Hear What the Critics are Saying "Very heart-warming stories; not only was this book inspirational, but it was also incredibly helpful. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is lost and needs to find themselves. Amazing Book." -Mary Jones – Valley Daily News “I enjoyed this motivational book quite a bit. My favorite story was the one about the Peanut butter And Jelly sandwiches. Five Stars.” -Judy B. Cohen – Elite Media Group “This was a very up-lifting and inspirational book. It both motivated and taught me to think outside of the box. A Must Read.” -Dave Baker – Book Bloggers of America “I was really moved by some of the stories; what I like about this book is that some of the stories where motivational and others were just about teaching a specific lesson. Ten Thumbs Up.” -Debra Eisner – Literary Times Inc. “Very inspiring book with great stories; I Highly Recommend this one to anybody who likes to read, and whose soul needs a bit of healing.” -Emma Righter – Writers United Group “I liked a lot of the stories; my favorite was the one about the Gumballs; since I’m in sales, it made a lot of sense to me. This is definitely one book you will not regret buying. Great Book!” -Carl Mosner – Readers Cove Unlimited “This was an awesome book. I really enjoyed the stories, and the lessons were very helpful. It’s a Wonderful Book that really makes you think.” -Lee Ratner – Daily Media Trends, Inc. Editorial Review Good Things Take Time is a book that will make you laugh and think at the same time. The way the author explains very complex issues in such a simplistic, easy-to-comprehend fashion is commendable. These are the types of stories that feed our soul. Any generation, young or old, will enjoy this book very much; many of its stories are not only inspiring, but also time tested and true. If you are looking for a book that will not only inspire you, but will also challenge the way you view the world, then this is the book for you. A Must Read! Jim S. Stein About the Book If you loved the Chicken-Soup for the Soul series, then you’ll love Good Things Take Time. It’s a book full of motivational short stories that will not only inspire and motivate you, but will also give you great practical advice on everyday situations. This book is extremely funny in some parts and yet, very deep and thought provoking in others. It will elicit numerous emotions from its readers and shed more light on solutions to problems we face on a day to day basis. If you’re looking for a book that will not only motivate your soul, but will also cultivate your mind, then look no further. Good Things Take Time will leave you both inspired and prepared. (self help books, self help, self help books for women, self help anxiety, self help books for men, motivational self help, bestsellers) [self help books]

Why doesn't self-help help? Cultural critic Micki McGee puts forward this paradoxical question as she looks at a world where the market for self-improvement products--books, audiotapes, and extreme makeovers--is exploding, and there seems to be no end in sight. Rather than seeing narcissism at the root of the self-help craze, as others have contended, McGee shows a nation relying on self-help culture for advice on how to cope in an increasingly volatile and competitive work world. Self-Help, Inc. reveals how makeover culture traps Americans in endless cycles of self-invention and overwork as they struggle to stay ahead of a rapidly restructuring economic order. A lucid and fascinating treatment of the modern obsession with work and self-improvement, this lively book will strike a chord with its acute diagnosis of the self-help trap and its sharp suggestions for how we can address the alienating conditions of modern work and family life.

This volume constitutes the first solidly research-grounded guide for practitioners wending their way through the new maze of self-help approaches. The Handbook of Self-Help Therapies summarizes the current state of our knowledge about what works and what does not, disorder by disorder and modality by modality. Among the covered topics are: self-regulation theory; anxiety disorders; depression; childhood disorders; eating disorders; sexual dysfunctions; insomnia; problem drinking; smoking cessation; dieting and weight loss. Comprehensive in its scope, this systematic, objective assessment of self-help treatments will be invaluable for practitioners, researchers and students in counseling psychology, psychiatry and social work, health psychology, and behavioral medicine.

Previously published under title: Authoritative guide to self-help resources in mental health.

