Self-help

Gender equality is a moral and a business imperative. But unconscious bias holds us back and de-biasing minds has proven to be difficult and expensive. Behavioral design offers a new solution. Iris Bohnet shows that by de-biasing organizations instead of individuals, we can make smart changes that have big impacts-often at low cost and high speed.

Breaking Negative Thinking Patterns is the first schema-mode focused resource guide aimed at schema therapy patients and self-help readers seeking to understand and overcome negative patterns of thinking and behaviour.

In the past decades, the pressure to perfect and design our bodies has been unprecedented. Men are encouraged to surgically pump up their pecs, breast enhancement is a sweet sixteen birthday present in the suburbs of America. This book raises the fundamental questions about how we arrived here and proposes a fresh theory on how we became embodied.

A Business Week, New York Times Business, and USA Today Bestseller "Ambitious and readable... an engaging introduction to the oddsmakers, whom Bernstein regards as true humanists helping to release mankind from the choke holds of superstition and fatalism. " -The New York Times "An extraordinarily entertaining and informative book.

Offers a set of practices for creativity in various human enterprises. This book provides readers with a sense of the role that the notion of possibility can play in different aspects of our lives. It shifts readers perspective with stories, parables, and anecdotes from the authors' personal experiences as well as from everyday heroes.

In it, Dr Eric Berne reveals how everyone's life follows a predetermined script - a script they compose for themselves during early childhood. demonstrates how each life script gets written, how it works and, more important, how anyone can improvise or change his script to make a happy ending...

One of a number of major works written by Jung during his seventies in which he discusses the relationships between psychology, alchemy and religion. The particular focus in this volume is the rise of Christinity and the figure of Christ.

While some forms of anxiety are natural, even helpful, anxiety disorders can lead you into a spiral of stress and worry, and interfere with your everyday life. Practical, supportive and uplifting, this is a journal for anyone who struggles with anxiety, whether in the form of phobias, social anxiety, generalized anxiety (GAD) or day-to-day worrying. Beautifully illustrated by Marcia Mihotich, The Anxiety Journal by Corinne Sweet encourages you to use CBT techniques and mindfulness exercises to help you better understand your anxiety and help you to achieve peace and calm.Whether you're awake at 4am unable to turn off those racing thoughts, or struggling to get yourself together before a presentation, The Anxiety Journal will help to soothe stress and reduce worry, identify negative thought-cycles, and provide you with techniques to combat anxiety wherever you are.

'Ayelet Waldman is fearless' - Rebecca Solnit'Genuinely brave and human' - The New York Times'Wildly brilliant' - ElleThe true story of how a renowned writer's struggle with mood storms led her to try a remedy as drastic as it is forbidden: microdoses of LSD. Her fascinating journey provides a window into one family and the complex world of a once-infamous drug seen through new eyes.When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from 'Lewis Carroll,' Ayelet Waldman is at a low point. Her mood storms have become intolerably severe; she has tried nearly every medication possible; her husband and children are suffering with her. So she opens the vial, places two drops on her tongue, and joins the ranks of an underground but increasingly vocal group of scientists and civilians successfully using therapeutic microdoses of LSD. As Waldman charts her experience over the course of a month - bursts of productivity, sleepless nights, a newfound sense of equanimity - she also explores the history and mythology of LSD, the cutting-edge research into the drug, and the byzantine policies that control it. Drawing on her experience as a federal public defender, and as the mother of teenagers, and her research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Waldman has produced a book that is eye-opening, often hilarious, and utterly enthralling.

