Self-Development Audiobooks - page 4

Raising Your Kids to Succeed: What Every Parent Should Know describes what parents can do to be effective and help their children succeed, both in school and in life. Part I opens with some big, foundational questions, including the need for parents to realize their own importance. It goes on to discuss how to create a family mission statement, the importance of creating family traditions and rituals, and the pivotal need to model good behavior. Part II starts by exploring ways to let your kids know the importance you attach to education. It stresses the importance of really listening to your kids, reading to them, getting outside with them to enjoy nature, and teaching them life skills. Part III explores ways for you to be present at your child’s school and to be an advocate for your child. It also focuses on the issue of bullying and how to counter a toxic, sexualized and violent culture. Raise Your Kids to Succeed will help your children succeed and reach all of the dreams that you have for them—and, more important, the ones they have for themselves.

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.

“It’s like the meanest, wildest monkey running around my head, constantly looking for ways to bite me.” That was how Kirsten Pagacz described her OCD to her therapist on their first session when she was well into her 30s she’d been following orders from this mean taskmaster for 20 years, without understanding why. Initially the tapping and counting and cleaning and ordering brought her comfort and structure, two things lacking in her family life. But it never lasted; the loathsome self-talk only intensified, and the rituals she had to perform got more bizarre. By high school she was anorexic and a substance abuser, common "shadow syndromes" of OCD. By adulthood, she could barely hide her problems and held on to jobs and friends through sheer grit. Help finally came in the form of a miraculously well-timed public service announcement on NPR about OCD -- at last her illness had an identity. Leaving the OCD Circus reveals the story of Pagacz’s traumatic childhood and the escalation of her disorder demonstrating how OCD works to misshape a life from a very young age and explains the various tools she used for healing including meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, yoga, exposure therapy, and medication.

Few of us know how to navigate the territory of traumatic loss successfully. Sweet Sorrow shows how we can respond and grow stronger from loss and suffering. Written by a psychologist and certified bereavement trauma specialist in the decade following the loss of her husband, father, mother, and only sibling, this carefully considered work provides perspective on grief and healing over time. This longer-term approach allows readers to have a more complete and accurate picture of the oscillations of grief over time. The book describes not only the immediate agony of the author’s losses, but also the process of starting over and making a successful new life as a single person full of hope and joy. Sweet Sorrow combines the author’s psychological expertise and clinical experience with the compelling art of memoir to illuminate the surprising ways in which loss survivors can grow and even thrive to achieve wholeness after heartbreaking, traumatic losses. Using findings from post-traumatic growth, as well as evidence-based psychological approaches, Sweet Sorrow illustrates through story and example, ways for grief survivors to start over, to manage chaos and stress, to let go, and to heal with new strategies and re-storying. Sweet Sorrow also provides resources and recommendations for self-care, as well as tips and suggestions for all of us trying to respond creatively and helpfully to those around us suffering loss. Ultimately, Sweet Sorrow is a book of inspiration intended to companion readers through the processes of loss and grief much like a helpful Sherpa might guide a lost traveler.

Today more than ever, everyone must be her or his own healer, and this is especially true in the management of anxiety and depression. In the first major conceptual leap in mental health care in forty years, Mind Easing's Three-Layered Healing Plan harmonizes wellness approaches, therapy, and, when needed, medicine into a safe and effective plan tailored to the needs and wishes of the individual. Written by noted psychiatrist Bick Wanck, MD, one of the founders of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry and an experienced clinician, writer, and educator, Mind Easing shows how to relieve and often resolve anxiety and depression by assisting the mind's natural ability to heal. Along with non-medicinal healing methods, Mind Easing shows how to use psychiatric medicine (if needed) safely and effectively as part of a mindfully constructed healing plan. Because some psychiatric medicines can blunt feelings and dull thinking, they can impede the flow of healing and interfere with the pleasures of living. Mind Easing suggests when and how psychiatric medicines may be stopped when they are counterproductive to healing. Mind Easing presents a comprehensive Three-Layered Healing Plan for anxiety and depression. Some readers will find all they need in Layer One: Enhancement of Healing without needing the help of a professional. Others will benefit from Layer Two: Guidance which describes how psychotherapy, body and energy work, and spiritual guidance may be used to assist healing. Those readers who experience severe anxiety and depression will find helpful information in Layer Three: Restoration of Healing. where Dr. Wanck explains the concepts of "soft" and "hard" anxiety and depression. Soft anxiety and depression are generally caused by stressful current life events or past genetically inherited conditions or by physiologic hardening of symptoms resulting from persistent or severe adversity or trauma.

