Haunted by an urgent voice she hears each time she reads a book by Carlos Castaneda, Gail seeks out Castaneda's apprentice, and she finds herself catapulted into a strange world of shamans, metaphysics, and ancient beings. She is thrust forward onto a dangerous path that takes her from the safety of her everyday world into the radiant landscape where true power lives. Here, she is introduced to an ancient couple, who have lived and loved beyond time itself. She offers up her heart to become a co-conspirator with them in an unbelievable task. She must journey into the ancient records and retrieve the knowledge that broke this ancient couple and humanity itself apart. The death-bed promise this ancient couple made to each other eons ago is also the key to humanity's own resurrection. It is this-the Butterfly Promise-that will return us to our true powers and to our wholeness once again.

Haunted by an urgent voice she hears each time she reads a book by Carlos Castaneda, Gail seeks out Castanedas apprentice, and she finds herself catapulted into a strange world of shamans, metaphysics, and ancient beings. She is thrust forward onto a dangerous path that takes her from the safety of her everyday world into the radiant landscape where true power lives. Here, she is introduced to an ancient couple, who have lived and loved beyond time itself. She offers up her heart to become a co-conspirator with them in an unbelievable task. She must journey into the ancient records and retrieve the knowledge that broke this ancient couple and humanity itself apart. The death-bed promise this ancient couple made to each other eons ago is also the key to humanitys own resurrection. It is thisthe Butterfly Promisethat will return us to our true powers and to our wholeness once again.

National Bestseller For readers of Outliers, Atomic Habits, and Deep Work, comes a game-changing approach to unlocking your greatness, using a secret strategy that’s vaulted business titans and creative geniuses to the top of their profession. We’ve long been taught there are two ways to succeed—either talent or practice. In Decoding Greatness, award-winning social psychologist Ron Friedman illuminates a powerful third path—one that has launched icons in a wide range of fields, from artists, writers, and chefs, to athletes, inventors, and entrepreneurs: reverse engineering. To reverse engineer is to look beyond what is evident on the surface and find a hidden structure. It’s the ability to taste an intoxicating dish and deduce its recipe, to listen to a beautiful song and discern its chord progression, to watch your favorite film and grasp its narrative arc. “Clear, concise, and backed by science” (Daniel Pink, author of When), Decoding Greatness marries “alluring stories and illuminating studies” (Adam Grant, author of Think Again) of top performers—from Agatha Christie to Andy Warhol, Barack Obama, to Serena Williams—with groundbreaking research on pattern recognition and skill acquisition. You’ll learn how to take apart acheivements you admire, pinpoint precisely what makes them work, and apply that knowledge to develop novel ideas and products that are uniquely your own. Bursting with unforgettable stories and actionable strategies, Decoding Greatness is an indispensable guide to learning from the best, upgrading your skills, and sparking breakthrough ideas.

One of 2021's Most Highly Anticipated New Books—Newsweek One of The 20 Leadership Books to Read in 2020—Adam Grant One of The Best New Wellness Books Hitting Shelves in January 2021—Shape.com A Top Business Book for January 2021—Financial Times A Next Big Idea Club Nominee Social Chemistry will utterly transform the way you think about “networking.” Understanding the contours of your social network can dramatically enhance personal relationships, work life, and even your global impact. Are you an Expansionist, a Broker, or a Convener? The answer matters more than you think. . . . Yale professor Marissa King shows how anyone can build more meaningful and productive relationships based on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and network analytics. Conventional wisdom says it's the size of your network that matters, but social science research has proven there is more to it. King explains that the quality and structure of our relationships has the greatest impact on our personal and professional lives. As she shows, there are three basic types of networks, so readers can see the role they are already playing: Expansionist, Broker, or Convener. This network decoder enables readers to own their network style and modify it for better alignment with their life plans and values. High-quality connections in your social network strongly predict cognitive functioning, emotional resilience, and satisfaction at work. A well-structured network is likely to boost the quality of your ideas, as well as your pay. Beyond the office, social connections are the lifeblood of our health and happiness. The compiled results from dozens of previous studies found that our social relationships have an effect on our likelihood of dying prematurely—equivalent to obesity or smoking. Rich stories of Expansionists like Vernon Jordan, Brokers like Yo-Yo Ma, and Conveners like Anna Wintour, as well as personal experiences from King's own world of connections, inform this warm, engaging, revelatory investigation into some of the most consequential decisions we can make about the trajectory of our lives.