In private life, we try to induce or suppress love, envy, and anger through deep acting or "e;emotion work,"e; just as we manage our outer expressions of feeling through surface acting. In trying to bridge a gap between what we feel and what we "e;ought"e; to feel, we take guidance from "e;feeling rules"e; about what is owing to others in a given situation. Based on our private mutual understandings of feeling rules, we make a "e;gift exchange"e; of acts of emotion management. We bow to each other not simply from the waist, but from the heart.But what occurs when emotion work, feeling rules, and the gift of exchange are introduced into the public world of work? In search of the answer, Arlie Russell Hochschild closely examines two groups of public-contact workers: flight attendants and bill collectors. The flight attendant's job is to deliver a service and create further demand for it, to enhance the status of the customer and be "e;nicer than natural."e; The bill collector's job is to collect on the service, and if necessary, to deflate the status of the customer by being "e;nastier than natural."e; Between these extremes, roughly one-third of American men and one-half of American women hold jobs that call for substantial emotional labor. In many of these jobs, they are trained to accept feeling rules and techniques of emotion management that serve the company's commercial purpose.Just as we have seldom recognized or understood emotional labor, we have not appreciated its cost to those who do it for a living. Like a physical laborer who becomes estranged from what he or she makes, an emotional laborer, such as a flight attendant, can become estranged not only from her own expressions of feeling (her smile is not "e;her"e; smile), but also from what she actually feels (her managed friendliness). This estrangement, though a valuable defense against stress, is also an important occupational hazard, because it is through our feelings that we are connected with those around us.On the basis of this book, Hochschild was featured in Key Sociological Thinkers, edited by Rob Stones. This book was also the winner of the Charles Cooley Award in 1983, awarded by the American Sociological Association and received an honorable mention for the C. Wright Mills Award.

'Ranging expertly across business, politics and the arts, Tim Harford makes a compelling case for the creative benefits of disorganization, improvisation and confusion. His liberating message: you'll be more successful if you stop struggling so hard to plan or control your success. Messy is a deeply researched, endlessly eye-opening adventure in the life-changing magic of not tidying up' Oliver BurkemanThe urge to tidiness seems to be rooted deep in the human psyche. Many of us feel threatened by anything that is vague, unplanned, scattered around or hard to describe. We find comfort in having a script to rely on, a system to follow, in being able to categorise and file away. We all benefit from tidy organisation - up to a point. A large library needs a reference system. Global trade needs the shipping container. Scientific collaboration needs measurement units. But the forces of tidiness have marched too far. Corporate middle managers and government bureaucrats have long tended to insist that everything must have a label, a number and a logical place in a logical system. Now that they are armed with computers and serial numbers, there is little to hold this tidy-mindedness in check. It's even spilling into our personal lives, as we corral our children into sanitised play areas or entrust our quest for love to the soulless algorithms of dating websites. Order is imposed when chaos would be more productive. Or if not chaos, then . . . messiness.The trouble with tidiness is that, in excess, it becomes rigid, fragile and sterile. In Messy, Tim Harford reveals how qualities we value more than ever - responsiveness, resilience and creativity - simply cannot be disentangled from the messy soil that produces them. This, then, is a book about the benefits of being messy: messy in our private lives; messy in the office, with piles of paper on the desk and unread spreadsheets; messy in the recording studio, the laboratory or in preparing for an important presentation; and messy in our approach to business, politics and economics, leaving things vague, diverse and uncomfortably made-up-on-the-spot. It's time to rediscover the benefits of a little mess.

A Books on Prescription title to help you stop worrying about your health and enjoy life.Many of us have a tendency to worry unnecessarily about our health. For some the anxiety becomes chronic, and they may spend many hours checking for symptoms, seeking reassurance from others, surfing the internet for information about different diseases, or repeatedly visiting the doctor. It is distressing for them and for everyone around them.In fact, health anxiety can be very successfully treated with cognitive behavioural therapy - the approach taken in this self-help guide. Using a structured, step-by-step approach the authors explain how the problem develops, how to recognize what feeds it and how to develop effective methods of dealing with it.- Includes questionnaires, case studies and exercises- Based on proven CBT techniques- Includes a chapter on fear of death and fear of vomiting

Creative Visualization is the art of using mental imagery and affirmation to produce positive changes in your life. It is being successfully used in the fields of health, business, the creative arts, and sports, and in fact can have an impact in every area of your life. With more than six million copies sold worldwide, this pioneering bestseller and perennial favorite helped launch a new movement in personal growth when it was first published. The classic guide is filled with meditations, exercises, and techniques that can help you use the power of your imagination to create what you want in your life, change negative habit patterns, improve self-esteem, reach career goals, increase prosperity, develop creativity, increase vitality, improve your health, experience deep relaxation, and much more. This book can help you to increase your personal mastery of life.

