This essential go-to guide reveals how women can enhance their lives by creating valuable friendships in today’s busy, mobile world, from nationally recognized friendship expert and CEO of GirlFriendCircles.com. Every woman is searching for a happier, healthier, more fulfilling life. Many realize the significant role that an intimate, tightly knit circle of friends plays in creating a more fulfilling life, but with hectic schedules, frequent moves, and life changes, it’s more important than ever for women to establish natural, meaningful friendships that will contribute to their overall wellbeing. In Friendships Don’t Just Happen!, Shasta Nelson, friendship expert and CEO of GirlFriendCircles.com, reveals the most important proven steps, processes, and secrets vital to establishing the five different levels of friendships, or Circles of Connectedness, that women—no matter their age or relationship status—are longing for in today’s stressful and mobile culture. This revolutionary, engaging guide will also benefit women who already feel rooted to fabulous friends, with insightful principles that will help them maintain and enhance their current friendships. Full of practical how-to tips, fun activities, guiding questions, and step-by-step instructions, Friendships Don’t Just Happen! highlights several areas of developing lasting friendships, teaching women how to: Evaluate their current circle of friends Recognize what types of friends they are seeking based on career, interests, location, and relationship status Create a prioritized friendship action plan Find extraordinary friends—where to look and how to approach them Take initiative to jumpstart friendships and face fears of rejection Establish “frientimacy,” trust, and happiness through conversation and activities Maintain meaningful friendships and determine which ones are worthwhile Excerpt from Friendships Don't Just Happen: There is a lie out there that real friendship just happens. When I was new to San Francisco eight years ago, I remember standing at a café window on Polk Street watching a group of women inside, huddled around a table laughing. Like the puppy dog at the pound, I looked through the glass, wishing someone would pick me to be theirs. I had a phone full of far-flung friends’ phone numbers, but I didn’t yet know anyone I could just sit and laugh with in a café. It hit me how very hard the friendship process is. I’m an outgoing, socially comfortable woman with a long line of good friendships behind me. And yet I stood there feeling very lonely. And insecure. And exhausted at just the idea of how far I was from that reality. I knew I couldn’t just walk in there and introduce myself to them. “Hi! You look like fun women, can I join you?” I would have been met with stares of pity. No one wants to seem desperate, even if we are. We don’t have platonic pick-up lines memorized. Flirting for friends seems creepy. Asking for her phone number like we’re going to call her up for a Saturday night date is just plain weird. All the batting of my eyelashes wasn’t going to send the right signals. And so I turned away from the scene of laughter and walked away. No, unfortunately, friendships don’t just happen. We Value Belonging Friendships may not happen automatically, but what we crave about them sure seems to! We all want to belong—that need to be connected to others is an inherent desire. We live our entire lives trying to fit in, be known, attract acceptance, and experience intimacy. We desperately want to have others care about us. This book is about that hunger. And more pointedly, it is about listening to it and learning how to fulfill it.

With the constant connectivity of today’s world, it’s never been easier to meet people and make new friends—but it’s never been harder to form meaningful friendships. In Frientimacy, award-winning speaker Shasta Nelson shows how anyone can form stronger, more meaningful friendships, marked by a level of trust she calls “frientimacy.” Shasta explores the ten most common complaints and conflicts facing female friendships today, and lays out strategies for overcoming these pitfalls to create deeper, supportive relationships that last for the long-term. Shasta is the founder of girlfriendcircles.com, a community of women seeking stronger, more fulfilling friendships, and the author of Friendships Don’t Just Happen. In Frientimacy, she teaches readers to reject the impulse to pull away from friendships that aren’t instantly and constantly gratifying. With a warm, engaging, and inspiring voice, she shows how friendships built on dedication and commitment can lead to enriched relationships, stronger and more meaningful ties, and an overall increase in mental health. The Intimacy Gap is more than just a call for deeper connection between friends; it’s a roadmap for moving from friendship to frientimacy—and the meaningful and satisfying relationships that come with it.

It is virtually impossible to feel connected and supported in life when you don’t feel that way where you spend most of our time—at work. In The Business of Friendship, friendship expert Shasta Nelson unpacks the distinct ways we can make work relationships the healthiest they can be, both for the sake of the employee and the mission of the company. She inspires readers to see why friendship is crucial to our health and our careers, and teaches us exactly how to develop the supportive and meaningful connections we need. Our organizations benefit as friendships at work result in higher levels of workplace productivity, employee retention, safety, innovation, collaboration, and profitability. In having a best friend at work, we are seven times more engaged in our job, which translates to better customer service, less absenteeism, fewer workplace accidents, and more loyalty to our organizations. Through Shasta’s stories, research, and practical guidance, she: Breaks down what creates healthy bonds and reveals the 3 requirements necessary in all healthy relationships and teams. Helps managers and employees assess the health of their relationships and learn ways to repair and improve them. Provides advice for addressing some of the biggest fears around workplace friendships, such as increased drama, favoritism, confidentiality, gossip, toxic coworkers, relationship with bosses, and potential romantic attractions. The Business of Friendship is for those who are ready to maximize the two most significant factors of our wellbeing—career and relationships. Whether you are a leader or an employee, when you feel more connected and supported at work, everyone wins.