Between 1982 and 1989, Pelafina H. Lièvre sent her son, Johnny Truant, a series of letters from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a psychiatric facility in Ohio where she spent the final years of her life. Beautiful, heartfelt, and tragic, this correspondence reveals the powerful and deeply moving relationship between a brilliant though mentally ill mother and the precocious, gifted young son she never ceases to love. Originally contained within the monumental House of Leaves, this collection stands alone as a stunning portrait of mother and child. It is presented here along with a foreword by Walden D. Wyhrta and eleven previously unavailable letters.

Four friends who grew up together in Los Arbolitos Barrio of Santa Fe, New Mexico are bonded by a belief in the Aztec legend of the Butterfly Warrior. This Aztec god grants the dead the privilege of returning to Earth to collect the eternal reward of sucking on sacred nectar. In adulthood, one of the four, Manny, commits suicide. Now, the remaining three must resolve their differences in order to discover the strange truth surrounding Manny's demise. Cuate is the loose-tongued joker. Anna, Cuate's twin sister, is a voice of reason; Whitey is the outsider craving acceptance, and Manny was the Prometheus whose fire was music. Though the conflict between language and customs is at the heart of all Latino fiction, Butterfly Warrior adds to the mix new technology and the power of music to heal.

Decoding the Butterfly Promise: Regaining our Feminine Power and Returning to WholenessThis book invites you to relive Gail's personal journey that took her out of the safety of her everyday world into an amazing landscape where our true power lives. While Gail searches for a way to deliver a message to author Carlos Castaneda she is pulled into the original love story of a couple who lived and loved beyond time itself. It turns out their love story is the basis of all our fairy tales; but even more important, the pivotal key to awakening humans from our long slumber. With the assistance of none other than the Empress of the Universe (Source Feminine), Gail offers up her heart to help you feel her supra-ordinary experiences which happen against her hard - headed scientific and in - the - box skepticism. Eventually she connects to the original couple themselves and finds out why we keep reliving their life story and how we become free to create our own life story.In Gail's words:The book is divided into four parts. In Part 1. Answering the Wakeup Call I describe how I got hooked and engaged in joining this project. The section is filled with magical treats of the week and outrageous experiences that helped to break me out of the small box I'd labeled reality. In a word, it's outrageous! But it's true. My favorite part is when David helps my guide appear to me. Talk about scared skinny! I was terrified, but I was fascinated in equal measure. It is in this section that I also experience what being equal really feels like and I begin to see a bigger picture of what life really offers us.My adventures continue but now a pattern begins to form in Part 2. Rebuilding the Future. Vital keys are revealed and pieced together. Many transfers happen that lead me to work with a team of unusual and amazing individuals to help rebuild something that was lost long ago. I think what we did was also pre-paving the future. In Part 3. Moving Forward and Looking Back I move to the other side of the country and leave my 'stuff' and everything and everyone I've ever known. Think metaphor here. While I explore my new environment, the Empress of the Universe sends me back to review some of my earlier experiences which later fit together in an unbelievable way. I also find my partner in dreaming and experience an hysterical emotional roller coaster ride trying to find him in 3D reality. All of these experiences conspire to get me to shed my old ways and flip the switch on how I participate in life. Once I flip that switch I become able to access the information the Empress of the Universe has been helping me to reach. Part 4. Resurrecting the Knowledge of the Ancients tells the true 'first love' story according to the Empress of the Universe, and straightens out some bad information we've had passed along to us. Then it deals with what it means for us now and how we break through and claim our power. Butterfly woman in her feminine aspect speaks up and tells the story of what happened to her and then shows how we keep repeating her experiences with our own lives. Wow! I didn't want to believe it, but as soon as I looked through my life, the proof was right in front of my face. In fact I kept repeating a biggie she had...playing it again and again. Finally both Butterfly and the Empress of the Universe explain what it is we can do to stop the repeats and create our own lives, and yes, live happily ever after!