mindset and can lead to increased levels of stress, which in turn contribute to physical ailments including high blood pressure, increased heart rate, and headaches. It’s a vicious cycle. We don’t feel motivated. We feel depressed. We worry that we aren’t accomplishing much – or anything. It will take change – slow and steady change – to break the cycle of negativity and change your mindset. Doing so will change your life! An affirmation is a short positive statement that is true (or you want to be true). The process of repeating affirmations daily, either by writing or speaking them aloud, has a powerful effect on the subconscious mind. If you are new to affirmations, it is best to start simply and move forward steadily. This book will help you develop a daily routine of reciting positive affirmations. With over 250 affirmations included, you’ll have a resource for finding the right affirmation for any segment of your life: friends, family, relationships, creativity, health, career, finances, your environment, and personal growth.

Posted on Leave a comment

Gratitude and Trust: Six Affirmations That Will Change Your Life

Paul Williams is an alcoholic.

Tracey Jackson is not.

But together, these two close friends have written Gratitude and Trust, a book designed to apply the principles of the recovery movement to the countless people who are not addicts but nevertheless need effective help with their difficulties and pain.
Williams, the award-winning songwriter, actor, and performer, has embraced a traditional alcoholism recovery plan for more than two decades of sobriety. Jackson, a well-known TV and film writer—and veteran of many years of traditional therapy—has never been a drunk or a drug abuser, but she realized that many of the tenets of Williams’s program could apply to her. In Gratitude and Trust, Williams and Jackson ask: What happens to those who struggle with vexing problems yet are not full-blown addicts? Are there any lessons to be learned from the foundational and time-tested principles of the recovery movement?

Whether you’re tethered to your phone or you turn to food for comfort; whether you’re a perfectionist and can’t let things go or are too afraid to fail to even try; whether you can find intimacy only on the Internet or you’ve been involved in a string of nasty relationships—the first step toward feeling better about yourself and your life is the realization that you are what’s standing in your way. Williams and Jackson have designed a new, positive program, based on a half-dozen new affirmations, that can help conquer your vices, address personal dysfunction, and start to brighten the darkest moods. Gratitude and Trust is an essential, inspirational, and uplifting guide to identifying and changing maladaptive behaviors in order to uncover your most productive, healthiest self.

Posted on 3 Comments

100 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever

Live the life you’ve always wanted to live! 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself is packed with techniques for breaking down negative barriers and pessimistic thoughts that prevent you from fulfilling your goals and dreams. It’s easy to get stuck in a humdrum life and only fantasize about what “could have been.” Motivational speaker Steve Chandler helps you change that way of thinking to what “will be.” His ideas will help you create an action plan for living out your vision.

You will be intrigued at some of the real-life experiences upon which Steve has based his techniques—from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who told the author in 1976 that he was going to be the number one box office star in Hollywood (at the time, Arnold was only a body builder with a heavy Austrian accent), to Leonard Nimoy, whose life was reshaped through the rational, logical thought of Spock, the character he played on Star Trek.

100 Ways to Motivate Yourself is filled with proven methods for changing the way you think and developing self-creation. Steve draws on the feedback he’s received from corporate and public seminar students to ensure that his methods work.

Posted on 3 Comments

Jump…And Your Life Will Appear: An Inch-by-Inch Guide to Making a Major Change

     Are you ready to make changes in your life—but feel something is holding you back? Is your soul asking you to take a leap—but you’re too afraid to take it? Are you ready for something new—but aren’t sure where to start?     If this sounds like you, the book you hold in your hands will give you the courage and faith you need to jump across the threshold from where you are—to where you want to be. Jump . . . And Your Life Will Appear is a step-by-step guide to clearing the path ahead so you can let go and make the change you need the most. With a series of effective exercises, coach and author Nancy Levin will walk you through your fear, usher you up to the moment of jumping, and help you navigate what awaits on the other side.     Whether you want to switch careers, move to a different part of the world, set boundaries with someone in your life, or increase your capacity for self-love, Jump . . . And Your Life Will Appear will support you on a practical path from start to finish.

Posted on Leave a comment

Change Your Day, Not Your Life: A Realistic Guide to Sustained Motivation, More Productivity and the Art Of Working Well

Increase your employees’—and your own—productivity at work

If you look out over today’s workforce, you’ll find millions of hard-working people who are overly tired, overly stressed, and less than enchanted with work. For organizations around the globe, this represents an incredible opportunity to improve productivity, talent retention, innovation, and overall profitability.

The great paradox here is that when you take hard-working, responsible adults with a desire to succeed and a sense of responsibility and drop them into our demanding work culture, they tend to default to a way of life that sabotages their ability and best efforts to reach their goals. That’s where author Andy Core comes in. Change Your Day, Not Your Life offers a proven strategy to help you become energized at work. This book is designed as a resource for work-life balance, a tool to help you increase productivity during the final two hours of work by up to 47 percent, content to fuel employee communication, and a curriculum that departments can use in weekly or monthly meetings to keep everyone working at their best.

