Self-Development Audiobooks

Prior to 1990, fewer than five percent of domestic infant adoptions were open. In 2012, ninety percent or more of adoption agencies are recommending open adoption. Yet these agencies do not often or adequately prepare either adopting parents or birth parents for the road ahead of them! The adult parties in open adoptions are left floundering. There are many resources on why to do open adoption, but what about how? Open adoption isn't just something parents do when they exchange photos, send emails, share a visit. It's a lifestyle that may feel intrusive at times, be difficult or inconvenient at other times. Tensions can arise even in the best of circumstances. But knowing how to handle these situations and how to continue to make arrangements work for the child involved is paramount. This book offers readers the tools and the insight to do just that. It covers common open-adoption situations and how real families have navigated typical issues successfully. Like all useful parenting books, it provides parents with the tools to come to answers on their own, and answers questions that might not yet have come up. Through their own stories and those of other families of open adoption, Lori and Crystal review the secrets to success, the pitfalls and challenges, the joys and triumphs. By putting the adopted child at the center, families can come to enjoy the benefits of open adoption and mitigate the challenges that may arise. More than a how-to, this book shares a mindset, a heartset, that can be learned and internalized, so parents can choose to act out of love and honesty throughout their child’s growing up years, helping that child to grow up whole.

FACT: Your brain is being controlled-and you don't even know it. Because if you think the ads you're seeing today are just pretty pictures with nice, creative copy, you're mistaken. Truth is, you are being powerfully influenced by dozens of proven scientific principles of advertising psychology... little-known techniques of consumer persuasion that go completely unnoticed by the buying public. And they're causing you--and millions like you--to spend enormous amounts of money every day on countless products and services. But what are these principles? How do they work? And how can you use them in your own advertising? Prepare yourself for a unique learning experience as author Drew Eric Whitman takes you on a wild, roller-coaster ride through the streets of New York's famed Madison Avenue and teaches you the specific psychological techniques that today's top copywriters and designers use to influence the masses... and how you can use them to rapidly increase your sales, no matter what you sell. In 207 fast-moving pages, Whitman teaches you dozens of well-guarded secrets that he learned during his 30+ years in the ad business, including: * How to Push Your Prospects' Hot Buttons in Every Ad, Sales Letter, or Email--It's not hard to do once you know the secret. * Why Developing Your "USP" Can Leave Your Competition in the Dust--It's the quickest way to instantly begin out-marketing your competitors. (And they'll never know what hit them.) * Why You Don't Need a Degree in Business to Create Great Ads--But there is one thing you MUST know or your ads will likely fail miserably. * How to Develop a Powerful Ad-Agency Mindset--What the pros know about consumer buying behavior and how you can use it to your advantage. * How to Save $600 for Every $1,000 You Spend on Ads--This idea alone is worth infinitely more than the price of this book...and you can start using it immediately. * The Amazing 5-Second, No-Fail Headline Test--Chances are your ads, emails, websites and other promotional materials fail this test every time. One small change boosts your response. * What a Good Ad Should "Feel" Like--How to connect to readers on a deep, emotional level. * How to Install Persuasive Images in People's Brains--Learn how to direct how people think about your products and services. * Why People Really Buy Your Product or Service--Sorry, but it's not what you think. (But you better know the reason... or else.) * Where to Always Put Your Biggest Benefit--Miss this and you're flushing your ad dollars down the toilet. * How to Write "Dragon-Slayer" Headlines that Get Read and Get Response--Tons of examples you can "steal" for your own ads. * Long vs. Short Copy: Which Is Really Best for Response? Don't believe the lies! We'll set the record straight and you'll learn to cash-in. * How to Use the Devilishly Effective Pyramid Principal--Lure readers into your ads by understanding human eyeball behavior. * 22 Tested and Proven Headline Prescriptions you can start using RIGHT NOW. * How to Turn Ordinary Words in "Money-Magnet" Copy that motivates, influences, persuades. (Yes, you can really do it.) * Put Your Copy Here and Boost Readership by 10-200%--Why doesn't everyone do this? * 10 Sure-Fire Ways to Start Writing Your Ads--So easy, it's almost automatic. * How to Cause People to Mentally Demonstrate Your Products... Before They Buy. * How Emotional Words Melt Sales Resistance a Red-Hot Knife Through Butter. * "Sneaky" Ad-Design Psychology Tricks that Work Like Magic--Start using them tonight. * Typestyles that Actually REDUCE Readership--Are you using them? * This "Evil" Design Sin Depresses Your Readership Up to 50%--Do you do it? * Widely Used Typeface LOWERS Comprehension Up to 67%--Are you using it? * The Eye-Grabbing "Advertising Guillotine"--The one image humans can't resist. * And Much More