You Can Get Through This. Your doctor told you it was breast cancer. So now what?! You'll need plenty of essential advice—the kind that only comes from someone who's been there. In Just Get Me Through This! Deborah A. Cohen and Robert M. Gelfand, M.D. help you deal with all the ups and downs of the breast cancer experience. From the shock of diagnosis to getting through treatment to getting on with your life, they pack it with plenty of straight talk and practical tips. This newly updated edition also includes advice from two prominent breast cancer surgeons. Each step of the way, this wise and witty companion will be there with unfailing inspiration and heart-to-heart support. It's also simple to use, with an accessible format—to make even the toughest days a whole lot easier.

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… Tomboy Joey has more affinity with farm equipment than men, until a brooding cowboy changes her mind. 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.

Blindsided by a breakup, and asking herself the usual why, how, what questions, Tatiana Jerome went online. She used social media as a way to uplift and empower herself by venting but also working through her own part in the relationship’s demise. Her posts struck a chord with thousands and then hundreds of thousands of readers — no surprise since most (approximately 85 percent) relationships end. Jerome’s action plan — “crowd-tested” by her many online followers — walks readers through a clear-eyed view of why the break-up happened, what NOT to do on the rebound, and how to start over. Starting over involves rebuilding one’s self-esteem by caring for oneself in body, mind and spirit. Jerome’s posts spread online because she shares these ideas with a winning combination of sympathetic best friend, straight-shooting counselor, and inspiring cheerleader. This is for anyone who has loved, lost, and wants to love again — only better and smarter.

From Cradle to Classroom: A Guide to Special Education for Young Children is a book written for regular and special education teachers, school administrators, school psychologists, related educational personnel, day care providers, parents, graduate students, and policy makers who work on behalf of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers to ensure they are ready for formal education when they reach age 5. It reflects a keen understanding that early interventions are most effective in reducing the potential for special education or other support services later in a child’s development. Research shows the benefits of investing in early intervention and high-quality preschool as a way to mitigate educational gaps in learning and to improve the development of children across all domains (Executive Office of the President of the United States, 2015; Lynch & Vaghul, 2015; Yoshikawa et al., 2013). Throughout the book, readers will find strategies to help atypical children navigate the world as they move from infancy to toddlerhood, and to preschool and beyond. The chapters dig deep and offer expansive understandings of the components necessary to ensure young children, especially those with exceptionalities, become successful students.

Love is one of our strongest biological drives, but it can be frustratingly elusive and misunderstood. Music, literature, and movies are filled with common folklore about love and millions of TV viewers tune in to shows like The Bachelor and read the latest relationship tome with one simple hope: to uncover some nugget of mystic wisdom that will help them understand the exciting, addictive, insane experience called 'love'. Men Chase, Women Choose, is the first book to offer cutting-edge research that explains how the brain works when two people first meet, start to date, fall in love, and then move into long-term, real love. Maslar's unique approach brings together the latest and most relevant neurological, physiological, and biochemical research on the science of love while incorporating stories and examples of composite characters based on participants of her popular classes and seminars. She explains that 'love' is actually neural activity as well as the presence or absence of certain neurotransmitters that bathe the brain, and it follows a precisely timed path of four, easy-to-understand phases: the exciting norepinephrine-charged meeting phase; the addictive dopamine dating phase; the insane falling-in-love and losing your mind phase; and finally, the safe, warm and wonderful, true, long-term love phase. For the past decade Maslar has made it her mission to learn all she can about the science behind falling in love, including its evolutionary benefits. Her goal?and the purpose of this book?is to help men and women find and maintain love by understanding and applying the science behind it. The bottom line? We actually can have long-lasting, nourishing, exciting, passionate love with little or no risk!