Self Help & Motivation

Brief Summary Edge.org presents brilliant, accessible, cutting-edge ideas to improve our decision-making skills and improve our cognitive toolkits, with contributions by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Richard Dawkins, Brian Eno, Steven Pinker, and more. Featuring a foreword by New York Times columnist David Brooks and edited by John Brockman, This Will Make You Smarter presents some of the best wisdom from today’s leading thinkers—to make better thinkers out of the leaders of tomorrow. ISBN:9780062109392 Author:John Brockman

Brief Summary A riveting, revelatory, and moving account of the author’s struggles with anxiety, and of the history of efforts by scientists, philosophers, and writers to understand the condition As recently as thirty-five years ago, anxiety did not exist as a diagnostic category. Today, it is the most common form of officially classified mental illness. Scott Stossel gracefully guides us across the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive yet too often misunderstood. Drawing on his own long-standing battle with anxiety, Stossel presents an astonishing history, at once intimate and authoritative, of the efforts to understand the condition from medical, cultural, philosophical, and experiential perspectives. He ranges from the earliest medical reports of Galen and Hippocrates, through later observations by Robert Burton and Søren Kierkegaard, to the investigations by great nineteenth-century scientists, such as Charles Darwin, William James, and Sigmund Freud, as they began to explore its sources and causes, to the latest research by neuroscientists and geneticists. Stossel reports on famous individuals who struggled with anxiety, as well as on the afflicted generations of his own family. His portrait of anxiety reveals not only the emotion’s myriad manifestations and the anguish anxiety produces but also the countless psychotherapies, medications, and other (often outlandish) treatments that have been developed to counteract it. Stossel vividly depicts anxiety’s human toll—its crippling impact, it’s devastating power to paralyze—while at the same time exploring how those who suffer from it find ways to manage and control it. My Age of Anxiety is learned and empathetic, humorous and inspirational, offering the reader great insight into the biological, cultural, and environmental factors that contribute to the affliction. ISBN:9780307269874 Author:Scott Stossel

Brief Summary The times have changed. We need a fresh understanding of the meaning of success. What do Condoleezza Rice, Joe Torre, Bill Gates, Goldie Hawn, Mary Hart, Garry Kasparov, and Jack Welch have in common? All have talked at length with Maria Bartiromo about business, the world and their surprising, inspiring and uncommon ideas about the meaning of success. Their stories, those of an extraordinary range of other people from all walks of life, and Maria Bartiromo’s personal insights are the foundation of The 10 Laws of Enduring Success. It is the guide for the extraordinary times we are living through. During bullish, optimistic periods, people seem to ride an upward wave with ease and confidence. The tangible evidence is right there for all to see--in their jobs, bank accounts, homes, families, and the admiration of their peers. But it is a fact of life that success, once earned, is not necessarily there to stay. If ever there was a cautionary tale about the fleeting nature of success, it is the events of recent years. But a funny thing happened. Faced with gut-wrenching realities, many people have started to re-evaluate the meaning of success in less superficial and impermanent ways. They're asking themselves hard questions that have long been ignored: about what's really important to them, and where the bedrock of their personal achievement lies. As Maria Bartiromo watched the financial drama from her front-row seat at the New York Stock Exchange, she began to re-assess the meaning of success--not just as one-off achievements, but as a durable, lifelong pursuit. Is there, she wondered, a definition of success that you can have permanently--in spite of the turmoil in your life, your job, or your bank account? This question is more important than ever, given the unpredictability of the current economy. • What are the intangibles that can't be measured or counted? • What are the qualities that aren't reflected in your title or on your business card? • And more practically, how can you remain successful even when the worst things happen to you? • Is it possible to build success from failure? It's lonely at the bottom of the heap, when your BlackBerry stops buzzing, and the world moves on without you. Everyone wants to be close to success, and to have success. But what is success? How do you get it, and how do you keep it? As Maria interviewed some of the most successful people in the world, she felt the need to answer these questions: what makes these success stories tick? How did they achieve such leadership and power and how can one hold onto it, once you get it. What are the barriers to success and what is the bedrock to enduring success? ISBN:9780307452542 Author:Maria Bartiromo and Catherine Whitney

Brief Summary For previous generations, living within your means was a simple formula. Now, with the staggering rise in education, health care, and housing costs, millions of people find themselves skating from paycheck to paycheck with no idea how to move forward. As the most-read personal finance columnist on the Internet, Liz Weston has heard the questions and has the answers. Her 10 Commandments of Money will help readers avoid critical mistakes, survive the bad times, and thrive in the good ones. Just a few of Weston's invaluable pointers include how to: • Balance Your Budget • Pay Down Toxic Debt • Get the Right Mortgage • Pay for College • Save for Retirement • Maximize Your Financial Flexibility Liz Weston's goal is to provide THE practical guide to the brave new world of money. What Sylvia Porter's Money Book was to the 1970s, The 10 Commandments of Money will be for the 2010s. ISBN:9781594630743 Author:Liz Pulliam Weston