Make Your Gifted Life Meaningful Overcome your unique challenges. The challenges smart and creative people encounter―from scientific researchers and genius award winners to bestselling novelists, Broadway actors, high-powered attorneys, and academics―often include anxiety, overthinking, mania, sadness, and despair. In Why Smart People Hurt , natural psychology specialist and creativity coach Dr. Eric Maisel draws on his many years of work with the best and the brightest to pinpoint these often devastating challenges and offer solutions based on the groundbreaking principles and practices of natural psychology. Find meaningful success. Do you understand what meaning is, what it isn’t, and how to create it? Do you know how to organize your day around meaning investments and meaning opportunities? Are you still searching for meaning after all these years? Many smart people struggle with reaching for or maintaining success because, after all of the work they put into attaining it, it still seems meaningless. In Why Smart people Hurt , Dr. Maisel will teach you how to stop searching for meaning and create it for yourself. Learn from a truly thought-provoking personal growth book. In Why Smart People Hurt , you will find: Evidence that you are not alone in your struggles with living in a world that wasn't built for you or your intelligence Logic- and creativity-based strategies to cope with having a brain that goes into overdrive at the drop of a hat Questions that will help you create your own personal roadmap to a calm and meaningful life Readers of true, natural self-help books for gifted people struggling with life, anxiety, and depression, like Living With Intensity , Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults , and Your Rainforest Mind , will learn how to create meaning in their lives with Why Smart People Hurt by Dr. Eric Maisel.

“When you FIND and LIVE your purpose, you discover the essence of your existence and why you are here. This will transform your life forever.”—Karen Hoyos PURPOSE: The Ultimate Quest , is designed to uncover the answers to life’s most important questions: Who am I, and why am I here? Once you know who you really are, and what your purpose is, you can travel beyond the labels in your mind and surrender to fulfill your destiny. PURPOSE features stories of Karen Hoyos’ personal challenges and victories, as well as those of her coaching clients and seminar participants. It also includes “ do now ” exercises that will transform your life immediately. Be ready to delve into your essence as you laugh, cry, become inspired, and have fun with Karen’s refreshing wit and profound wisdom. Above all, this is a book of transformation. Within these pages, you will uncover access to a new life of happiness, health, and abundance. “Karen Hoyos is a true example of success: From coming to the US with nothing, to building a multimillion dollar company, all through helping people to fulfill their purpose! The best part is that this book will show you HOW!” — Bill Walsh, America’s Business Expert “Karen’s transformational book will empower you to live your legacy and make powerful contributions to the world!” — Liz Stern, Legacy Expert, Globetrotter of 95 Countries “PURPOSE will elevate your consciousness and transform your personal and financial life forever.” — Rocio and Alfonso Martinez, Real Estate Investors

A marvel of evolution is that humans are not solely motivated by their desire to experience positive emotions. They are also motivated, and even driven to achieve, by their attempt to avoid or seek relief from negative ones. What Motivates Getting Things Done: Procrastination, Emotions, and Success explains how anxiety is like a highly motivating friend, why you should fear failure, and the underpinnings of shame, distress, and fear in the pursuit of excellence. Many successful people put things off until a deadline beckons them, while countless others can't resist the urge to do things right away. Dr. Lamia explores the emotional lives of people who are successful in their endeavors--both procrastinators and non-procrastinators alike--to illustrate how the human motivational system works, why people respond to it differently, and how everyone can use their natural style of getting things done to their advantage. The book illustrates how the different timing of procrastinators and non-procrastinators to complete tasks has to do with when their emotions are activated and what activates them. Overall, What Motivates Getting Things Done illustrates how emotions play a significant role in our style of doing, along with our way of being in the world. Readers will acquire a better understanding of the innate biological system that motivates them and how they can make the most of it in all areas of their lives.

This novella is also published as part of the collection SWEET HOME COWBOY. The Hathaway sisters might have grown up apart, but when they agree to move to Jasper Creek, Oregon, to revitalize their grandfather’s farm, it seems a straightforward decision. Until they meet their neighborhood cowboys… Sweet-natured Teddy has never met a man worth taking a risk on, until now. The sisters’ feelings are anything but simple, but with the love and support of each other, they discover that a cowboy might be the sweetest thing of all about coming home.

Give your best friend more purr and pounce with this whiskers-to-tail guide to the good life! One reason we’re wild for cats is that our cats are still wild at heart. On our laps, they’re purring lovebugs, but on the prowl, they’re fearsome hunters—with territorial instincts to match. The Handbook for a Happy Cat takes us inside the feline mind to decode what our cats really want in life and how they try to tell us. You’ll learn: Why a bigger water bowl does away with “whisker stress” How to move like a mouse for maximum fun at playtime Skills to teach your kitten for a lifetime of easy vet visits, grooming, and more Subtle signs of stress such as excessive scent-marking and lip-licking How to tell frolic from fighting in the multi-cat household (and how to give frenemies a fresh start) What makes a scratching post so tempting that your sofa will be spared How to reassure a spooked cat with the “slow blink” Why it’s pointless to “punish” a cat—but training is possible! Certified behaviorist Liesbeth Puts traces every feline mystery to cats’ natural behavior and needs. A happy cat is a cat who can be herself!

