Self-Development Audiobooks

A clinical psychologist specializing in behavioral medicine presents a dozen practical approaches to transforming loss, pain, and suffering into positive growth and hope. Just as some flowers only bloom in the dark, so too, some people only grow by experiencing tough times. Each chapter explains an empirically based principle for handling adversity, followed by writing prompts designed to help readers experience the axiom personally. Tools such as self-reflection, meaning-making, narrative creation, benefit-finding, and inspired value-based action help readers move through their trauma toward a new exuberance for life.

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 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. Frientimacy is more than just a call for deeper connection between friends; it’s a blueprint for turning simple friendships into true bonds—and for the meaningful and satisfying relationships that come with them.

Winner of the 2015 COVR Award for Best Self-Help Book! Blamestorming outlines the reasons why our daily conversations go wrong, explains how to respond when they do and provides tips on how to stop them going wrong in the first place. Based on his experience as a highly respected communications coach for international companies and business professionals, Rob Kendall provides a practical guide to achieving more rewarding and effective interactions with everyone in your life - from your boss to your partner. Rob's techniques have been proven to be effective for thousands of people from all walks of life and are presented in an illustrated step-by-step format that makes them easy to put into practice from Day One. Underpinning the book's approach to consistently having better interactions is an explanation of the warning signals that indicate when a conversation is going off track.

Neuroscientists estimate that over 90 percent of our operating systems—beliefs, behaviors, patterns—are unconscious. Since the surface story determines less than 10 percent of our decisions, how can we illuminate the shadow story responsible for over 90 percent of what we do each day? Once we systematically understand our relationship with money, can we overcome the mind and brain’s resistance to change? Especially when so many of the current popular strategies for change are contrary to the way the mind and brain work? Each money story line contains unspoken assumptions, emotional agendas, and unconscious meanings. Money becomes a portal to the immaterial and the intangible, a Rorschach onto which we project our needs and hopes. Your New Money Story: The Beliefs, Behaviors, and Brain Science to Rewire for Wealth combines twenty-five years of psychiatric and psychoanalytic practice and over a dozen years of professional and executive mentor coaching with groundbreaking research in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics to show readers how to recognize money behaviors ghostwritten by hidden assumptions, overcome the brain’s patterned responses that lead to bad decisions, harness the power of regulating states of mind, develop the art and neuroscience of money strategies, and identify and remedy emotionally based money mistakes and financial fallacies. The ROADMAP System deconstructs the process of understanding a money story to systematically construct a new one to write new mind software and rewire the brain for wealth. YOUR NEW MONEY STORY The Beliefs, Behaviors, and Brain Science to Rewire for Wealth David Krueger, Read by Edward Bauer • Unabridged • AUGUST 2019 Vibrance Press • Digital Download Narrator Edward Bauer sounds like a friendly college instructor who wants to spare you the anguish you've had trying to get your financial life in order. He has a wonderful phrasing palette, smooth and natural sounding, and what stands out is how he finesses the author's desire to help: He's assertive enough with the direct advice and many lists offered by the psychiatrist/business-coach, but he keeps enough distance from his listeners to convey respect for their autonomy. They can take this advice or leave it. This vocal attitude is important with a lesson like this, which is psychologically invasive with its pointed assumption that all financial mismanagement begins with limiting psychological beliefs. This is effective audio advice on how to overcome those beliefs with brighter expectations, concrete strategies, and discipline. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Give your best friend more purr and pounce with this whiskers-to-tail guide to the good life! One reason we’re wild for cats is that our cats are still wild at heart. On our laps, they’re purring lovebugs, but on the prowl, they’re fearsome hunters—with territorial instincts to match. The Handbook for a Happy Cat takes us inside the feline mind to decode what our cats really want in life and how they try to tell us. You’ll learn: Why a bigger water bowl does away with “whisker stress” How to move like a mouse for maximum fun at playtime Skills to teach your kitten for a lifetime of easy vet visits, grooming, and more Subtle signs of stress such as excessive scent-marking and lip-licking How to tell frolic from fighting in the multi-cat household (and how to give frenemies a fresh start) What makes a scratching post so tempting that your sofa will be spared How to reassure a spooked cat with the “slow blink” Why it’s pointless to “punish” a cat—but training is possible! Certified behaviorist Liesbeth Puts traces every feline mystery to cats’ natural behavior and needs. A happy cat is a cat who can be herself!

