A brilliant distillation of the key ideas behind successful self-improvement practices throughout history, showing us how they remain relevant today Self-help today is a multi-billion-dollar global industry, one often seen as a by-product of neoliberalism and capitalism. Far from being a recent phenomenon, however, the practice of self-improvement has a long and rich history, extending all the way back to ancient China. For millennia, philosophers, sages, and theologians have reflected on the good life and devised strategies on how to achieve it. Focusing on ten core ideas of self-improvement that run through the world’s advice literature, Anna Katharina Schaffner reveals the ways they have evolved across cultures and historical eras, and why they continue to resonate with us today. Reminding us that there is much to learn from looking at time-honed models, Schaffner also examines the ways that self-improvement practices provide powerful barometers of the values, anxieties, and aspirations that preoccupy us at particular moments in time and expose basic assumptions about our purpose and nature.

This book celebrates the great stripping process of aging, dying and spiritual awakening. Beautiful, poignant, at times humorous, transcendent, messy, down to earth, refreshingly honest--the book explores death, and more importantly, being alive, through a rich mix of personal stories and spiritual reflections. Joan writes about her mother's final years and about being with friends and teachers at the end of their lives. She shares her own journey with aging, anal cancer, and other life challenges. She explores what it means to be alive in what may be the collapse of civilization and the possible extinction of life on earth due to climate change. Pointing beyond deficiency stories, future fantasies, and oppressive self-improvement projects, Joan invites an awakening to the immediacy of this moment and the wonder of ordinary life. She demonstrates a pathless path of genuine transformation, seeing all of life as sacred and worthy of devotion, and finding joy in the full range of our human experience.

Looking for the ultimate self-improvement guide so that you can take matters into your own hands and jump start or rejuvenate your career? Look no further than The Self-Improvement Book: A Guide Book for Success and Personal Development. The Self-Improvement Book is actually a set of four already popular books by renowned business and entrepreneurship authors Can Akdeniz and Jonas Stark. The set includes: The Nine Routines of Successful People: A Guidebook for Personal Change, Problem Solver: An Amazing Way to Deal with Problems and Personal Challenges, Surpass the Average: Learn the Seven Traits of High Achievers, and Productivity Masterclass: Learning to Work Smarter and Faster.

This book investigates how persuasion relates to values in self-improvement literature, revealing the discursive practices used to persuade and engage their readers, and construct a credible persona. The author adopts a corpus-driven approach that encompasses an examination of genre analysis and linguistic features such as narrative, pronoun, grammar and structure. The book further draws on insights from original interviews with writers and readers of self-improvement books, as well as people who do not read the genre. It begins by providing a helpful overview of the concepts of ideology and genre. A brief history of self-improvement books and their values and assumptions provide the context for the analysis. Where relevant, linguistic features in self-improvement books are compared with other genres (e.g. academic text, conversation, news). This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of linguistics, culture and media studies.

"You can't love someone until you learn to love yourself." "Being healthy means being in touch with your feelings." "Never lose hope." These are self-evident truths, right?Wrong charges best-selling psychologist Paul Pearsall in this provocative new book. Though everyone from talk show hosts to politicians mouths these platitudes, and self-help bibles are a dime a dozen, their advice simply hasn't't helped us live happier or more satisfying lives. Pearsall cites scientific evidence to challenge what he calls the McMorals of self-potentialism: the unsubstantiated prescriptions, programs, guarantees, and gurus that define our pursuit of The Good Life. His message is timely: we're fed up with truisms masquerading as truth, and hungry for self-help that really helps. Filled with groundbreaking research and inspiring true stories from Dr. Pearsall's clinical practice, The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need offers a powerful antidote to the mindless mental languishing that characterizes so much of modern life. The solution is not just to "get tough and suck it up." Instead, Pearsall offers powerful if counterintuitive strategies. By abandoning the mandate to "stay hopeful," for example, we can begin to savor today rather than focus desperately on tomorrow. By allowing ourselves the natural process of grieving instead of relentlessly treating grief as a disease, we can recover from tragedy. With Pearsall's lively and informative roadmap to psychological health, we can say "goodbye" to our inner child and "hello" to a better life.

Is your mind actually able to send and receive messages from other people’s brains? Explore these secrets now revealed by the author’s quest. Enjoy the facts and results of the latest neuroscience as they now unfold. Revelations of Your Self-Help Book Secrets begins with explaining the brain’s function, the role of quantum physics, and our current incomplete knowledge of the neuroscience of dreaming. This fascinating journey through science and self-help literature explores what we call “psychic phenomena.” Author Lancaster Adams is a medical doctor, surgeon, scientist, and medical missionary. In the book, he describes his quest to comprehend the underlying science of a disturbing dream, one with a premonition he had just before his father’s illness killed him. Across a span of 6,000 miles, the dream communicated hard facts about his father’s previously unknown mortal illness. The incident prompted real communication that confirmed his father’s impending death, prompting him to ask how this type of premonition is possible. Using light-hearted humor and anecdotes, Revelations illuminates how our brains actually work. Perhaps through our shared humanity, we can identify aspects of our lives that will prove we are not alone in an existential nothingness. And, perhaps we can also learn the answers our brains hold that the best computers in the world can’t answer.