You Can Get Unstuck When author and podcaster Polly Campbell got tired of her hoodie smelling like pizza and her days being clouded by midlife over-exhaustion, emotional burnout, and boredom, she decided to get off the couch and reclaim her core energy. But could this burned-out, chronically ill, middle-aged mother of a teen rediscover her vitality? Yes. And so can you. Small Steps, Big Energy. Self-help books for women often encourage you to throw out the life you’re living and create a fresh start. You, Recharged isn’t about that. You don’t have to quit your mundane job, cut out cocktails, or sign-off of social media to recharge. Instead, Polly Campbell’s inspirational book is about adding things in―good habits, practices, fun, people, activities, self-care strategies―that ignite your essential energy, the sustainable source that fires you up from within and keeps you going during the good and bad. Meaning Ignites Power. When we align with the things that matter to us and allow the “why” to guide us, we are energized. Sure, there are challenges, setbacks, and plenty of things that piss us off, but they don’t have to deplete us. They don’t have to leave us mentally exhausted or take our power. Instead, our energy can be refocused and redirected into things that we value. You, Recharged will help you discover the small but meaningful ways you can feel happier, healthier, and more alive. In this personal development book, find: Easy-to-apply, practical strategies to ease stress, boost energy, and improve health and well-being Short chapters, delivered in a relatable, conversational tone, with plenty of humor Hope and inspiration, so you know that you can also create a meaningful, satisfying life no matter how stuck, lost, bored, and physically exhausted you feel If you were inspired by motivational books and self-help books like Own Your Everyday , How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t , or The Self-Love Experiment , then you’ll love You, Recharged .

Who would I be, what would I do, if I trusted Myself… In her warm and inimitable way M.J. Ryan guides us to look at our lives from a different perspective. To imagine what they would be like if we practiced an attitude of self-trust, if we received the gifts trusting ourselves might give us. In an age of constant media messages and so-called expert advice telling us to be richer, thinner, smart, and faster, we're all dogged with worry and self-doubt. Bestselling author M.J. Ryan believes we've become so dependent on "experts" to tell us how to live our lives that we listen to everyone except ourselves. In Trusting Yourself, Ryan identifies the answers to feeling swept away by life: we already have what it takes to cope. We can learn how to tap into the wisdom inside us by cultivating self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-reliance. Learn how to quiet the critics—inside and out—and trust yourself instead. If you accept that we learn through trial and error, if you believe that we each have unique strengths and that not one of us has to have them all, if you realize that labels only get in the way, then your self-trust will grow, your worries will shrink, and you'll find happiness and success with a lot less effort. This is a life coach in a book that readers can turn to again and again when stress or worry takes over to find more peaceful, saner lives every day.

Neuroscientists estimate that over 90 percent of our operating systems—beliefs, behaviors, patterns—are unconscious. Since the surface story determines less than 10 percent of our decisions, how can we illuminate the shadow story responsible for over 90 percent of what we do each day? Once we systematically understand our relationship with money, can we overcome the mind and brain’s resistance to change? Especially when so many of the current popular strategies for change are contrary to the way the mind and brain work? Each money story line contains unspoken assumptions, emotional agendas, and unconscious meanings. Money becomes a portal to the immaterial and the intangible, a Rorschach onto which we project our needs and hopes. Your New Money Story: The Beliefs, Behaviors, and Brain Science to Rewire for Wealth combines twenty-five years of psychiatric and psychoanalytic practice and over a dozen years of professional and executive mentor coaching with groundbreaking research in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics to show readers how to recognize money behaviors ghostwritten by hidden assumptions, overcome the brain’s patterned responses that lead to bad decisions, harness the power of regulating states of mind, develop the art and neuroscience of money strategies, and identify and remedy emotionally based money mistakes and financial fallacies. The ROADMAP System deconstructs the process of understanding a money story to systematically construct a new one to write new mind software and rewire the brain for wealth. YOUR NEW MONEY STORY The Beliefs, Behaviors, and Brain Science to Rewire for Wealth David Krueger, Read by Edward Bauer • Unabridged • AUGUST 2019 Vibrance Press • Digital Download Narrator Edward Bauer sounds like a friendly college instructor who wants to spare you the anguish you've had trying to get your financial life in order. He has a wonderful phrasing palette, smooth and natural sounding, and what stands out is how he finesses the author's desire to help: He's assertive enough with the direct advice and many lists offered by the psychiatrist/business-coach, but he keeps enough distance from his listeners to convey respect for their autonomy. They can take this advice or leave it. This vocal attitude is important with a lesson like this, which is psychologically invasive with its pointed assumption that all financial mismanagement begins with limiting psychological beliefs. This is effective audio advice on how to overcome those beliefs with brighter expectations, concrete strategies, and discipline. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine