Recommended Books
Take
Time for Your Life : A Personal Coach's Seven-Step Program for Creating
the Life You Want
by Cheryl Richardson
Personal coach Cheryl Richardson helps people create the lives they want. In Take Time for Your Life, she shows you how to switch from being stressed, unfulfilled, and overworked, to "living a life you love" by using a seven-step process.
Cheryl takes you through seven progressive strategies that free you to live an authentic, high-quality life, embracing your spiritual, emotional, and financial well-being.
Life
Makeovers
by Cheryl Richardson
What do you need to change
to make your life work better and make you happier? Top-level personal
coach Cheryl Richardson, author of the popular Take Time for Your Life,
shows you how to make your life over, one week at a time, using her philosophy
of "extreme self-care." The result: you'll reevaluate your life and connect
to what matters most to you, improving the quality of your life.
The
Marriage Plan : How to Marry Your Soul Mate in One Year or Less
by Aggie Jordan, PhD
A relationship coach offers a step-by-step program for marrying your soul mate in one year or less.
Whether you're divorced or have never been married, if you're searching for long-lasting love, you're not alone: millions of people are on the lookout for their soul mate, and most of them are having trouble finding and keeping him or her. With The Marriage Plan, Dr. Aggie Jordan offers readers a tried-and-true program for finding and attracting the right man and building a healthy marriage, without sacrificing mutual respect, integrity, or your true self.
When
Working Out Isn't Working Out: A Mind/Body Guide to Conquering Unidentified
Fitness Obstacles
by Michael Gerrish
The most remarkable facts about the "fitness boom" are that most people still don't exercise, and among those who do, few get the results they envisioned. Michael Gerrish is uniquely qualified to examine the phenomenon of exercise nonadherence, being both a certified and experienced trainer and psychotherapist. He suggests that many problems people have with their fitness programs start way, way before they ever step inside a gym.
Michael identifies UFOs, or "unidentified fitness obstacles" such as:
- Long-term, low-grade depression
- Relentless perfectionism
- attention deficit disorder
For each potential fitness-blocking problem Gerrish identifies, he offers checklists you can go through to see whether it applies to you, a list of ways to overcome the problem, and resources to turn to for help, if you decide you need it.
Men Are from Mars,Women
Are from Venus:
A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting
What You Want in Your Relationships
by John Gray
Relationship counselor John Gray focuses on the differences between men and women--men are from Mars, and women are from Venus, after all--and offers a simple solution: couples must acknowledge and accept these differences before they can develop happier relationships. The information is sound and gives both men and women helpful hints on improving themselves and their union.
Mars and Venus
on a Date:
A Guide for Navigating
the 5 Stages of Dating to Create a Loving and Lasting Relationship
by John Gray
With a lot of insight and common sense, Gray tackles the hard and often messy business of finding "a soul mate." Without fear or favor, Mars and Venus on a Date dissects the dynamics between men and women and the five stages each relationship must pass through: attraction, uncertainty, exclusivity, intimacy, and, finally, engagement (for marriage, of course). Even though Mars and Venus on a Date isn't The Rules by a long shot, the courtship it describes is surprisingly old-fashioned. It's chock-full of things your mother might say: "Most people find or are found by their soul mates when they are not really looking." "The man should never talk more than the woman." But how to know if the person you're with is your "soul mate?" Gray writes, "When our soul wants to marry our partner, it feels like a promise that we came into this world to keep." Which translates into, "When you know, you know."
Mars and Venus
Starting Over:
A Practical Guide for Finding Love Again After a Painful
Breakup, Divorce, or the Loss of a Loved One
by John Gray
A breakup, divorce, or loss of a loved one isn't just the end of your relationship with that person. It's a continuation of every feeling of abandonment you've ever suffered. It's the loss of a system of approval you'd come to depend on. The struggle, as Gray points out in Starting Over, isn't just to find a new partner, but to get over those feelings of abandonment or loss or anger or whatever else gets dredged up by the end of a relationship.
Perhaps the book's most crucial chapter posits that the best way to get over the loss of love is to focus on the "love" more than the "loss." That may seem impossible, especially if the bum took off with your best friend, your life savings, and your Lyle Lovett CDs, but Gray didn't get to be a household name because the advice in his Venus and Mars books doesn't work. Remembering only the bad parts, Gray says, leaves you with an important part of your emotional being closed to new business.
As for the Venus and Mars stuff, that comes in the second half of the book, when Gray looks at how men and women start new relationships from different points of view, with different priorities (a man might want to have fun with no strings attached; a woman might carry with her a lengthy list of requirements for her next partner, a list that excludes virtually all available men).
If you've never read Gray's work before, you have to be prepared to check your cynicism at the door. This is earnest stuff, but it's also based on decades of experience counseling clients. He's not one of those photogenic, nine-times-divorced shrinklets who's telling you how to conduct your relationships without any real clue of what makes love last. This is the real package: nothing glib, nothing quick and easy, nothing you could've figured out from a "Love Is..." cartoon.
Children Are From Heaven
by John Gray
Psychologist John Gray cites a need to shift from "fear-based parenting" (a punitive and oppressive approach to child rearing) to "love-based parenting" (which accepts children's desires and negative emotions while still setting reasonable limits). With child and teen violence increasing, rampant low self-esteem, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and attention deficit disorder, he says, "the Western free world is experiencing a crisis in parenting. Almost all parents today are questioning both the old and the new ways of parenting. Nothing seems to be working."
He suggests "Five Messages of Positive Parenting" that will facilitate such a shift:
- It's okay to be different.
- It's okay to make mistakes.
- It's okay to express negative emotions.
- It's okay to want more.
- It's okay to say no, but remember mom and dad are the bosses.
Although his parenting philosophy is not necessarily revolutionary (think "positive discipline"), Gray manages to keep this parenting primer contemporary by weaving in specific challenges of new-millennium families--such as our tendency to be consumer-driven and overscheduled. "When parents learn what their children really need, they are less motivated to create money to acquire things and more motivated to create time to enjoy their family," Gray writes. "The greatest wealth for a parent today is time."
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How to Get What You Want and Want What You Have:
A Practical
and Spiritual Guide to Personal Success
by John Gray
What you want materially and what you want spiritually are both important, says John Gray, Ph.D., in How to Get What You Want and Want What You Have. "Wanting more is the nature of our soul, mind, heart, and senses," he says. As an antidote of sorts to the sometimes overly strict books of late that advocate a life of utter simplicity, he concedes that it's okay to want a big promotion or fancy car. It's also noble to want a solid spiritual life and to want to be at peace with yourself. However, he says, you need to recognize and work on the many self-defeating behaviors that may be thwarting your chances for reaching your goals. In fact, he identifies 24 typical stumbling blocks to look for.
How to Get What You Want and Want What You Have is perfect for the ostensibly successful business people who can't explain why they're miserable, or people who blame their partners for their miseries instead of looking inward. It's filled with anecdotes and tools to help you achieve a fuller sense of identity. Gray says that one of the most important steps to reaching this level of self-awareness is meditation, and Gray gives dozens of stepping-off points for meditation exercises to help you ascertain what exactly it is that you want, and how to remove any obstacles--whether external or internal. Take it from a man who used to be so ascetic that he was rendered homeless but now has achieved a strong sense of self and has managed to write nine bestselling books: both spiritual and material success are within your grasp.
| © Edward Shea 1999 |
