Archives de catégorie : Self Help / Mind, Body & Spirit

HOW TO STOP TRYING de Kate Williams

A smart and humorous look at the self-help industry and the pervasive impact of social media in our modern world.

HOW TO STOP TRYING:
Rejecting Empowerment Culture, Ignoring Bad Advice, and (Finally) Giving Yourself a Break
by Kate Williams
Harper Wave, Summer 2024
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary)

You can think of this as straddling the line between Jenny Odell’s sparkling How To Do Nothing and Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck if it had been written by a woman who considers Mean Girls a canonical film. Delivered with the whip smart humor and grace of someone who has made a career writing about everything from Wu-Tang Clan to colonics and odor-resistant underwear, HOW TO STOP TRYING has short chapters like Death Is The Ultimate Life Hack that helps you jump into perspective shifts and You Don’t Have to Be Who You Think You Are that teaches you to start living beyond the nouns in your social media bio and think of how you want to be instead of what you want to be.
Kate Williams has spent her career crafting narratives for women—as a ghostwriter for celebrity books, a magazine journalist, and an editorial director at companies like Urban Outfitters and Calvin Klein—but she has come to the conclusion that these narratives of never giving up, pushing through, soldiering on are causing a lot of harm. As a lifelong consumer and maker of media, Kate is keenly aware of exactly how these campaigns are working to sell you stuff, make you feel bad about yourself (so they can sell you stuff) and keep you from enjoying the actual life you’ve already built.
When Kate gave up trying to have a second child after several miscarriages, the most common response she got was: “Don’t give up. Keep trying. It’ll be worth it in the end.” She understood that this response was usually coming from a well-meaning place, but she bristled as her aha moment arrived—at what point do we have to quit, move on make peace, stop trying? And why is everyone else so invested in me not giving up? She did something revolutionary and just…stopped. As she began to turn her attention to what was already in her life instead of what wasn’t she began to see a bigger life theory come into focus. Not just about trying for a baby but trying (so hard) at all the things all the time.
There is no shortage of self-improvement books (Kate has ghostwritten many of these!) but there is a gap in books that really focus on bringing awareness to assumed cultural norms that are damaging so many of us. In the post-pandemic world, the conversation about stepping back is prevalent but what it misses is that stepping back is not just another pit stop before gearing back up to breakneck speed (in the way self-care has become) but instead it’s a whole new road of a gentler way to move forward.

Kate Williams is the author of the YA series The Babysitters Coven and the novel Never Coming Home (Delacorte Press). Her nonfiction has appeared in Cosmopolitan, NYLON, Elle, Women’s Health, Shape, Time Out New York, Monster Children, Russh, Oyster, The Fader, NME, H&M, Popular, Style.com and more. As a ghostwriter, she has written New York Times bestsellers, celebrity tell-alls, memoirs, how-tos, and beauty bibles.

THE CHASE de Jenny Wood

This playbook by a high-level executive at Google not only tells readers how to achieve better outcomes, but also exactly what to do, step-by-step, to overcome the most common personal and professional obstacles, from negotiating a raise to finding a mentor to landing a first date.

THE CHASE:
An Unconventional, Uninhibited, and Unapologetic Approach to Getting What You Want in Life
by Jenny Wood
Portfolio, TBD
(via Writers House)

Jenny Wood was working at Google for more than ten years when she set her sights on a much bigger role in the company. It took more than six months and sixty internal coffee chats for Jenny to go from Manager of Analytical Leads, a member of a seven-person sales team, to Head of U.S. West Coast Technical Operations, leading a team of forty-five alongside four other managers.
All her previous roles were easy to get. This one was hard. It took effort, intentionality, and grit. When she landed the job, Jenny wrote notes to herself as a kind of “playbook,” figuring she’d want to remember the details the next time she had to go through the process. The doc was also a tool Jenny could use as she mentored others. Soon people were sharing; hundreds and then thousands of employees at Google found “Jenny’s Job Search Tips” to be invaluable. Fast forward less than two years, and Jenny’s side project—which now includes workshops, keynotes, and tips on everything from email to influence to building a personal brand—is a full-blown global phenomenon called Own Your Career. A Google program with a $250,000 annual budget, Own Your Career is now used by 58,000 Googlers (that’s one-third of the company) and distributed by Google to companies like American Express, Spotify, Target, Indeed, and CVS.
Turns out lots of people want to know how to go from entry level at a place like Google to the top 2% of management, and in THE CHASE: An Unconventional, Uninhibited, and Unapologetic Approach to Getting What You Want in Life, Jenny Wood gives readers the playbook for that and more. Reclaiming labels we often attach to people who transgress social norms to get what they want—Weird, Selfish, Shameless, Nosy, Obsessed, to name a few—Jenny shows that “to get there, you have to be a little bit out there,” and her book transforms the labels into powerful mantras for success. Wood not only tells readers how to achieve better outcomes, she tells them exactly what to do, step-by-step, to overcome the most common personal and professional obstacles, from negotiating a raise to finding a mentor to landing a first date.

Before Google, Jenny Wood was a research associate at Harvard Business School, authoring case studies that have been published and sold to MBA programs worldwide. With her smarts, energy, and platform—and with Google’s full support in her tailwinds (she also flies airplanes)—Jenny Wood is poised to deliver the next must-buy book for the same ambitious readers who made Dare to Lead and Atomic Habits huge bestsellers.