Author Andy Core is a credentialed, award-winning thought leader on increasing employee engagement, productivity, and wellness motivation; his talent lies in helping hard-working, conscientious adults thrive at work and in their personal lives

Turn wasted hours into tasks accomplished by following the methods found in Change Your Day, Not Your Life.

Posted on Leave a comment

Mindfulness Quotes: Thoughts For Meditation, Inner Peace and Change

These Mindfulness Quotes collected over time by Kenneth Mendel are the little companions the beginner, as well as the mindfulness meditation expert wants to keep in mind, and live by. Far from being an exercise book, these sayings are great principles to rely on when times are tough. Short, powerful and easy to remember, these quotes are designed to make you think, meditate and help you live and feel your life at its fullest. From acceptance and love to learning the truth and liberating yourself, you have in hand some of the essential words of wisdom from ancient and modern thinkers and leaders – from Buddha and the Dalai Lama to Thich Nhat Hanh and Jon Kabat-Zinn. Enjoy, and live the present moment!

Posted on Leave a comment

Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life

The definitive book on miracles from the New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas.

What are miracles, and why do we believe in them? Is it for comfort, to explain the inexplicable, or do we simply long for a connection with something larger than ourselves? And why do some people dismiss them out of hand, as if they can never happen?

What Heaven is for Real did for near-death experiences, Miracles does for the miraculous—provides undeniably compelling evidence that there’s something real
to be reckoned with, whatever one has thought of this topic before. It provides a wide range of real stories of the miraculous and will engage the reader in the serious
discussion that this fascinating and rich subject deserves.

Miracles is in some ways a more personal, anecdotal, and updated version of C. S. Lewis’s 1947 book on the subject. Metaxas’s Miracles is an exploration and an
exhortation to view miracles as not only possible, but as far more widespread than most of us had ever imagined.

Eric Metaxas says it is not a question of whether miracles happen—the evidence that they do is overwhelming in this book alone—but rather, what exactly are
miracles, why do they happen, and how can we to understand them in our own lives?

Posted on 3 Comments

Change Almost Anything in 21 Days: Recharge Your Life with the Power of Over 500 Affirmations

This endearing book will help people make important changes in their lives-from careers and relationships to parenting and health.

Ruth Fishel knows that almost any negative habit can be changed in 21 days. While struggling with a drinking problem, Fishel discovered the power of affirmations and transformed her life. She now counsels others about this potent life-enhancement tool.

Change Almost Anything in 21 Days shows readers how to use affirmations effectively and includes five suggestions for ensuring success, as well as how to overcome barriers to change and how to tell when it’s best to stay the status quo.

With more than 500 affirmations, indexed by topic, finding a meaningful affirmation on almost anything is easy: Worried about a job interview? Look up Fear, Confidence or Career. Want to lose weight? Look up Food or Addiction. Other key topics include: Anger, Balance, Creativity, Exercise, Forgiveness, Grief, Health, Money, Trust, and more.

Including endearing and timeless illustrations by Bonny Van de Kamp and a 21-day personal journal-this book makes a wonderful gift for any occasion.

Posted on 3 Comments

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives?

The primary obstacle is a conflict that’s built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly.

In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people—employees and managers, parents and nurses—have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: 
●      The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients.
●      The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping.
●      The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service
            
In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.Chip Heath and Dan Heath on Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Change is hard.” “People hate change.” Those were two of the most common quotes we heard when we began to study change.

But it occurred to us that if people hate change, they have a funny way of showing it. Every iPhone sold serves as counter-evidence. So does every text message sent, every corporate merger finalized, every aluminum can recycled. And we haven’t even mentioned the biggest changes: Getting married. Having kids. (If people hate change, then having a kid is an awfully dumb decision.)

It puzzled us–why do some huge changes, like marriage, come joyously, while some trivial changes, like submitting an expense report on time, meet fierce resistance?

We found the answer in the research of some brilliant psychologists who’d discovered that people have two separate “systems” in their brains—a rational system and an emotional system. The rational system is a thoughtful, logical planner. The emotional system is, well, emotional—and impulsive and instinctual.

When these two systems are in alignment, change can come quickly and easily (as when a dreamy-eyed couple gets married). When they’re not, change can be grueling (as anyone who has struggled with a diet can attest).

In those situations where change is hard, is it possible to align the two systems? Is it possible to overcome our internal “schizophrenia” about change? We believe it is.

In our research, we studied people trying to make difficult changes: People fighting to lose weight and keep it off. Managers trying to overhaul an entrenched bureaucracy. Activists combatting seemingly intractable problems such as child malnutrition. They succeeded–and, to our surprise, we found striking similarities in the strategies they used. They seemed to share a similar game plan. We wanted, in Switch, to make that game plan available to everyone, in hopes that we could show people how to make the hard changes in life a little bit easier. –Chip and Dan Heath

(Photo © Amy Surdacki)