Marie-Josée Shaar and Kathryn Britton demonstrate that health, happiness, and productivity are mutually reinforcing. Smarts and Stamina is a highly practical workbook that will help you leverage your strengths to have lasting impact on your quality of life at work and play. The 50 sets of health-building activities are grounded on scientific research. By following the powerful, customizable step-by-step process, you can: - Feel in the prime of your life - Learn how to change and change how you learn - Choose good health habits, and make them stick Discover your own personal pathway to physical energy, mental focus, and emotional resilience. This book is not just an enjoyable process helping you become healthier; it is a true lifestyle game changer.

Describes why secondary students don't read, and offers teachers practical advice and strategies for developing depth, stamina, and passion in adolescent readers.

This positive psychology textbook focuses on the importance of the body within optimal functioning and highlights new research in this area.

Shawn Phillips is an internationally respected strength and fitness expert who has helped athletes, celebrities, and tens of thousands of others over the past twenty years. Now he’s sharing his fresh approach to fitness with everyone. Strength for Life is an easy-to-implement program to help you get in fantastic shape, enjoy abundant energy, and maintain a lean, strong physique–not just for 12 weeks but for the rest of your life. Let’s face it, with the demands of family, work, and life, many of us simply don’t have the time to stick to a rigorous workout schedule. Through his own life experience, Shawn Phillips has recognized this challenge and risen to it, literally reinventing fitness with a results-oriented program that you can embrace even with your hectic schedule and do either at home or at the gym. Homing in on the idea of building mental and physical strength rather than just sculpting your body, Shawn has pioneered a technique called Focus Intensity Training ™ (FIT), which uses the mind-body connection to yield incredible results. The program features • a workout plan that can take as little as 35 minutes a day, 3 times a week • illustrated exercises with clear step-by-step instructions • 3 workout phases–a 12-day Base Camp pre-training period, a 12-week Transformation Camp, and a year-round continuation plan geared to keep you going strong and vibrant for the rest of your life • a simple eating plan to fuel your body for optimum energy and performance–one that will free you from dieting forever • goal-setting exercises to help you achieve lasting motivation and reach your loftiest visions It’s never too late to get in shape. If you’re in your twenties or thirties, Strength for Life will show you how to achieve peak levels of fitness year after year. For those forty and beyond, you can look forward to recapturing the energy and vitality you thought you had lost. By following Strength for Life, you will make yourself stronger, leaner, sharper, and more confident. As Shawn writes: “Strength is about being more, doing more, giving more. It’s not just surviving; it’s thriving. And most important, strength is about having a reserve, a deeper, fuller capacity of body, mind, heart, and soul.”

What are the elements of good character? The Values in Action (VIA) project identified 24 qualities such as creative, authentic, loving, forgiving, kind, persistent, prudent, and brave, calling them character strengths. Character strengths are elements of good character valued across time and around the world. If you are curious about your own strengths, join the 3 million people that have taken the free online survey at www.viacharacter.org. Character Strengths Matter: How to Live a Full Life brings the 24 character strengths to life with stories involving children, teenagers, adults, and elders and occurring in family life and business settings, in the present and in the distant past, in locations from China to the United States to the Middle East. Research shows that using character strengths in new ways for a week makes people happier up to six months later. This book includes many ideas for using your character strengths in new ways. Based on the unusual premise that a key way to build strength is to act 'as if' you have that strength already, this book includes short passages to read aloud to try on particular character strengths. This concept is well known to actors and elite athletes, but less well known to the rest of the world. Look inside the book to see whose words are used to embody hope, gratitude, leadership, creativity, kindness, love and all the rest. More than 30 authors contributed stories to this book, including George Vaillant, the 35-year director of Harvard's Study of Adult Development. Many leaders in the positive psychology field endorse the book, including the 'father of positive psychology' Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman. He writes: "My friend, Chris Peterson, would have loved this book. It brings to life with personal stories, practical recommendations, wisdom, and humor the dry scholarship that he (with an assist from me) did in Character Strengths and Virtues. Chris was very down-to-earth and I am sure he would have concurred in my enthusiastically recommending this book to everyone who works with character strengths in the real world." Martin E. P. Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness and Flourish Proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to a scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania in honor of the lead researcher of character strengths, the late Christopher Peterson. This scholarship supports the education of future practitioners of positive psychology. This is the third book in the Positive Psychology News series, joining Resilience: How to Navigate Life's Curves and Gratitude: How to Appreciate Life's Gifts. Bottom line, this book is bound to make you learn something new, be inspired about humanity and have a chance to play with character strengths. This book will make you happier.

In this instant New York Times bestseller, Angela Duckworth shows anyone striving to succeed that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent, but a special blend of passion and persistence she calls “grit.” “Inspiration for non-geniuses everywhere” (People). The daughter of a scientist who frequently noted her lack of “genius,” Angela Duckworth is now a celebrated researcher and professor. It was her early eye-opening stints in teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience that led to her hypothesis about what really drives success: not genius, but a unique combination of passion and long-term perseverance. In Grit, she takes us into the field to visit cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, teachers working in some of the toughest schools, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she’s learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers—from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll. “Duckworth’s ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better” (The New York Times Book Review). Among Grit’s most valuable insights: any effort you make ultimately counts twice toward your goal; grit can be learned, regardless of IQ or circumstances; when it comes to child-rearing, neither a warm embrace nor high standards will work by themselves; how to trigger lifelong interest; the magic of the Hard Thing Rule; and so much more. Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that—not talent or luck—makes all the difference. This is “a fascinating tour of the psychological research on success” (The Wall Street Journal).

Come back from every setback a stronger and better leader. If you read nothing else on mental toughness, read these ten articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you build your emotional strength and resilience--and to achieve high performance. This book will inspire you to: Thrive on pressure like an Olympic athlete Manage and overcome negative emotions by acknowledging them Plan short-term goals to achieve long-term aspirations Surround yourself with the people who will push you the hardest Use challenges to become a better leader Use creativity to move past trauma Understand the tools your mind uses to recover from setbacks This collection of articles includes "How the Best of the Best Get Better and Better," by Graham Jones; "Crucibles of Leadership," by Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas; "Building Resilience," by Martin E.P. Seligman; "Cognitive Fitness," by Roderick Gilkey and Clint Kilts; "The Making of a Corporate Athlete," by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz; "Stress Can Be a Good Thing If You Know How to Use It," by Alla Crum and Thomas Crum; "How to Bounce Back from Adversity," by Joshua D. Margolis and Paul G. Stoltz; "Rebounding from Career Setbacks," by Mitchell Lee Marks, Philip Mirvis, and Ron Ashkenas; "Realizing What You're Made Of," by Glenn E. Mangurian; "Extreme Negotiations," by Jeff Weiss, Aram Donigian, and Jonathan Hughes; and "Post-Traumatic Growth and Building Resilience," by Martin Seligman and Sarah Green Carmichael. HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further. HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an ever‐changing business environment.