Brief Summary Wasn't the twentieth century the most violent in history? In his extraordinary, epic book Steven Pinker shows us that this is wrong, telling the story of humanity in a completely new and unfamiliar way. From why cities make us safer to how books bring about peace, Pinker weaves together history, philosophy and science to examine why we are less likely to die at another's hand than ever before, how it happened and what it tells us about our very natures. 'May prove to be one of the great books of our time ... he writes like an angel' Economist 'Masterly, a supremely important book ... For anyone interested in human nature, it is engrossing' The New York Times 'Marvellous ... riveting and myth-destroying' New Statesman 'A marvellous synthesis of science, history and storytelling, written in Pinker's distinctively entertaining and clear personal style ... I was astonished by the extent to which violence has declined in every shape, form and scale' Financial Times 'An outstandingly fruitful read, with fascinating nuggets on almost every page' Sunday Times, Books of the Year ISBN:0141034645 Author:Steven Pinker

Brief Summary The Science of Intelligent Achievement: How Smart People Focus, Create and Grow Their Way to Success Smart strategies for pragmatic, science-based growth and sustainable achievement. The Science of Intelligent Achievement teaches you the scientific process of finding success through your most valuable assets: • Selective focus - how selective are you with who and what you let into your life? • Creative ownership - how dependent are you on others for your happiness and success? • Pragmatic growth - how consistently and practically are you growing daily? First, this book will show you how to develop your focus by being very selective with where you spend your mental energy. If you've failed to reach an important goal because you were distracted, misinformed, or overcommitted, then you know the role focus and selectivity play in achievement. Second, you will learn how to stop allowing your happiness and success to be dependent on other people and instead, start taking ownership over your life through creative work. Finally, you will learn the art of changing your life through pragmatic decisions and actions. Self-improvement is not the result of dramatic changes. Instead, science has shown that personal and professional change is initiated and sustained by consistent, practical changes. To grow, you must leverage the power of micro-decisions, personality responsibility, and mini-habits. Your own biology will not let you improve your life in any other way. What do you currently value? What are working to attain? Have you been taught to value your job title or your relationship with some other person above all else? Have you been convinced that the most valuable things in life are your paycheck, the number of people who say 'hello' to you at the office, and the number of people who say 'I need you' at home? Or, have you become so passive in what you value that you let anyone and anything into your life, as long as whatever you let in allows you to stay disconnected from the cold hard truth that when things really go wrong in your life, the only person who will be able to fix it and the only person will be responsible for it is you. If so...welcome to fake success. Passivity, dependence, and the sacrifice of practical thinking and personal responsibility to fuzzy, grandiose ideals and temporary feelings -- these are markers of fake success. Intelligent Achievement, on the other hand, is not a moving target. It's not empty either. Instead, it's sturdy, full, and immovable. It's not something that's just handed to you. It's not something you're nudged to chase or coerced into wanting. Intelligent Achievement comes from within you. It's a collection of values that are aligned with who you are--values you have to protect and nurture. These values do not increase your dependence on other people and things. Instead, they relieve you of dependence. This kind of achievement is something that you have a part in building from the ground up--you know what's in it--you chose it, someone else didn't choose it for you. Achieving real success means you must focus, create, and grow daily. The Science of Intelligent Achievement will show you how. ISBN:9780857087607 Author:Isaiah Hankel

Brief Summary Get Over It and On with It: How to Get Up When Life Knocks You Down. We all have dreams and expectations of life. But life is unpredictable. No matter what we do or how we live, we are certain to encounter trials and setbacks, frustrations and real suffering. The question is, how are we to respond when we are blindsided by troubles? What can we do when life knocks the wind out of us? If you’re like most people, when hardship hits you can think of countless situations you’d rather be in. Yet the secret of making it through is in learning how to make right choices and thrive in the middle of difficulty. In Get Over It and On with It!, outspoken Bible teacher Michelle McKinney Hammond finds contemporary application in the ancient stories of several men and women who took the path from suffering to overcoming. Their journeys teach us how to press through hardship and get to the other side of our disappointment. ISBN:9781578569021 Author:Michelle McKinney Hammond

Brief Summary 101 Ways to Promote Yourself: Tricks of the Trade for Taking Charge of Your Own Success. You may have the most outstanding business, product, idea or talent in the world, but in order to be successful, you have to let the world know about it. Raleigh Pinskey offers you a crash course on how to get the attention you need. 101 Ways to Promote Yourself reveals the insider secrets learned from years of experience and how these low-cost, high-powered techniques can carry you to the top of your market and beyond. Find out how to: • Get your name in front of potential customers • Promote instant name recognition • Hold on to valued customers • Build on your success by cultivating referrals • Position yourself for greater visibility in your market • Grow and expand your network and database • Explore media opportunities • Market effectively on the Internet • Create goodwill in your community • Develop hot new leads Project a positive image ISBN:9780380810543 Author:Raleigh Pinskey