Dr Mary Aiken is the world's leading expert in forensic cyberpsychology - a discipline that combines psychology, criminology and technology to investigate the intersection between technology and human behaviour. In this, her first book, Aiken has created a starting point for all future conversations about how the Internet is shaping our perception of the world, development and behaviour, societal norms and values, children, safety and security.Covering everything from the impact of screens on the developing child to the explosion of teen sexting, and the acceleration of compulsive and addictive online behaviours (gaming, shopping, pornography), The Cyber Effect also examines the escalation in cyberchondria (self-diagnosis online), cyberstalking and organized crime in the Deep Web. Cyberspace is an environment full of surveillance, but who is looking out for us? Full of surprising statistics and incredible-but-true case studies of the hidden trends that are shaping our culture, this book raises troubling questions about where the digital revolution is taking us.Upending your assumptions about your online life and forever changing the way you think about the technology that you, your friends and your family use, The Cyber Effect offers a fascinating and chilling look at a future we can still do something about.

Full of insights and very practical, this important book by the Dalai Lama shows that self-knowledge is the key to personal development and creating positive relationshipsHow to See Yourself As You Really Are is based on a fundamental Buddhist belief that love and insight work together to bring about enlightenment, like two wings of a bird. It provides a new perspective on the psychological problems of hurting ourselves through misguided, exaggerated notions of self, others, events and physical things. It shows how even our senses deceive us, drawing us into unwise attachments and negative actions that can only come back to haunt us in the future.Drawing on wisdom and techniques refined in Tibetan monasteries for more than a thousand years, and adopting as its structure traditional Buddhist steps of meditative reflection, How to See Yourself As You Really Are includes practical exercises and gives readers a clear path to assess their growth and personal development. The book is enlivened throughout with warm personal anecdotes and intimate accounts of the Dalai Lama's experiences as a life-long student, a meditator, a political leader and an international figure working with other Nobel Peace Laureates to address crises around the world.His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibet. Today, he lives in exile in Northern India and works tirelessly on behalf of the Tibetan people, as well as travelling the world to give spiritual teachings to sell-out audiences. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

Your body is comprised of energy pathways and energy centres that are in constant motion, interconnecting with your cells, organs, immune system, mood and thoughts. THE HEALING POWER OF EFT AND ENERGY PSYCHOLOGY incorporates the concepts of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to show you how to shift these energies, so you can influence your physical health, your emotional patterns, and your state of mind. With this strategy, stubborn phobias often fade in minutes, the lifelong effects of an early trauma can frequently be reduced or completely eliminated, uncontrollable anger can rapidly become manageable and even elusive physical problems may respond where other treatments have failed. Here are simple step-by-step instructions to help you: change unwanted habits and behaviours; enhance your ability to love, succeed and enjoy life; overcome fear, guilt, shame, jealousy or anger. This clearly illustrated and easy to follow energy approach will help bring about significant change in your life.

WINNER OF BEST BOOK (POPULAR MEDICINE) AT THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION'S BOOK AWARDS 2014Pain, suffering and stress can be intolerable - but it doesn't have to be this way.Mindfulness for Health reveals a series of simple practices that you can incorporate into your daily life to relieve chronic pain and the suffering and stress of illness. Clinical trials show that mindfulness meditation can be as effective as prescription painkillers and also enhances the body's natural healing systems. Mindfulness can also reduce the anxiety, depression, irritability, exhaustion and insomnia that can arise from chronic pain and illness.Mindfulness for Health is based on a unique meditation programme developed by Vidyamala Burch to help her cope with the severe pain of spinal injury. Taught at Breathworks in the UK - and its affiliates around the world - this programme has helped tens of thousands of people cope with pain, illness and stress. Breathworks' pioneering approach is praised by Professor Mark Williams of Oxford University, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Professor Lance McCracken of King's College London.The eight-week programme at the heart of this book takes just 10-20 minutes per day. It is particularly effective for the biggest causes of pain - back problems, arthritis, migraine and diabetes but works equally well for cancer (and its associated chemotherapy), heart disease, fibromyalgia, celiac disease, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS, labour pain and even tinnitus. You will be surprised by how quickly your suffering melts away, leaving you able to live life to the full again.

