Resources

Do you…
• Put the needs of others above your own?
• Start to panic when someone you love leaves—or threatens to?
• Often feel anxious about natural disasters, losing all your money, or getting seriously ill?
• Find that no matter how successful you are, you still feel unhappy, unfulfilled, or undeserving?

Unsatisfactory relationships, irrational lack of self-esteem, feelings of being unfulfilled—these are all problems that can be solved by changing the types of messages that people internalize. These self-defeating behavior patterns are called “lifetraps,” and Reinventing Your Life shows you how to stop the cycle that keeps you from attaining happiness”

– identify triggers for a variety of psychological problems
– create step by step plans to improve self-worth
– dismiss dysfunctional thinking
– track and monitor anger
– find calm in stressful situations
– break destructive patterns in toxic relationships
– defeat depression”

Have you tried to control your thoughts and get your worrying under control? Did it work? If it didn’t, try this simple exercise: Take thirty seconds, right here and now, and don’t think about something you recently worried about. Think about anything and everything else, but don’t think about that worry.
How did you do? Like most of us, you probably could think of little else except whatever it was you worried about, no matter how hard you tried. This is the problem with trying to control your thoughts: Your attempts to stop worrying very often lead you to repeat and refresh the very worries you’re trying to dispel.
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a revolutionary new approach to resolving a wide range of psychological problems, can help you break the cycle of chronic worry. ACT stresses letting go of your attempts to avoid, change, and get rid of worry. Instead, it shows you how to accept your feelings as they occur, without judgment. You’ll learn to de-fuse from your worries, observing and then letting them go. Then you’ll explore and commit to acting on your values, thereby creating a rich life for yourself-even with the occasional worry.”

The Reality Slap offers a four-part path for healing from crises based on acceptance and commitment therapy. In these pages, you will learn how to:

• Find peace in the midst of your pain
• Rediscover calm in the midst of chaos
• Turn difficult emotions into wisdom and compassion
• Find illionst, even when you can’t get what you want
• Heal your wounds and emerge stronger than before

Unlike some self-help books that claim you can have everything you ever wanted in life, if you only put your mind to it, this book claims that you can’t have everything in life. The hard truth of this world is that we are all going to experience disappointment, frustration, failure, loss, rejection, illness, injury, aging, and death at some point. However, in spite of all this, you can still lead a rich and rewarding life. Let this book be your guide.”

   • Reduce stress and worry
   • Handle painful feelings and thoughts more effectively
   • Break self-defeating habits
   • Overcome insecurity and self-doubt
   • Create a rich, full, and meaningful life”

Russ Harris offers a surprising solution to low self-confidence, shyness, and insecurity: Rather than trying to “get over” our fears, he says, the secret is to form a new and wiser relationship with them. Paradoxically, it’s only when we stop struggling against our fearfulness that we begin to find lasting freedom from it.

Drawing on the techniques of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a cutting-edge form of cognitive-behavioral therapy, The Confidence Gap explains how to: 

   • Free yourself from common misconceptions about what confidence is and how to build it
   • Transform your relationship with fear and anxiety
   • Clarify your core values and use them as your inspiration and motivation
   • Use mindfulness to effectively handle negative thoughts and feelings.”

This practical self-help book based on Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) will help you to take a new approach to managing difficult emotions. It outlines why we experience emotions, how they can be helpful but also how and why we can get into struggles with them. It outlines the Compassionate Mind model, and guides you through a series of exercises that will help you to develop your compassion mind, and use this to develop more helpful emotion regulation strategies, and bring greater balance to your emotions.”

In this wise and eloquent memoir, spanning the most transformative years in the history of modern psychology, Seligman recounts how he learned to study optimism — including a life-changing conversation with his five-year-old daughter. He tells the human stories behind some of his major findings, like CAVE, an analytical tool that predicts election outcomes (with shocking accuracy) based on the language used in campaign speeches, the international spread of Positive Education, the launch of the US Army’s huge resilience program, and the canonical studies that birthed the theory of learned helplessness — which he now reveals was incorrect. And he writes at length for the first time about his own battles with depression at a young age.

In The Hope Circuit, Seligman makes a compelling and deeply personal case for the importance of virtues like hope, gratitude, and wisdom for our mental health. You will walk away from this book not just educated but deeply enriched.”

With generous additional advice on how to encourage optimistic behavior at school, at work and in children, Learned Optimism is both profound and practical–and valuable for every phase of life.”

While certainly a part of well-being, happiness alone doesn’t give life meaning. Seligman now asks, What is it that enables you to cultivate your talents, to build deep, lasting relationships with others, to feel pleasure, and to contribute meaningfully to the world? In a word, what is it that allows you to flourish? “Well-being” takes the stage front and center, and Happiness (or Positive Emotion) becomes one of the five pillars of Positive Psychology, along with Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment—or PERMA, the permanent building blocks for a life of profound fulfillment…..”

Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently noted her lack of “genius,” Duckworth, now a celebrated researcher and professor, describes her early eye-opening stints in teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not “genius” but a unique combination of passion and long-term perseverance.

In Grit, she takes readers into the field to visit cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, teachers working in some of the toughest schools, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she’s learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers—from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.”

The way we respond to these internal experiences drives our actions, careers, relationships, happiness, health—everything that matters in our lives. As humans, we are all prone to common hooks—things like self-doubt, shame, sadness, fear, or anger—that can too easily steer us in the wrong direction. Emotionally agile people are not immune to stresses and setbacks. The key difference is that they know how to adapt, aligning their actions with their values and making small but powerful changes that lead to a lifetime of growth. Emotional agility is not about ignoring difficult emotions and thoughts; it’s about holding them loosely, facing them courageously and compassionately, and then moving past them to bring the best of yourself forward….”