Personal Improvement Development

In The Fred Factor, Mark Sanborn illuminates the simple steps each of us can take to transform our own lives from the ordinary into the extraordinary. Through stories about Fred and others like him, Sanborn reveals four basic "how to" principles that will help us bring fresh energy and creativity to our life and work.

Do you ride the escalator or do you take the stairs? No matter how you define success, it always requires one thing: self-discipline. But as popular speaker and strategist Rory Vaden explains, we live in an "escalator world", one that's filled with shortcuts, quick fixes, and distractions that make it all too easy to slide into procrastination, compromise, and mediocrity. What seems like an easier path is really much harder in the end - and, most important, it won't take you where you want to go.

Can we really learn to be happy? Yes, we can. Each semester, nearly 1,400 students sign up for Harvard professor Tal Ben-Shahar's life-changing class, "How to Get Happy". Currently it's the hottest course at Harvard, taken by 20 percent of its graduates. In Happier, Professor Ben-Shahar brings the ideas of the Ivory Tower to Main Street, distilling the lessons and exercises from his course into a slim volume of practical wisdom.

We've all had the desire to travel through time and see what our lives will be like later in life. While we want the best possible future for ourselves, we often fail to make decisions that would truly make that a reality. Why are so many of us so disconnected from our future selves? Based on over a decade of groundbreaking research, Your Future Self explains that, in our minds, our future selves often look like strangers.

A guide to creating miracles in your own life through the power of thought.

Let "The Kick Start Guy", who inspires 2.4 million entrepreneurs monthly, introduce you to a profound four-step process for achieving important goals in your life and work. Gain the discipline, skill, and mastery it takes to pursue your purpose in life. This practical, life-affirming guide gives you the tools and techniques you need to create conversations that inspire others to help you succeed.

Based on his TEDx talk "Everyday Leadership (the Lollipop Moment)"—voted one of the 15 most inspirational TED talks of all time—This Is Day One is leadership expert Drew Dudley's guide to cultivating the behaviors that will help you to succeed and empower those around you. If you're intimidated by the mystique surrounding leadership, this audiobook is for you. Dudley simplifies leadership without denying its complexity, demonstrating that leadership in all its forms begins at the same clear and accessible place for everyone: what he calls "Day One".

The Next Chapter is Jana Kramer’s intimate and moving account about setting her life back on the right path after her sudden divorce. Chronicling the year that follows, Jana relives personal stories of early traumas and past relationships, and with raw honesty she shares topics dear to her heart and music, including hearing God, loving oneself, navigating setbacks, female friendships, grief, and motherhood.

When psychotherapist Amy Morin first introduced the world to the concept of mental strength with her internationally bestselling book, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, she showed millions of people how to be the strongest, best version of themselves. Now, Morin turns her expert eye to how couples can work together to grow stronger and have better relationships. Relationships play a key role in mental strength, and partners have the ability to help one another build the mental muscle they need to reach their greatest potential—with hard work and the right tools.

In her midforties, Gwendolyn Bounds attended a dinner party where someone asked a little girl: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It struck Bounds: In middle age, no one asks you that anymore. So she put the question to herself. The answer set her on an unexpected five-year path of transformation from an unathletic office executive glued to her screens to an age-group medalist and world championship competitor in obstacle course racing—a demanding military-style sport requiring speed, endurance, mobility, and strength.

The workplace is a magnet for clutter and mess. Who hasn't felt drained by wasteful meetings, disorganized papers, endless emails, and unnecessary tasks? These are the modern-day hazards of working, and they can slowly drain the joy from work, limit our chances of career progress, and undermine our well-being. There is another way. In Joy at Work, best-selling author and Netflix star Marie Kondo and Rice University business professor Scott Sonenshein offer stories, studies, and strategies to help you eliminate clutter and make space for work that really matters.

Whether we’re facing deadlines, difficulties with family or friends, personal crises, or just the uncertainty of the world—stress is the ocean we swim in. Even our negative thoughts can trigger our body’s stress response so we rarely experience periods of ease and deep restoration. In The Stress Prescription, Dr. Epel distills decades of research, infused with wisdom, into a practical yet transformative seven-day plan of science-based techniques that can help you harness stress through more positive challenge and purpose.

In Thrive, Arianna Huffington has written a passionate call to arms, looking to redefine what it means to be successful in today's world. Drawing on the latest groundbreaking research and scientific findings in the fields of psychology, sports, sleep, and physiology that show the profound and transformative effects of meditation, mindfulness, unplugging, and giving, Arianna shows us the way to a revolution in our culture, our thinking, our workplaces, and our lives.

Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal began working with brain injury patients and found that most popular beliefs about human resilience are incorrect. Since then, for the last 20 years, she has conducted qualitative research on the power of resilience, studying the science behind why some people succeed while others fail. Here, Dr. Taryn Marie outlines the five critical behaviors that define successful resilience: Vulnerability, Productive Perseverance, Connection, Gratiosity (Gratitude and Generosity), and Possibility.

Discover the potent force of kaizen... and use it to easily, effortlessly achieve any goal or make any change you want to!We've been programmed to believe that change is a "battle" - something hard fought and hard won, something that demands struggle and sacrifice. But as anyone who uses the technique known as kaizen can tell you, nothing could be further from the truth. With kaizen, it's effortless, simple, and inevitable to change your life.

Quietly and steadily, the number of women making six figures or more is increasing and continues to rise at a rate faster than for men. From entrepreneurs to corporate executives, from white-collar professionals to freelancers and part-timers, women are forging careers with considerable financial success. In Secrets of Six-Figure Women, Barbara Stanny, journalist, motivational speaker, and financial educator, identifies the seven key strategies of female high earners.

Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the "creative types." But two of the leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is creative. In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO, the Stanford d.school, and with many of the world's top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential.

First Things First is a revolutionary guide to managing your time by learning how to balance your life. Traditional time management suggests that working harder, smarter, and faster will help you gain control over your life, and that increased control will bring peace and fulfillment. But the authors of First Things First apply the insights of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to our daily problems of struggling with the ever-increasing demands of work and home life.

In this revolutionary, comprehensive, and accessible guide on how the brain learns, discover how to study more efficiently and effectively, shrug away exam stress, and most of all, enjoy learning.

Renowned sports psychology expert W. Timothy Gallwey teams up with two esteemed physicians to offer a unique and empowering guide to mental health in today’s volatile world. The Inner Game of Stress applies the trusted principles of Gallwey’s wildly popular Inner Game series, which have helped athletes the world over, to the management of everyday stress - personal, professional, financial, physical - and shows us how to access our inner resources to maintain stability and achieve success.