Allen Carr, international bestselling author of The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, addresses your worries about plane travel in Allen Carr's Easy Way to Enjoy Flying.Learn to ENJOY your holidays and NEVER fear flying again!Read this ebook and flying will become a happy, stress-free experience for life.THE unique method pioneered by Allen Carr dispels all the most common flying fears as well as revealing the truth behind media scare stories. It removes the root of the fear, not just the symptoms and is packed with tips to help you on your next flight.Allen Carr, author of the world's bestselling guide to stopping smoking, uses his unique approach to help make flying an enjoyable part of your work or holiday.By the time you have finished reading this ebook you will be looking forward to taking your next flight.A satisfied Amazon customer says:'I still can't believe that something as simple as reading a book could allay what had pretty much become a phobia, but I can assure you it really does work. I consider myself CURED!''His method is absolutey unique' - Sir Richard BransonAllen Carr was an accountant who smoked 100 cigarettes a day until he discovered EASYWAY. Having cured his own addiction he went on to write a series of bestselling books, most famously The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. His books have sold more than 13 million copies worldwide. Allen's lasting legacy is a dynamic, ongoing, global publishing programme and an ever-expanding worldwide network of clinics which help treat a range of issues including smoking, weight, alcohol and 'other' drug addiction.

A book that deals with that most crucial of decisions - should you stay with your present partner or should you go? Brilliantly incisive, witty and extremely informative.

The New Black is Darian Leader's compassionate and illuminating exploration of melancholyWhat happens when we lose someone we love? A death, a separation or the break-up of a relationship are some of the hardest times we have to live through. We may fall into a nightmare of depression, lose the will to live and see no hope for the future. What matters at this crucial point is whether or not we are able to mourn. In this important and groundbreaking book, acclaimed psychoanalyst and writer Darian Leader urges us to look beyond the catch-all concept of depression to explore the deeper, unconscious ways in which we respond to the experience of loss. In so doing, we can loosen the grip it may have upon our lives.'His orthodox, psychoanalytical approach, produces an unpredictable, occasionally brilliant book. The New Black is a mixture of Freudian text, clinical assessments and Leader's own brand of gentle wisdom'Herald'Compelling and important . . . an engrossing and wise book'Hanif Kureishi'There are many self-help books on the market . . . The New Black is a book that might actually help'IndependentDarian Leader is a psychoanalyst practising in London and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and of the College of Psychoanalysts - UK. He is the author of The New Black, Strictly Bipolar, Why do women write more letters than they post?, Promises lovers make when it gets late, Freud's Footnotes and Stealing the Mona Lisa, and co-author, with David Corfield, of Why Do People Get Ill? He is Honorary Visiting Professor in the School of Human and Life Sciences, Roehampton University.

A Sunday Times Bestseller Have you ever had a strange urge to jump from a tall building, or steer your car into oncoming traffic? You are not alone. In this captivating fusion of science, history and personal memoir, writer David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind, and how they drive millions of us towards obsessions and compulsions. David has suffered from OCD for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn't Stop is his unflinchingly honest attempt to understand the condition and his experiences. What might lead an Ethiopian schoolgirl to eat a wall of her house, piece by piece; or a pair of brothers to die beneath an avalanche of household junk that they had compulsively hoarded? At what point does a harmless idea, a snowflake in a clear summer sky, become a blinding blizzard of unwanted thoughts? Drawing on the latest research on the brain, as well as historical accounts of patients and their treatments, this is a book that will challenge the way you think about what is normal, and what is mental illness. Told with fierce clarity, humour and urgent lyricism, this extraordinary book is both the haunting story of a personal nightmare, and a fascinating doorway into the darkest corners of our minds.