ASTROLOGY OF YOU AND ME ORACLE DECK de Gary Goldschneider

Whether you’re struggling to understand a break-up, looking to forge new alliances at work, or wanting to reconnect with an old friend, let the universe guide you as you explore how the stars impact every aspect of your relationships.

ASTROLOGY OF YOU AND ME ORACLE DECK:
72 Cards to Understand and Improve Your Relationships
by Gary Goldschneider
illustrated by Camille Chew
Clarkson Potter/St. Martin’s Press, February 2024

A companion to the bestselling book The Astrology of You and Me (Quirk Publishing), this oracle deck of 72 illustrated cards describes six archetypes—the romantic partner, the ex, the friend, the parent, the coworker, the competitor—within each of the twelve Zodiac signs. With multiple ways to read the cards, this deck offers more than just one method of insight.
The companion guidebook offers ways to use the deck as an oracle, including providing instructions for interpreting cards singularly or in a spread. It also includes nuanced descriptions of each sign’s archetypes to enhance your card reading.

Gary Goldschneider was a best-selling author of personology and astrology books. He studied astrology for forty years and frequently lectured and wrote on the subject. An accomplished pianist and composer, he performed in concerts and recitals worldwide. He lived in Amsterdam.

THE PARA METHOD de Tiago Forte

Productivity expert and bestselling author of Building a Second Brain, Tiago Forte shows you how to re-organise, streamline and simplify your inbox, filing system, notes app and more – so that you have more time to do the things that really matter.

THE PARA METHOD
by Tiago Forte
Atria/Simon & Schuster, November 2023
(via Writers House)

Imagine the perfect organizational system.
A system that told you exactly where to put every piece of information in your life – every document, file, note, agenda, outline, and bit of research – and exactly where to find it when you needed it. Such a system would need to be incredibly easy to set up, and even easier to maintain. After all, only the simplest, most effortless habits endure long term.
It would need to be both flexible, adapting to your needs in different seasons of your life, but also comprehensive, so you can use it in every one of the many places where you store information, such as your computer’s file system, a cloud storage platform (e.g., Dropbox or Google Drive), or a digital notetaking app. But most of all, the ideal organizational system would be one that leads directly to tangible benefits in your career and life. It would dramatically accelerate you toward completing the projects and achieving the goals that are most important to you.
In other words, the ultimate system for organizing your life is one that is actionable. Instead of putting more obstacles in your way, postponing the actions that will make a difference, it would pull those actions closer and make them easier to start and finish.
Developed by Tiago Forte after more than a decade of personal experimentation, teaching thousands of students, and coaching world-class professionals, THE PARA METHOD is a simple, comprehensive, yet extremely flexible system for organizing any type of digital information across any platform.

Tiago Forte is one of the world’s foremost experts on productivity and has taught thousands of people around the world how timeless principles and the latest technology can revolutionize their productivity, creativity, and personal effectiveness. He has worked with organizations such as Genentech, Toyota Motor Corporation, and the Inter-American Development Bank and appeared in a variety of publications, such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Harvard Business Review.

PROTOCOLS d’Andrew Huberman

From the award-winning Stanford professor and host of the Huberman Lab podcast, a comprehensive look at the most exciting discoveries in neuroscience along with actionable tools that allow readers to rewire their minds and bodies for more fulfilling lives. For fans of David Sinclair, Carol Dweck, Jay Shetty, David Goggins, and Matthew Walker.

PROTOCOLS:
Science Based Tools for Everyday Life
by Andrew Huberman
Simon Element, Spring 2024
(via Park & Fine)

We can’t always recover from extreme stress, fatigue, or depression by changing our mindset alone. The mind is just one part of the body, connected to everything else by the most complex and powerful technology in the universe; the nervous system. And recent scientific studies have revealed that we have much more control over the mind through physical inputs than previously thought. Just as the brain influences the body, the body can influence the brain. Dr. Huberman wants to show us that we can harness the power of the nervous system to control our minds. We can use it to calm ourselves when feeling stressed, focus when feeling distracted, relax when it’s time to go to bed, and become energized when it’s time to get up.
Using cutting edge research in the biology of mindset and grit, and real stories from the top athletes, scientists and executives, Dr. Huberman will illustrate the life-changing power of hundreds of science-based tools and protocols, from breathing to visual exercises to food choices. Because when we learn to tap into our nervous system, we can overcome trauma, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and other debilitating states of mind.
From the most trusted voice in popular science, PROTOCOLS will be the definitive guide to leveraging the latest science to improve our mental health, our physical health, and our performance.

Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist and tenured professor in the department of neurobiology and by courtesy, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford School of Medicine. He has made numerous significant contributions to the fields of brain development, brain function and neural plasticity, which is the ability of our nervous system to rewire and learn new behaviors, skills and cognitive functioning. Huberman is a McKnight Foundation and Pew Foundation Fellow and was awarded the Cogan Award in 2017, given to the scientist making the most significant discoveries in the study of vision. Work from the Huberman Laboratory at Stanford School of Medicine has been published in top journals including Nature, Science, and Cell and has been featured in TIME, BBC, Scientific American, Discover, and other top media outlets.