Samuel Beckett as a guru for business executives? James Joyce as a guide to living a good life? The notion of notoriously experimental authors sharing a shelf with self-help books might seem far-fetched, yet a hidden history of rivalry, influence, and imitation links these two worlds. In The Self-Help Compulsion, Beth Blum reveals the profound entanglement of modern literature and commercial advice from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Blum explores popular reading practices in which people turn to literature in search of practical advice alongside modern writers’ rebukes of such instrumental purposes. As literary authors positioned themselves in opposition to people like Samuel Smiles and Dale Carnegie, readers turned to self-help for the promises of mobility, agency, and practical use that serious literature was reluctant to supply. Blum unearths a series of unlikely cases of the love-hate relationship between serious fiction and commercial advice, from Gustave Flaubert’s mockery of early DIY culture to Dear Abby’s cutting diagnoses of Nathanael West and from Virginia Woolf’s ambivalent polemics against self-improvement to the ways that contemporary global authors such as Mohsin Hamid and Tash Aw explicitly draw on the self-help genre. She also traces the self-help industry’s tendency to popularize, quote, and adapt literary wisdom and considers what it might have to teach today’s university. Offering a new history of self-help’s origins, appeal, and cultural and literary import around the world, this book reveals that self-help’s most valuable secrets are not about getting rich or winning friends but about how and why people read.

“As a bookseller, I loved Shelf Life for the chance to peer behind the curtain of Diwan, Nadia Wassef’s Egyptian bookstore—the way that the personal is inextricable from the professional, the way that failure and success are often lovers, the relationship between neighborhoods and books and life. Nadia’s story is for every business owner who has ever jumped without a net, and for every reader who has found solace in the aisles of a bookstore.” —Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here “Shelf Life is such a unique memoir about career, life, love, friendship, motherhood, and the impossibility of succeeding at all of them at the same time. It is the story of Diwan, the first modern bookstore in Cairo, which was opened by three women, one of whom penned this book. As a bookstore owner I found this fascinating. As a reader I found it fascinating. Blunt, honest, funny.” —Jenny Lawson, author of Broken (in the best possible way) The warm and winning story of opening a modern bookstore where there were none, Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller recounts Nadia Wassef’s troubles and triumphs as a founder and manager of Cairo-based Diwan The streets of Cairo make strange music. The echoing calls to prayer; the raging insults hurled between drivers; the steady crescendo of horns honking; the shouts of street vendors; the television sets and radios blaring from every sidewalk. Nadia Wassef knows this song by heart. In 2002, with her sister, Hind, and their friend, Nihal, she founded Diwan, a fiercely independent bookstore. They were three young women with no business degrees, no formal training, and nothing to lose. At the time, nothing like Diwan existed in Egypt. Culture was languishing under government mismanagement, and books were considered a luxury, not a necessity. Ten years later, Diwan had become a rousing success, with ten locations, 150 employees, and a fervent fan base. Frank, fresh, and very funny, Nadia Wassef’s memoir tells the story of this journey. Its eclectic cast of characters features Diwan’s impassioned regulars, like the demanding Dr. Medhat; Samir, the driver with CEO aspirations; meditative and mythical Nihal; silent but deadly Hind; dictatorial and exacting Nadia, a self-proclaimed bitch to work with—and the many people, mostly men, who said Diwan would never work. Shelf Life is a portrait of a country hurtling toward revolution, a feminist rallying cry, and an unapologetic crash course in running a business under the law of entropy. Above all, it is a celebration of the power of words to bring us home.

Understanding instead of lamenting the popularity of self-help books Based on a reading of more than three hundred self-help books, Sandra K. Dolby examines this remarkably popular genre to define "self-help" in a way that's compelling to academics and lay readers alike. Self-Help Books also offers an interpretation of why these books are so popular, arguing that they continue the well-established American penchant for self-education, they articulate problems of daily life and their supposed solutions, and that they present their content in a form and style that is accessible rather than arcane. Using tools associated with folklore studies, Dolby then examines how the genre makes use of stories, aphorisms, and a worldview that is at once traditional and contemporary. The overarching premise of the study is that self-help books, much like fairy tales, take traditional materials, especially stories and ideas, and recast them into extended essays that people happily read, think about, try to apply, and then set aside when a new embodiment of the genre comes along.