Are you plagued by obsessive thoughts, rituals or routines? Would you like to regain control over your behaviour and cast your fears aside?Whether you are compelled to wash your hands more and more thoroughly or feel the need to keep checking that you've turned off appliances, obsessive worries can be a drain on daily life. However, you don't need to suffer any more. This practical guide, written by three leading cognitive behavioural therapy experts, enables you to make sense of your symptoms, and gives a simple plan to help you conquer OCD.Includes: detailed information on the many different manifestations of OCD; the differences between normal and obsessive worries; clear information on treating your individual problem; real-life case studies and examples; and advice and support for friends and family of OCD sufferers.Whether your condition is mild or severe, this definitive resource will help you reclaim your life and keep OCD away for good.

Brilliantly entertaining, enlightening and inspiring, Robin Skynner and John Cleese take on the big issue: life, and the challenge of living, in all its myriad forms. This book is an essential guide to surviving life's ups and downs - at home or in the workplace, as a member of a family or society. Presented in the same lively style as the best-selling Families and How to Survive Them, Life extends Skynner's and Cleese's study beyond the family to relationships and group interaction in life outside it. The book deals with such pithy issues as: -Why life gives you all the lessons you need-How grief can be good for you-Why work is essential to our psychological health-What mid-life crisis means for youWe are all searching for healthier, happier, more satisfying lives, but it's the journey that matters, not the destination. Skynner and Cleese are the perfect travelling companions.

Written by ex-Commando and dad of three Neil Sinclair, this no-nonsense manual is a must-have for every man about to embark on his greatest mission: fatherhood.With straightforward and practical advice for all new recruits, from early reconnaissance right up to the deployment date, learn how to:- Prepare for your baby trooper's arrival- Manage your Commanding Officer (i.e., the mum-to-be) in all terrains- Pack your Deployment Kit list (i.e., the hospital bag) ... and much moreLet the mission begin!www.commandodad.com

Following the massive success of The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler now bring their bestselling message to our working lives.Of the many Dalai Lama titles on sale, The Art of Happiness written with western psychiatrist Howard Cutler is by far the biggest bestseller of them all. A huge international success, it has sold over 2 million copies worldwide, with nearly 300,000 of these in the UK alone. Now, this inspirational new book brings the successful East-meets-West pairing together again to provide a practical application of Tibetan Buddhist spiritual values to the world of work.In this wise and practical book, the Dalai Lama shows us how to place our working lives into the context of our lives as a whole. Rather than striving to find a role which suits us, we should allow our work to arise naturally from who we are and what is most important to us. From here we reach a pathway that can lead us to true life fulfilment and purpose.

Sacred Knowledge is the first well-documented, sophisticated account of the effect of psychedelics on biological processes, human consciousness, and revelatory religious experiences. Based on nearly three decades of legal research with volunteers, William A. Richards argues that, if used responsibly and legally, psychedelics have the potential to assuage suffering and constructively affect the quality of human life.Richards's analysis contributes to social and political debates over the responsible integration of psychedelic substances into modern society. His book serves as an invaluable resource for readers who, whether spontaneously or with the facilitation of psychedelics, have encountered meaningful, inspiring, or even disturbing states of consciousness and seek clarity about their experiences. Testing the limits of language and conceptual frameworks, Richards makes the most of experiential phenomena that stretch our understanding of reality, advancing new frontiers in the study of belief, spiritual awakening, psychiatric treatment, and social well-being. His findings enrich humanities and scientific scholarship, expanding work in philosophy, anthropology, theology, and religious studies and bringing depth to research in mental health, psychotherapy, and psychopharmacology.

After the Affair teaches partners how to heal themselves and grow from the shattering crisis of an infidelity. Drawing on thirty-five years as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Spring offers a series of original and proven strategies that address such questions as: Why did it happen? Once love and trust are gone, can we ever get them back? Can Ishould Irecommit when I feel so ambivalent? How do we become sexually intimate again? Is forgiveness possible? What constitutes an affair in cyberspace?