Discover how seemingly harmless habits can contribute to lasting destruction in your most precious relationships. Kim Beckham shares insights and instruction from over 35 years of experience leading and counseling people through challenging times in their relationships. HIDDEN DANGERS EXPOSED: - Comparing your relationship to others - Accepting poor counsel - Clinging to the past - Living selfishly Discover how to recognize these dangers as you explore powerful strategies for preventing damage to those you love. Learn how to deepen and strengthen your connections through the exercises found in this book. Start today and acquire the skills to really make your relationships flourish!

Learn how to celebrate every moment in life while living enthusiastically and following your God-given passions. New York Times bestselling author Sadie Robertson invites you to reach new depths of faith and new heights of life as you discover how to live life to the fullest through 100 relevant devotions. Live on Purpose takes the life-changing messages from Sadie's bestselling books Live Fearless and Live and helps you apply those truths through Scripture, prayer, and her passionate message to live well. Through each of Sadie's authentic and relatable entries, you'll take away practical tools for overcoming fear and living with confidence living without limitations by setting aside fear, anxiety, and comparison authentically celebrating every moment in life replacing temporary highs with the promises of God dreaming big and living life on purpose! Live on Purpose, which made the USA Today and ECPA bestseller lists, is a valuable message for anyone eager to make a difference in the world and is a perfect gift for the holidays, graduation, birthdays, or a faith anniversary. You'll discover that when you follow your God-given passions, nothing can stop you from living your most enthusiastic, purposeful life. It's time to let go of fear and follow God. Sadie is a wholesome and trusted role model and enthusiastic voice for her generation, reaching millions of teens, young adults, and parents through her books, social platforms, and hit podcast, WHOA That's Good. Read Sadie's additional inspirational bestselling books, Live Fearless and Live.

Finding happiness at 80+, from the perspective of an octogenarian. Author Ralph Milton wants readers to know that old age is not a disease circling the world ready to pounce on anyone over eighty. Many, maybe even most, old people, say they are happier and more contented than they have ever been. And that’s good news because Canadians are living much, much longer. In fact, octogenarians are the county’s fastest growing demographic. To quote the author, "Society has never had to deal with such a huge bunch of old people." To address this societal shift, Well Aged offers a candid, useful and entertaining insider’s take on life among the old, old. Not the recently retired who are enjoying Arizona winters and unlimited golf, but those in their last years, usually in the eighty- to one- hundred-year-old bracket. While there is good material written by health-care professionals for other professionals, and popular non-fiction to inspire the recently retired, there is virtually nothing written at the non-professional level for the oldest of the old. Or for their families and care givers. This book is a free wheeling, down to earth, inside look at what it’s really like to be old, written by an insider and sprinkled liberally with humour. Topics include: Identity and independence Choosing a retirement location among the options of independent living, retirement residences and nursing homes Personal health needs and priorities Community support, friendships and recreation Spirituality and religion Intimacy, companionship, sexuality, homosexuality Loneliness, depression and frailty Leaving a legacy and end of life arrangements When the situation of elderly Canadians does get public attention, as it has during the Covid-19 pandemic, the focus is on what can go wrong. Well Aged is intended to expand the conversation around aging, and it is a must-read for anyone who needs to put out their birthday cake with a fire extinguisher—as well as those who love and care for them.

Helps women break through the tired and hurtful stereotypes of aging to better reflect who they are, how they live, and what they want as they age. Who hasn’t heard the stereotypes about women of a "certain age?” That’s the age when women become invisible, irrelevant, undesirable, asexual, unhinged, dried-up, hormonal messes. It’s when women quickly slide into fragility and become forgetful, passive, weak, feeble, debilitated, disabled, dependent, and depressed. Or so the story goes. Not only are those outdated narratives sexist and ageist, they are also damaging to women’s physical, emotional, financial, romantic, and sexual health. It’s time to change them. In Not Too Old for That, Vicki Larson helps change the narrative about being a woman at midlife and older. She questions what we’ve been told aging would be like and encourages us to instead ask ourselves, what do we want it to be like, and how can we get there? The key is to be curious, open-minded, and intentional about the ways we are becoming our future selves.We have an opportunity to create new narratives of aging as a woman, ones that value women at all stages of life, not just youth, and it starts with us. Once the stereotypes that have held women back are broken down, women can move past them and rather than feel helpless as the years add up, they can discover and tap into just how much agency they have. Not only will this book help to create a less-ageist, less-sexist, more-inclusive future, it will release our daughters and all young women from a similar future.