Were you ever advised to "just relax" before making a big speech? Don’t. From Texas A&M professor and celebrity advisor, Dr. John Eliot, this insightful guide takes a sledgehammer to what most of us think we know about doing our best. Eliot explains how mainstream psychology moves us in the wrong direction when it comes to stress management and performance enhancement; techniques like visualization and goal setting, based on pseudoscience rather than empirical evidence, often get in our way rather than propel us forward. Drawing on field-tested experiments and extensive research in neuropsychology, Eliot shares why these “common sense” strategies tend to come up short for the majority of people—and how, instead, great accomplishments are more likely to result from "Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket", "Thinking Like a Squirrel", and "Embracing Butterflies As a Good Thing". These counterintuitive practices not only trigger your full natural talent, but also teach you how to thrive under pressure, not dread it. OVERACHIEVEMENT incorporates Eliot’s work with Fortune 500 companies, Olympic athletes, renowned surgeons, military pilots, and Grammy-winning musicians, providing you with a powerful combination of inspiring stories and life-changing tools, offering the skills needed to overcome stress and rise above your peers in the boardroom, on the playing field, or in the normal day-to-day of life.

Raising an extremely bright child - quick, curious, sensitive, and introspective - is a daunting challenge. Parents need insight into their own motivations (as well as those of their children), and the courage and ability to make tough decisions about their child's development. "Raising Gifted Kids" will help parents understand and cope with the obstacles they face in raising a gifted child, and help them make the best choices for their son's or daughter's growth and happiness.

Relax. Set Goals. Focus On The Outcome. Lose Yourself To The Zone. All Reasonable, Sensible, Rational Words Of Advice When You Are Facing A Performance Challenge, Be It A Big Presentation At Work, A Crucial Point In The Game, Or A Career-Launching Music Recital. And All Utterly, Hopelessly, Wrong. According To John Eliot, Ph.D., &Ldquo;Such Self-Improvement Balderdash Will Do Nothing But Relegate You To A Career In Mediocrity. Overachievers Don&Rsquo;T Think Reasonably, Sensibly, Or Rationally. If Your Wish In Life Is To Fit In With The Crowd, Then This Is Not The Book For You.&Rdquo; As Dr. Eliot Has Discovered Through Years Of Cutting-Edge Research In Cognitive Neuroscience And Real-World Coaching, Techniques Such As Goal-Setting, Relaxation, Visualization, Stress Management, And Flow Just Don&Rsquo;T Work For Most People. He&Rsquo;S Proven That At High Levels Of Business, Medicine, Entertainment, And Sports, Relaxing When The Pressure Is On Is The Wrong Way To Go. In Overachievement, Dr. Eliot Offers The Rest Of Us The Counterintuitive And Unconventional Concepts That Have Been Embraced By The Olympic Athletes, Business Moguls, Top Surgeons, Salesmen, Financial Experts, And Rock Stars Who Have Turned To Him For Performance Enhancement Advice. For Example: &Bull; Using Your Head Is Stupid &Bull; Setting Goals Is For Couch Potatoes &Bull; All Those Eggs Belong In One Basket &Bull; Legends Never Say They&Rsquo;Re Sorry To Radically Ratchet Up Your Performance, You&Rsquo;Ll Need To Change The Way You Think About Becoming Exceptional&Mdash;And That Means Truly Being An Exception, Abnormal By The Standards Of Most, And Loving It. Eliot Will Teach You That Overachieving Means Thriving Under Pressure&Mdash;Welcoming It, Enjoying It, And Making It Work To Your Advantage. Mixing Scientific Insights With Entertaining And Inspiring Stories, Overachievement Will Help You Achieve Spectacular Success On The Job, On The Playing Field, Or In Any Situation That Demands You Rise Above And Beyond What You Ever Thought Possible.

- One volume-reference work with approximately 250 entries, organized alphabetically for ease of use and of locating subject matter. Each entry will contain 5-8 references as well as a bibliography of references and suggested readings - An authoritative reference text on school psychology that would appeal to, and be understood by, a broad audience. - Will assist individuals in acquiring a general understanding of some of the theories, practices, and language associated with the field of school psychology

This Handbook explores the cognitive, motivational, interpersonal, clinical, and applied aspects of personal uncertainty. It showcases both the diversity and the unity that defines contemporary perspectives on uncertainty in self within social and personality psychology. The contributions to the volume are all written by distinguished scholars in personality, social psychology, and clinical psychology united by their common focus on the causes and consequences of self-uncertainty. Chapters explore the similarities and differences between personal uncertainty and other psychological experiences in terms of their nature and relationship with human thought, emotion, motivation, and behavior. Specific challenges posed by personal uncertainty and the coping strategies people develop in their daily life are identified. There is an assessment of the potential negative and positive repercussions of coping with the specific experience of self-uncertainty, including academic, health, and relationship outcomes. Throughout, strategies specifically designed to assist others in confronting the unique challenges posed by self-uncertainty in ways that emphasize healthy psychological functioning and growth are promoted. In addition, the contributions to the Handbook touch on the psychological, social, and cultural context of the new millennium, including concepts such as Friedman’s "flat world," confidence, the absence of doubt in world leaders, the threat of terrorism since 9/11, the arts, doubt and religious belief, and views of doubt as the universal condition of humankind. The Handbook is an invaluable resource for researchers, practitioners, and senior undergraduate and graduate students in social and personality psychology, clinical and counseling psychology, educational psychology, and developmental psychology.

Design and Implementation of service-oriented architectures imposes a huge number of research questions from the fields of software engineering, system analysis and modeling, adaptability, and application integration. Component orientation and web services are two approaches for design and realization of complex web-based system. Both approaches allow for dynamic application adaptation as well as integration of enterprise application. Commonly used technologies, such as J2EE and .NET, form de facto standards for the realization of complex distributed systems. Evolution of component systems has lead to web services and service-based architectures. This has been manifested in a multitude of industry standards and initiatives such as XML, WSDL UDDI, SOAP, etc. All these achievements lead to a new and promising paradigm in IT systems engineering which proposes to design complex software solutions as collaboration of contractually defined software services. Service-Oriented Systems Engineering represents a symbiosis of best practices in object-orientation, component-based development, distributed computing, and business process management. It provides integration of business and IT concerns. The annual Ph.D. Retreat of the Research School provides each member the opportunity to present his/her current state of their research and to give an outline of a prospective Ph.D. thesis. Due to the interdisciplinary structure of the Research Scholl, this technical report covers a wide range of research topics. These include but are not limited to: Self-Adaptive Service-Oriented Systems, Operating System Support for Service-Oriented Systems, Architecture and Modeling of Service-Oriented Systems, Adaptive Process Management, Services Composition and Workflow Planning, Security Engineering of Service-Based IT Systems, Quantitative Analysis and Optimization of Service-Oriented Systems, Service-Oriented Systems in 3D Computer Graphics, as well as Service-Oriented Geoinformatics.