Everything you need to know about love, life, relationships, sex, men, and being a badass Advice from girl bosses of all kinds: Women are, far and away, the Oral Sex. Women’s Studies scholar Becca Anderson has gathered the wisdom from a chorus of fabulous femmes for this one-of-a-kind advice book. From housewives to Hollywood starlets, from standup comedians to startup entrepreneurs, these badass women offer unvarnished and unabashed opinions and share their frank and forthright thinking on the wild world of relationships. A sassy collection of woman wisdom: This delightfully dishy gathering of gal pals is like having a heart-to-heart with 200 of your closest friends. Garrulous girls and loquacious ladies from every walk of life unleash their wicked wit in this humorous and enlightening compilation and tell it like it is. Topics include What the World Needs Now, Love Hurts, Lost Love, and Are Men Really Necessary. Learn and laugh at the real stories of the amazing women you love: true tales about wild women of yore that entertain as much as they enlighten. From Anais Nin, Lily Tomlin, Amy Bloom, Dorothy Allison, Drew Barrymore, Chrissy Teigan and beyond, there's no shortage of sass, sarcasm, or sizzle and a few shocks along the way! In Badass Women Give the Best Advice , readers will find: Wisdom about sex, dating, break ups, weddings, the prerequisites for the perfect kiss, and more! Quotes and true stories from famous women and girl bosses Quizzes, love and sex bucket lists and topics like “Size Really Does Matter,” and “Cry Me a River, The Weepiest Romantic Movies Ever” that will spice up your sex and love life Be enlightened with these no nonsense takes on dating, love life, sex, self-love, and more!

“It’s like the meanest, wildest monkey running around my head, constantly looking for ways to bite me.” That was how Kirsten Pagacz described her OCD to her therapist on their first session when she was well into her 30s she’d been following orders from this mean taskmaster for 20 years, without understanding why. Initially the tapping and counting and cleaning and ordering brought her comfort and structure, two things lacking in her family life. But it never lasted; the loathsome self-talk only intensified, and the rituals she had to perform got more bizarre. By high school she was anorexic and a substance abuser, common "shadow syndromes" of OCD. By adulthood, she could barely hide her problems and held on to jobs and friends through sheer grit. Help finally came in the form of a miraculously well-timed public service announcement on NPR about OCD -- at last her illness had an identity. Leaving the OCD Circus reveals the story of Pagacz’s traumatic childhood and the escalation of her disorder demonstrating how OCD works to misshape a life from a very young age and explains the various tools she used for healing including meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, yoga, exposure therapy, and medication.

Relieve anxiety, fear, and worry for good! Fully revised and based in the latest research, this second edition of Coping with Anxiety includes the latest DSM updates and provides immediate, user-friendly, and effective strategies to stop anxiety at its source. If you suffer from anxiety, you may try to avoid the situations that cause you to feel uneasy. But avoidance isn’t the answer—and letting your fears and worries constantly hold you back will keep you from living the life you truly want. So, how can you learn to cope with your anxiety while it’s happening? In Coping with Anxiety, Second Edition, renowned anxiety expert and author of The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, Edmund Bourne, offers a clinically proven, step-by-step program to help you overcome the physical, mental, and emotional symptoms of anxiety. The exercises in this book can be done in the moment, whenever you feel anxious, and will help you move past your fears and start living the life you were meant to live. Don’t let anxiety keep you one step behind. This book will show you how to face your fears, overcome panic when it happens, and take charge of your anxiety once and for all.

The first authoritative and comprehensive guide to "aging in place"--a burgeoning movement for those who don't want to rely on assisted living or nursing home care--which allows seniors to spend their later years living comfortably, independently, and in their own home or community. For millions of Americans, living in a nursing home or assisted living facility is not how they’d prefer to spend their retirement years. This is why more and more people are choosing to “age in place.” In this empowering and indispensable book, clinical psychologists and aging specialists Mary Languirand and Robert Bornstein teach readers how, with planning and foresight, they can age with dignity and comfort in the place of their own choosing. How to Age in Place offers useful, actionable advice on financial planning; making your home physically safe; getting around; obtaining necessary services; keeping a healthy mind, body, and spirit; and post-retirement employment. A necessary resource for seniors, their adult children, and eldercare professionals, How to Age in Place is both a practical roadmap and inspirational guide for the millions of seniors who want to make their own decisions and age well.

Few of us know how to navigate the territory of traumatic loss successfully. Sweet Sorrow shows how we can respond and grow stronger from loss and suffering. Written by a psychologist and certified bereavement trauma specialist in the decade following the loss of her husband, father, mother, and only sibling, this carefully considered work provides perspective on grief and healing over time. This longer-term approach allows readers to have a more complete and accurate picture of the oscillations of grief over time. The book describes not only the immediate agony of the author’s losses, but also the process of starting over and making a successful new life as a single person full of hope and joy. Sweet Sorrow combines the author’s psychological expertise and clinical experience with the compelling art of memoir to illuminate the surprising ways in which loss survivors can grow and even thrive to achieve wholeness after heartbreaking, traumatic losses. Using findings from post-traumatic growth, as well as evidence-based psychological approaches, Sweet Sorrow illustrates through story and example, ways for grief survivors to start over, to manage chaos and stress, to let go, and to heal with new strategies and re-storying. Sweet Sorrow also provides resources and recommendations for self-care, as well as tips and suggestions for all of us trying to respond creatively and helpfully to those around us suffering loss. Ultimately, Sweet Sorrow is a book of inspiration intended to companion readers through the processes of loss and grief much like a helpful Sherpa might guide a lost traveler.